{"id":1567,"date":"2007-11-08T05:00:47","date_gmt":"2007-11-08T10:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1567"},"modified":"2013-01-21T14:21:16","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T20:21:16","slug":"open-letter-to-simon-townsend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1567","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter To Simon Townsend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Simon,<\/p>\n<p>For the past quarter-century, I&#8217;ve been pointing out to people that <a href=\"http:\/\/simontownshend.blogspot.com\/\">you <\/a><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.simontownshend.com\/\">are<\/a>,<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Simon_Townshend\">in fact<\/a>, Pete Townsend&#8217;s little brother.  Of course, it&#8217;d make not the faintest shred of difference, and nobody would care&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;but for your great shining moment, <em>Sweet Sound<\/em> &#8211; the album that put you on the map, back in 1983.\u00a0 And the cornerstone of that album was &#8220;I Am The Answer&#8221;, one of the most perfect pop songs ever written.<\/p>\n<p>Cut with your old band (bassist Tony Butler and drummer Mark Bzrzecki, who joined Big Country around this time), centered around a spare, chiming guitar part and the gorgeous interplay between you and Butler&#8217;s vocals, the song was an exhilarating wonder. I&#8217;ve been wanting to find it for years.<\/p>\n<p>So now I have an IPod, and ITumes.\u00a0 And I went looking.\u00a0 And found it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.simontownshend.com\/listen.html\">Sort of.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>No, the version available on ITunes is not the <em>Sweet Sound <\/em>take.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a newer version.<\/p>\n<p>And Simon?\u00a0 Bubbie?\u00a0 We gotta talk.<\/p>\n<p>Where the old version was low-key and gorgeous, the new one is shrill and constipated-sounding.\u00a0 Where Tony Butler&#8217;s harmonies on the original defied vocal gravity, the new version sounds like you&#8217;re backed by a bunch of Scottish football hooligans.<\/p>\n<p>See to this, can we?<\/p>\n<p>That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Simon, For the past quarter-century, I&#8217;ve been pointing out to people that you are, in fact, Pete Townsend&#8217;s little brother. Of course, it&#8217;d make not the faintest shred of difference, and nobody would care&#8230; &#8230;but for your great shining moment, Sweet Sound &#8211; the album that put you on the map, back in 1983.\u00a0 And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[249],"class_list":["post-1567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-open-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33676,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions\/33676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}