ADDED: Here's a shrine to the single "Substitute." And here's an article in today's NYT about The Who concert in NYC on Wednesday, which I hadn't noticed when I wrote this post. I'm not a fan of Who comeback concerts, and, in fact, my love for The Who is all about the pre-"Tommy" things, back when Keith Moon was not only not dead, but looked like he was just a kid.
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23 comments:
I agree with your morally just decsion. Throwing away LPs is a cardinal sin of the church. Little known edict from Vatican III, the Basement Tapes
obob: It's not an LP!
truly: Well, I'm using them in the decor of my blog. And actually, I do have one 45 that's been leaning on the mantle for a long time. As far as actual LPs are concerned, I do have 6 of them framed and hanging over the fireplace. There's an old post about that.
Unlike yesterday's, this 45 did not leap immediately to the tongue. I don't know if that's because it's less singable, less memorable (to me), or what.
Who broke it?
Didn't leap to the tongue?!
Sad but true. Yesterday I immediately started singing Walk like a man, talk like a man, walk like a man my so-o-o-o-on (Apologies to those who just got that out of their head), but today I had to think: "How's that go? Oh yeah, Substitute...". And that's the only word in the song I Know!
If you don't know "Substitute," you should at least know not to admit it. Unless you shun all popular music, it's cultural illiteracy not to know this one. Go to iTunes and download it. Then come back and talk about it. I like the single version, but "Live at Leeds" is a classic too.
Ann:
Photographs of your old 45s bring me a set of sad memories.
When my wife and I were married thirty-two years ago, the apartment into which we moved was too small for me to take all my stuff. So, I left behind my 45s, as well as my Matchbox cars, baseball cards, and some 30 Tonka trucks.
All were pretty much destroyed by my family. Six 45s (out of about 150) survived. The baseball cards were all thrown away. All but about ten Matchbox cars bit the dust. (Their demise I didn't mind so much; they were played with first, by my kid brother, and then by my nephews and nieces.)
I was shocked a few years ago when I learned that my sister had eight of the thirty big Tonka trucks, my most cherished childhood possessions, setting in barrels. My wife found a way to display them in our home and, in fact, two of them set on a shelf above my computer and I look at them every day.
I know that I shouldn't do it and most of the time I attach little significance to material things, as I've written to Sippican before. But I do wish that I could have been the one to decide which 45s to get rid, if any.
All the Veejay, Capitol, and Apple singles by the Beatles were among the collection, as were songs by Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, Donovan, Stevie Wonder, and lots of others. Included was 'Hey Jude,' which, as far as I'm aware, was the first 45 to be in stereo rather than mono.
Pardon me for whimpering and whining over something totally inconsequential.
(Fortunately, I took all my LPs with me and they all survive. They set on a bookshelf behind me now. I still play some of them from time to time.)
Mark
Madison Man's comment about the single not leaping immediately to the tongue made me laugh...it looks like somebody bit the record. So, maybe it did leap to someone's tongue.
Mark
So I shouldn't admit I never saw the appeal of the Who? There are Who songs I can listen to -- Won't get Fooled again, for example -- but they've never wormed their way into my brain like, say, all the songs on Surrealistic Pillow. I've always preferred the vocal part of songs, so I can sing along with them. I don't find Who songs singalongable, hence my lack of interest in them.
I'll add that I've never liked the Who's Next album cover either. I see it and think: don't they know they're polluting?
I know. Hopelessly square, in 1960s parlance.
Great song! But help me:
"See right through your plastic what?"
I'm a substitute for another guy/Look pretty tall, but my heels are high/The simple things you see are all complicated/I look pretty young but I'm just backdated.
I'm not a big fan of The Who, but this song is one of their most singable. I have the album, Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy which also includes Boris the Spider, Happy Jack (from the Hummer commercial, for the kids) and The Magic Bus.
On ATCO records, even! Most impressive. I had no idea that any label but Decca released their records in the USA. The 'Oo equivalent of Beatles singles on Vee-Jay, I suppose... Did you see Pete and Roger on Letterman last night?
Ann, can you post images of the B-sides too? I admit I'm too young to know what the B-side of this was, although I'm sure I know the tune.
And Ann is correct that you should know this song! I will have it in my head the rest of the day, no need for iTunes, no need for a device of any kind. I think the weekend just officially started!
Substitute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plastic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine looking suit is really made out of sack
Apparently, The Who weren't Apple fans....
"I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth" - The Who
"Poor George, he can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." - Ann Richards
"plastic mac" = one of those transparent raincoats that maybe the Mods liked to wear?
Before I ever heard this song, I knew its lyrics, because it was one of the songs listed in "The Poetry of Rock."
My parents were taken with the idea that, after Sgt. Pepper, rock was now culturally respectable, but only if the music was "sophisticated" and the lyrics "literary" (or alternately, political). So I was given this insufferable book analyzing rock song lyrics as poetry as a Christmas present.
"Substitute" was seen as a statement about racial prejudice -- I think just because of that one line, 'I look all white but my dad was black,' which is to me pretty clearly meant to taunt the person the singer is addressing, not to advance the cause of civil rights.
Hazy Dave: I'm glad you appreciate the ATCO label! I probably bought that record the day it came out. And let me just add that I was a member of the Who fan club before their first album was released in the U.S., and based on the first single ("I Can't Explain") and reading about them in magazines. I read a lot about the song "My Generation" before it was released here. Also: I never cared much for the later Who, which for me is "Tommy" and everything after. I'm all about the early singles. I even have something of a problem with "Happy Jack."
The B side is "Waltz for a Pig."
Wickedpinto: Funny. Reminds me of my brother, who once tried to burn a record he didn't like by pouring gasoline on it and lighting it, but he'd dripped gasoline all the way from the garage to the driveway and the whole line of drippings blew up in flames, and "the old man" looked out the window and saw huge flames billowing out of the house. Nothing serious really happened, but the old man went nuts (and rightly so).
A sad picture that. I am much more of an lp guy myself. Lately, when I can, I have a Friday (or Saturday) night record club where I vacuum clean some of my collection, then listen to them while I transfer them to cds and then my ipod.
The who STILL work for me. They are one of the important rock groups in my head, along with Neil Young (when he chooses to rock,) Jimi, Chicago (when they chose to rock) and others. The Who certainly lost a lot when they lost Keith and later John, but Roger and Pete still have it as far as I am concerned.
There is a new pressing of Who's Next by Classic Records that gets rave reviews, and I have seen but not yet bought a SACD of their first record. In my collection, my most valuable piece is a minty fresh 10 inch of Chet Baker. It was my mother in laws, she never played it, and I cannot part with it!
Thanks for the post and the pic.
Trey
Trey: The Who, with "Tommy" and what went after, were the very foundation of arena rock and the source of a whole lot of what went bad about rock music. In the 70s, their music and other things like it were on the radio all the time. The early Who inspired a different line, and the musicians who picked up that thread are the rock heroes of the 70s. I don't think "Tommy" is bad. "Who's Next" is good, but in the big picture, I have a problem with it, and the early Who is absolutely central to what I like about rock music.
Well, just to show how ancient it's possible to be, one of the first singles I owned, and would kill to still have, was the martyred Ritchie Valens' "Donna" on one side and "La Bamba" on the other. "La Bamba" was the side I favored and the singer's death in a small-plane crash in February 1959 along with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper was the first death that really hit me hard. I still have my journal entries about it -- two months short of age 13.
If I remember correctly, the Atco release of "Substitute" was expurgated: the line about "I look all white but my dad was black" was replaced with the more-innocuous "I try walking forward but my feet walk back."
"Waltz for a Pig," incidentally, is not the Who at all, but the Graham Bond Organisation, featuring Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, who made bigger names for themselves later elsewhere.
CGHill: You're right. It definitely had the "feet" line, which is also what we heard on the radio. I can't imagine the song with the "dad was black" line being played on the radio in the United States.
Ann Althouse uses the words "Live At Leeds" and I swoon. Good job, Professor.
Now...not singalongable? The Who? ok then, I won't sing "Pictures of Lily" any more and I'll try to remember those catchy lyrics to "3/5ths of a mile in ten seconds" or whatever it's called. only good thing about the airplane was Jack Casady.
and yes, a plastic mac means a plastic mackintosh. a raincoat. Pete Townshend's opinion about The Beatles is forever recorded in the movie "The Kids Are Alright" in which he refers to the fab four's music sans vocals as "flippin' lousy".
oooh, the kids are alright, another great heavily singalongable song.
The Good's Gone, evidently. Time to take the 5:15.
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