30 -- The Who -- Monday, November 3, 2008 -- Verizon Center – Washington, DC

Meh. My initial AIM Profile grade was a “B,” so I’ll stick with that, but I don’t remember being particularly impressed. Three main things disappointed me: (1) you could often tell their age, (2) I did not come to the concert strongly connecting with a lot of the songs, and (3) they did not play either of the songs I connected to most.





62-year-old frontman Pete Townshend certainly did not embarrass himself, and could show whippersnappers like Jack Johnson and The New Rockers a few things about performing live. That being said, it did seem like Townshend was going through the motions at times. Because he had been a world renowned rock star for forty years, his version of going through the motions was still engaging…but it didn’t have a lot of urgency. Springsteen takes songs most people have heard twenty times before and makes them new. Townshend simply replayed those songs. The renditions were always competent – but rarely dynamic.

Dropping in obscure songs on a Greatest Hits tour is generally a good idea. It keeps band members fresh and pays respect to true fans. The only problem in this case was that I was not a true fan. I’d gone to the show because they were a seminal group and I loved Tommy, but I certainly did not have a command of all their albums. I prepped as much as I could the week beforehand, but it’s hard to make up for forty years in that amount of time. ;)

Considering they had forty years of songs to choose from, it was understandable they could not pick everyone’s favorites. But why couldn’t they play “Slip Kid”?! And “Christmas”?! These songs had the best beats of any I heard in Europe. “Slip Kid”’s flicked back and forth according to the zigs and zags in the young rascal’s life. “Christmas”’s relied on an extreme turn two minutes into song, shifting from a sappy family celebration…to a fearful search for young Tommy, referenced in the songs before. Couldn’t they have played at least one of them? Oh, well, at least I got “Pinball Wizard” and “Baba O’Reilly” – and first-rate versions at that.





Grade: B