{"id":79357,"date":"2021-08-27T07:32:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T12:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79357"},"modified":"2021-08-27T07:32:02","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T12:32:02","slug":"i-get-my-back-into-my-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=79357","title":{"rendered":"I Get My Back Into My Living"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p>It was my 15th birthday.  We were having dinner at my grandma&#8217;s house.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That was our family tradition &#8211; Grandma Bea lived four blocks away, so we spent a lot of time there.  I knew it was a blessing at the time, and that&#8217;s only grown moreso over time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I actually remember two presents:  the Avalon Hill game &#8220;Gettysburg&#8221;, which was actually three games in one (introductory, intermediate and incredibly mind-warpingly complex &#8211; and you can probably guess the one I went straight to) from my parents&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;and, from my little sister, this album:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.musicmaniarecords.be\/media\/coverart-big\/70053-whos-next.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;which fairly scandalized Dad, gave Mom a chuckle, and drew a &#8220;kids these days&#8221; roll of the eyes from my Grandma.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hard to beliieve <em>Who&#8217;s Next <\/em>turns fifty today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, I played that album nearly white over the next few years.   In its day, it was the perfect album for channeling adolescent angst into a fury of&#8230;well, activity, anyway.   <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, in one of its periodic &#8220;Best Albums&#8221; lists that came out in the magazines tween years, referred to it as &#8220;a mature. punk&#8217;s <em>War and Peace<\/em>&#8220;, which is the sort of<em> <\/em>wannabe-Hemingway dross that passed for rock critiicism then as now&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;but it wasn&#8217;t wrong.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More than a few of my high school classmates remember me as &#8220;the kid who was always dropping Pete Townsend references&#8221; &#8211; sometimes literally (I could slip a lyric into nearly any situation) or physically (when I played in garage bands, I scissor kicked and duck-walked and windmilled away, and in one gig, when I cut my thumb on an exposed thread on a toggle switch on my guitar, <em>just like Pete<\/em>, it was the most joyous injury of my life.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I mean, has there ever been a more perfect explosion of adolescent energy? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Who - Won&#039;t Get Fooled Again (Shepperton Studios \/ 1978)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UDfAdHBtK_Q?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>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>And yes, <em>of course <\/em>they were caricaturing themselves &#8211; but then, what explosion of adolescent energy, angst and unfocused emotion <em>isn&#8217;t, <\/em>really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Townsend has spent going on six decades exploring the world of the angry, angsty adolescent &#8211; he may be the world&#8217;s oldest t twenty-year-old art student, even today; even as The Who turned into a disappointment (after the death of Keith Moon) and then a nostalgia act after John Entwistle&#8217;s passing, he kept mining that same vein &#8211; often brilliantly.   But I can&#8217;t say The Who grew with me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But then there are days that there is no substitute for putting on <em>Who&#8217;s Next <\/em>and smiling at the sky. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was my 15th birthday. We were having dinner at my grandma&#8217;s house. That was our family tradition &#8211; Grandma Bea lived four blocks away, so we spent a lot of time there. I knew it was a blessing at the time, and that&#8217;s only grown moreso over time. I actually remember two presents: the [&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-79357","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\/79357","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=79357"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79358,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79357\/revisions\/79358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}