Have you ever wanted something so much – so badly, that you would give up anything to win it?
Well then my friend, “Bargain” is the song for you. After “Baba O’Riley” on “Who’s Next” is this gem, again penned by Pete Townshend about becoming closer to God.
It’s another powerful song and is driven on by the force of the rhythm section and Daltrey’s vocals, even more so than in the aforementioned album opener.
I don’t think I can write anything else that isn’t in its Wikipedia entry.
It’s one of my favourites from the album though. It’s good stuff.
“What are you going to do now?”
“Rest until July, then I’ll find something to do.”
That was one exchange of words by my mum and I after I had finished my last exam in secondary school. I have been working endlessly all year for this stuff, and it feels like a whole weight has been lifted off my shoulders, it feels very relaxing. Everytime I feel like I should be doing something… but I don’t, and it feels weird and a bit creepy.
It’s fine not doing anything at the moment but seeing as other people still have exams to do, it’s quite boring being in your house by yourself when the weather’s crappy and there’s nothing on except…. daytime television…. eurgh.
At least I have my iTunes library to keep me company. And that reminds me… it’s the second of the ‘B’ series. Yay.
I feel like I’ve already gone on about The Who in an earlier post, so I won’t rabble on too much. “Who’s Next”, the album ‘Baba O’Riley’ is on, is actually the most recent one of theirs that I downloaded and listened to. It’s considered to be their magnum opus by many critics, and I knew that their two most overplayed songs including this and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” were on it. I didn’t want to listen to an album which I thought was only good for two songs, so I chose to listen to “Quadrophenia” and “Sell Out” instead. Heck, I might have even listened to “By Numbers” before it. I can’t remember. I’ll have a look at my computer.
Yeah, “Who’s Next” is beast. This song is the perfect way to start things off.
Firstly, the synthesizer which seems to last for an eternity until the descending riff is introduced by the piano and Moon’s drums come crashing in. “Who’s Next” is mainly regarded to be the album in which each individual member had reached their peak in creativity, much like “Revolver” by The Beatles. Although Roger Daltrey wasn’t much of a songwriter, but listen to his vocals on here compared to those of “Tommy”… I know right? Pete Townshend was well in the way of writing songs with meaning, and with links between one another to tell a story, simply put as a concept album, and had completely abandoned the writing for the “singles band” that The Who was once regarded to be. John Entwistle and Keith Moon…. well with a rhythm section like that, how much better can you get? Come on, people.
Yep. I don’t want to ruin the song for you. It’s already up there.
Until tomorrow.
Jamie
P.S. I can confirm that I did listen to “The Who by Numbers” before “Who’s Next”. And what… bitch.
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.
Oh man. Summer 2010 was the moment when I began to actually start listening to the band. Best decision I’ve made.
I could start a whole story about how I started listening to them and everything, but ‘Another Tricky Day’; doesn’t really fit in with that, so I’ll leave that for another day.
Firstly, my new found love for The Who made me want to search for music videos on the YouTubes, and after coming across songs like ‘Happy Jack’ and ‘Substitute’ I realised that they were experts at everything they did. Townshend is a great guitar player, Moon, well, you know he’s crazy but a beast on the drums, Entwistle the best bass player of all time and Daltrey with his soaring vocals combined produced a wall of melodic noise to great effect.
Then I watched the video for this song; initially I didn’t think much of it. Keith wasn’t there, he had passed away, and it all sounded very tame. All the energy was lost, but Entwistle made it up with his bass. Townshend was still recuperating after Keith’s death, he was drinking and thinking he was going to go next, his family had left him. Life got hard.
It’s a pretty sad song. I feel sad listening to it sometimes. I was going to school recently with my iPod playing in my ears. It was raining, this song started playing, and I began to feel useless. The weather was bad, I didn’t want to go in, everything was just so boring and repetitive. I don’t feel like working anymore, I will for my exams but school is just so pointless.
“It’s just another tricky day for you.”
Yeah, I know Roger thank you.
All in all, I never feel really happy when I hear this song. Thoughts of dread and despair build up, and it isn’t great.
The Music in My Ears 