“Glow Girl” closes out the 1995 reissue of The Who Sell Out, The Who’s third album which was originally released in 1967. The song was recorded during 1968, and was planned to be on an album entitled “Who’s for Tennis?” which obviously never came to be. It captures the band at their most poppy phase with jangly guitars and sweet vocal harmonies that last throughout the song, but still manages to contain that rock edge via the swaggering basslines and erratic drum fills.
Despite the light and heartwarming tone the song details the scene where people are getting on a flight which unfortunately crashes shortly after taking off. But after an instrumental break of guitar string scrapes the song comes to the pleasant conclusion in which the “glow girl” is born. To a “Mrs. Walker”, funnily enough. That caught me by surprise when I listened to it for the first time too. Does that mean Pete Townshend just stole bits from this track and “Rael 1” and inserted them into “Tommy”, or did he have that music planned all along? Who knows.
The thing I know is, after more than an hour or so of great music and a few mock adverts, “Glow Girl” with its pleasant overtones and silly mock-Sgt.Pepper locked groove is the perfect way to cap off the “Who Sell Out” listening experience.
“Girl’s Eyes” is a song recorded during the making of The Who’s third album The Who Sell Out, which went on to be released in 1967. The song did not make it onto the original album’s tracklist. Though it did appear in the extended tracklisting when the album was remastered and remixed years later in 1995. The track is one of the very few Who songs to be written by the ever-eccentric Keith Moon. He couldn’t sing very well, but you’re still able to hear him take lead vocals in the right channel with bassist John Entwistle singing along with him in the left.
After a false start in which someone blows over the top of an open bottle and Moon hurriedly says “Hello” to the listener (maybe to test the microphone or something), the track eventually gets going and is driven by a delightful piano and acoustic guitars, but Moon and Entwistle do their business on their respective instruments too. The track concerns a fangirl who Moon sees at every show the band perform at, but he clearly doesn’t care about her as much as she about them. He wonders if he could have the audacity of hurting this girl if they were ever to meet, though whether this actually happens is not revealed as the lyrics pretty much end there. I also think that Moon couldn’t think of a true ending to the song’s music, as the band improvise an ending where each member eventually gives up playing after a few reiterations of the song’s chord progression.
This song’s a-okay. Moon was always meant for the drums, of course, but this track shows that he could actually write a good tune as well too.
Today’s track is “Early Morning Cold Taxi” by The Who, one that wasn’t released on an album when the band were making music in their heyday. I heard the song when listening to the 1995 Remixed and Remastered version of “The Who Sell Out“, the band’s third album released in 1967.
What the song title actually means is beyond me. I never really think about it that much. Maybe the phrase just fit the melody of the song or whatever. “Cold Taxi” wasn’t written by Pete Townshend, who obviously wrote pretty much everything The Who did, but instead a guy named Dave Langston who was the band’s first roadie. The song is actually credited to both him and lead singer Roger Daltrey, but Daltrey didn’t actually do much. He didn’t write any of it at all really.
But this isn’t a bad thing. “Cold Taxi” is a nice poppy number with, what I think are vocals done by both Daltrey and bassist John Entwistle, the former being in the right side of the ‘stereo field’ (that is how it’s described, right) and the latter on the left. Got great vocal harmonies and a sweet melody, an innocent little ‘ooooh’ bridge section and a few key changes here and there. It’s a nice song.
The song is about three minutes long, and ‘cos of the whole radio concept the album’s supposed to have it is followed by a thirty second Coke jingle that the band actually recorded for the company all those years ago. It does take the momentum out of the track, but it is a rocking advertisement for a drink.
I made another post about The Who a few days ago, so have a look at it if you want.
In that post I mentioned that Summer 2010 was when I began to listen to The Who, and recognised them for the ball of talent that they were back in the day.
However, I had only listened to a few songs by them. In order to get a sense of what their music was about, I would have to listen to one of their albums.
But which one? Where do I start?
Now, I knew that their ‘magnum opus’ was considered to be their album ‘Who’s Next‘. It contains two of their most well known songs, and it is the one where each member had reached their peak at their positions. Together, there was no stopping them.
For me, there was something that prevented me from listening to it. I don’t why. I think it’s just because I had only heard of those two songs, and if people only liked the album for them then what was the point?
So what better way to start my Who experience…. than with their 1967 release, ‘The Who Sell Out‘? Seeing its article on Wikipedia, I saw the praise that it received (full marks by the ones listed), the whole radio concept thing amused me, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to listen to it.
It’s probably their most under-appreciated album. It is their only release where a majority of songs are not written by Pete Townshend and not only sung by Roger Daltrey. Everybody gets to sing, I have the 1995 remastered version which features ‘Jaguar’ with lead vocals by Keith, and ‘Girl’s Eyes’ which is written by him and sung with John Entwistle. It’s really one of my favourite albums.
“DUUUUUH-DUH Monday……..” is the first thing you hear when listening to ‘Armenia City in the Sky’, the first song of the album. The Who Sell Out incorporates radio adverts that were transmitted on a rogue radio station, ‘Radio London’, which would normally be broadcast from a boat in the middle of an ocean. This ‘Days of the Week’ interlude carries on until Sunday, which is when a weird backwards guitar fades in, and boom. The actual song begins.
Another unusual thing about the song is that it’s not actually written by any members of the band. In fact Pete’s chauffeur, Mr John Keen, wrote the song and is also singing it along with Roger Daltrey. Although it’s hard to make it out, seeing as there is this weird pitch shifting effect that is used on the vocals. Maybe they didn’t want people to know that someone who wasn’t in the band was singing.
Listening to it with headphones is another weird experience. You basically have Keith and John playing the rhythm section in the left channel, whilst there are these backwards trumpets and hazey backwards guitars playing in the other. That along with the lyrics, for example:
‘The sky is glass, the sea is brown, and everyone is upside down,’
makes this song one of the trippiest from the album.
I guess as it was 1967, this was supposed to a spoof of the psychedelicmaterial that was coming out, only because this is the only song on the album that uses that sort of drugged-up-on-LSD sound. The others are solid songs that don’t try to sound like it at all.
The solo is backwards too, so that screeching bird-call in the middle is still a guitar. After two repetitions of the title, the band maintain the pace and rhythm, a weird insect-sounding voices says ‘Freak out, freak out’ and the song ends with an explosion that echoes into the next radio transmission.
All in all, it’s a perfect start to a perfect album.
The Music in My Ears 