{"id":65456,"date":"2018-09-07T11:00:12","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65456"},"modified":"2018-09-07T10:26:58","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T15:26:58","slug":"see-you-on-the-dark-side-of-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65456","title":{"rendered":"See You On The Dark Side Of The Moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>People have told me I march to the beat of a different drummer.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve usually responded &#8220;Yes, I do.\u00a0 He was Keith Moon&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The right people get the joke.<\/p>\n<p>It was forty years ago today that Keith Moon died &#8211; too\u00a0 young, but also probably later than he should have.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Final 24: Keith Moon\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HzYqUh8u7yo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I had just barely discovered The Who at the time.\u00a0 Pete Townsend was a self-obsessed overdramatic post-adolescent with a flair for the dramatic.\u00a0 And I was a self-obsessed overdramatic adolescent.\u00a0 It was a match made in heaven.\u00a0 Ask anyone I knew in high school &#8211; I was a Who fanatic.<\/p>\n<p>And I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m overstating it &#8211; The Who died forty years ago today.\u00a0 Townsend&#8217;s pompous mini-operas needed the raw, unpredictable, &#8220;what&#8217;s gonna happen next?&#8221; power of Moon&#8217;s inimitable style to seem like anything but the caterwauling of a guy griping about getting old without dying first.<\/p>\n<p>Moon had been declining for a while, as his legendarily-dissipate lifestyle had been<\/p>\n<p>Even close to his soggy, saggy, alcohol sotted, drug-sodden end, though, Moon still had distilled blasts of pure brilliance:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/n19GVGtBAUE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And the band onstage desperately needed the comic relief Moon provided.<\/p>\n<p>Townsend, Roger Daltrey and (for another 25 years or so) John Entwistle played on, and even made the occasional good\/great song.\u00a0 And Townsend made a couple of essential solo albums in the next decade and change &#8211; but those were written around the styles of different drummers.\u00a0 <em>Great\u00a0<\/em>different drummers &#8211; Mark Brzeziczki, Simon Baker, Jason Bonham and a who&#8217;s who of other great British sidemen played on Townsend&#8217;s solo records, all of them superb in their own way.<\/p>\n<p>But without Moon, The Who always felt like a nostalgia band.<\/p>\n<p>The Kenny Jones edition of the band was the first big-time rock concert I ever attended, in October of\u00a0 &#8217;82 at the old Saint Paul Civic Center (29th row tickets on the floor, $15).\u00a0 \u00a0I loved the show &#8211; I loved\u00a0<em>the event,\u00a0<\/em>really &#8211; but for The Who, there really was no going back.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People have told me I march to the beat of a different drummer.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve usually responded &#8220;Yes, I do.\u00a0 He was Keith Moon&#8221;. The right people get the joke. It was forty years ago today that Keith Moon died &#8211; too\u00a0 young, but also probably later than he should have. I had just barely discovered [&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":[],"class_list":["post-65456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65456","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=65456"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67915,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65456\/revisions\/67915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}