Tommy Can You Hear Me? The unedited and unexpurgated single topic bootleg version.
I love a good concept album. “The Wall” and “Operation Mindcrime” are my 2 all time favorites with honorable mention going to Green Day’s recent “American Idiot”. I hear My Chemical Romance’s new one is a concept album and good but I haven’t heard any of it. System Of The Down’s most recent may be but I haven’t heard enough of it.
But is a story about a deaf and blind guy who has a facility for playing pinball machines really worthy of an hour concept album?
There’s alot of good songs on Tommy, as well as alot of filler, but it’s just kind of hard to get too involved in a story so specific.
I mean no matter how hard I try I just can’t quite relate to being deaf, dumb, and blind.
Or rocking the pinball machines.
And being named Tommy Walker.
Yeah there’s some non-literal connections I have to the idea of feeling isolated and unable to connect to the world around me.
But for me Pink Floyd’s The Wall covers this territory better without drawing too fine a characterization that it takes me out of the concept.
Plus The Wall is more thematic than narrative. I think that helps offer itself to a wider interpretation.
I just thought it was about time I spoke out about this.
Plus i just wanted to talk about rock music. I was thinking about Classic Rock in particular yesterday. I think it was because I was hanging at my friend Jeff’s. He is a hippie from back in the day. He grew up with this stuff. But even though I was unborn or too young to remember alot of the stuff, I was thinking about how much I’ve always felt a connection to 60′s and 70′s music.
Those who know me know I’ve had an 80s thing going on for a while. Understandable since i was around and had first hand knowledge of it that created memories which now in my later 30′s have bled into memories sticky, creepy stalkers, nostalgia. But when i hear alot of that stuff like some of Tommy, or CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel, Led Zep, The Byrds or whoever, I kind of feel like I’m connecting in a personal way to a time and place even though I wasn’t in that time and place.
This is probably just a testimony to the great musicians that were so inspired during the period. But sometimes I wish I had been older then. Like I missed my time. I think that’s one of the appeals of Almost Famous, which has become one of my all time favorite movies. I was dropping the DVD off for Jeff to borrow when I got to thinking about all this. I couldn’t believe he’d not ever seen it. I love that movie the way a man loves the first teacher he had a crush on and always felt he belonged with if only she’d wait for him to get older.
For me it’s the kind of movie you just want to hug and be around all the time.
And of course I can’t not mention The Beatles while I’m going on about the era. They are the first older woman you do have a relationship with.
Ok I never actually had a relationship with an older woman but you get my point.
The Beatles are amazing. I can remember the joy of discovery when I really found them. I was in my late teens-early twenties. Having that whole catalogue of material suddenly open before me was magical. An experience of discovery of such wide eyed wonder and pure joy I’ll probably never experience again. Sure there could be other bands in other genres that have gone largely untapped. But rock will always be first and no one in any genre could touch what the Beatles did. Maybe I’ll get into Jazz and Coltrane in a way I’ve never thought to before someday. But I’ve listened to enough Jazz to know it can never make me smile or feel a connection to others the way the Beatles or rock music can.
Throw in the fact that music becomes harder and harder for me over time as my hearing fails in one of my ears and there is certainly a joy and purity lost in that simple physiological fact of my existence. “Don’t it always seem to go that you dont know what you got till it’s gone,” indeed Joni.
Motown can also make me feel alot of that kind of funneled emotion. As a whole that music, of that era made for quite an enjoyable year or so of discovery. I brought boxed sets of the Temptations and Marvin Gaye and just gave myself over to it wondering why it took me so long. I think I was in my mid twenties. The Funk Brothers were the common element running through all the music coming out of Detroit at the time. And I guess Smokey wrote alot of stuff for other acts as well. I had this prejudice against musicians who didn’t play their own instruments until The Four Tops and the rest. I kind of still have it but I suspend it for these guys. Some of the Stax guys down South as well.
But even though no one group captures the mega-status or garners the intimate relationship the Beatles do, the Motown sound as a whole was really a great high point that can still awaken in me a feeling of innocence that resonates with a good kind of naivete about love and a hopeful longing unencumbered by wisdoms cynicism.
Will people listen to all of the above the same way in 25 years? 50? I don’t know. Judging from the music of the past 10-15 years it doesn’t seem like much of it will be worth remembering or preserving. Even the stuff I like just doesn’t have the same life. Maybe it was the drugs of the era.
I loved the grunge era, still dig the Pearl Jam and Audioslave that are its byproducts today. Radiohead, Beck, Green Day, and a few others stand out for me. But even these are hard to imagine resonating with new generations who discover it and through it connect to a time and place. Maybe this has something to do with my generations not living through particularly memorable times. To paraphrase Tyler Durden we have no war, no depression, only our lives. THere is no WWII. No clear cut battle against evil. There is no deep soul searching born of Vietnam or civil rights movements. Yeah we had 9-11 but that’s been muddied and forever linked to grave mistakes and wanton lies. And Iraq’s been done in Vietnam.
Sure there have been changes. I’d say mostly for the better despite the Bush years. But it happens so fast and there is so much happening that nothing serves as defining. Growth and change is exponential and we’re so specialized now. It’s all important but is it memorable? Maybe the music is a byproduct of that. I shudder at the thought of one day not having music as a source of joy, inspiration, or just energy in my life. Individually I will certainly always sing Pearl Jam songs to myself even if they don’t become the stuff of lore for our cyborg grandchildren in a hundred years.
Even if I can’t hear it mysef. I don’t know if things will get bad enough that it will be like that ever but I know it’s harder now and will get harder. It’s only to what degree that remains in question. Hopefully I’ll have enough to keep on rockin in the free world for a long long time.
Even if I can’t do it very loudly.
And Tommy is still overrated. But with some great songs nonetheless.
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