Miles has been getting into The Who, which is okay by me. He especially likes "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Baba O'Reilly" from Who's Next, as well as "Overture" and "Pinball Wizard" from Tommy. My favorite bits of Tommy are "Sparks" and "Underture."
So I remember watching Michael Hedges play "Underture" at the Varsity in Palo Alto back in the eighties. He described how he used to sit on his back porch listening to Tommy, which is a rock opera, and how he thought that was very cool, a rock opera, and that operas have overtures, which Tommy does, too, but that Tommy has an "Underture," which he thought was very cool. Then he leapt across the stage and began "Underture" with a big, swinging power chord that would have made Pete Townshend proud.
Remembering all this, I checked whether there's a video of Michael playing "Underture" on youtube. No luck. So here's "Aerial Boundaries" instead, making me all nostalgic for all those times I had the joy and privilege of hearing Michael play, back at the Varsity in Palo Alto.
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4 comments:
I don't remember how old Miles is, but I do remember that early in my time at Princeton, when Kajsa was around 8 or 9, the tape we played on almost every trip to or from DE (about 90 min. drive) was the original recording of "Tommy."
"did you ever see the faces of the children, they get so excited / waking up on Christmas morning hours before the winter sun's ignited."--Townshend, "Christmas"
Miles is seven; he'll be eight in December.
I try to approach music with Miles the way you approached it with Kajsa. :-)
Thanks for the Hedges; I always associate him with the Varsity too. I saw him there around the time of the first album he ever did with vocals. His death saddened me--both the fact of it and the nature of it.
Also enjoy thi clip.
It was the summer of 82 (right after we graduated, Mr. J.) that I spent watching Michael at the Varsity almost every week. I think I spent a lot of time there in the summer of 83, too.
Thanks for the link to "Because It's There." Great stuff.
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