W: It’s time for Rock Geek News, live from Miami. We take you down to the field of Superbowl 44 where sports commentator Cristy Scoggins gives a
play-by-play recap of the halftime performance by rock stuporgroup The Who.
C: Well, what we’ve just seen is a disgrace, frankly. If football players can get thrown out of the league for using steroids, these geritol-and-viagara
sniffing dinosaurs shouldn’t be allowed onto the field at all.
W: To say nothing of being busted for child pornography. If some temp worker can lose her job for making a zine on the company xerox machine, tell me that a millionaire rock star can lose his superbowl gig if Interpol seizes his hard drive and finds pictures of naked ten-year-olds.
C: He ought to be on the dole, taking advantage of the English welfare state.
W: He’s creepy. Pete Townsend looked like Freddy Krueger in that dumb-ass fedora.
C: Daltry and Townsend’s vocals were so out of sync, they sounded like they were trying to harmonize over the phone. Although he’s too old and
feeble and complacent to smash his guitar, Townsend did the next best thing, which was to mangle his solos.
W: Does he even know that he’s still singing the line “I hope that I die before I get old?” He should take a cue from Jonathan Richman’s line
“Someday we’re going to be dignified and old.”
C: I swear I saw Roger Daltrey’s lips stop moving but sound was still coming out. He was lip-synching.
W: But the most appalling thing to me was, lurking in the smoke and mirrors of the most overblown light show in rock history, were at least
three other musicians. Since when has the rock quartet Pete Townsend and the Who felt it necessary to employ a second guitarist? What an
embarrassment. If Pete Townsend is just up there being a pretty face while some session musician is hiding in the wings playing all his classic licks for him while he does that annoying windmill strum, well, then he better get a nose job.
C: Join us next year, for the great American spectacle of Superbowl 45, featuring young American athletes in peak condition, and wheezing British musicians on the verge of collapse.
Who’s Been?
