Townshend's response
Sheer bleeding class
Legendary rockers The Who have announced they have no plans to ask One Direction to withdraw their new track Best Song Ever after a digital mob of rabid teenage girls bombarded them with death threats. The English rock band issued the statement yesterday, weeks after the boy band released their hit song. From the day of its …
whereas the response from the likes of that Caroline woman, Stella whats her face and the rest of the man hating femonazi's to a twitterstorm of threats of rape, murder or worse is exactly none at all.
From that I can only deduce that the Who are proper men and not a bunch of wishy washy liberal tree huggers!
Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha.......... Oohh Stop!.....Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........Ha, Ha, Ha..........
Their fans haven't heard anything released in the old millennium, to them One Direction's derivate is the original.
If you want to feel old: Go to Youtube, look up any rock song more than ten years old, and see what beer commercial, game, or animation the commenters think it originates from (or which present band's cover it is a "shitty cover" of).
The majority of songs out now are "re-mixes", "sampled from", "a tribute to" or "re-releases" of existing songs. Hell, most of the top 40 all "feature" other artists because they can't manage a whole song on their own.
Incidentally, Florence & the Machine's "Shake it out" samples a song from the 80s that I can't place my finger on. From 3:45 onwards if anyone know it...
"Now all you need is your team of marketing and PR people, stylists, song writers, etc.,"
Have you been a rock club night in the last 2-3 years? You'd be surprised at just how many talented kids there are out there willing to still work a music career the "old-fashioned" way, ie by actually learning to play and write music, then work their arses off gaining a proper dedicated fan base the hard way. They will take a shitty 15 min slot at the bottom of a 250 seat club to play in front of 20 people, usually for free to gain proper experience. Even as an old fart of 40+ years I still love going to club gigs seeing young bands learning to make music career the hard way.
Don't lump all young modern musicians together, there are still a hell of a lot of young musicians with integrity and drive, doing the right thing.
I wasn't implying that there aren't still talented musicians as there definitely are, and I've seen plenty in clubs over the years. But such talent is no longer a prerequisite for success.
If you look at the current big name "artists" few of them have any real talent. Top 40 lists are littered with more talentless fluff than ever before, not that I've ever been one to listen much to top 40 even when it did require some musical ability.
Talent was never a necessary thing for success.
The difference was the really big bands were all talented in some way.
Cannot think of anything past the 80's in pop music that has talent.
(Queen / Prince / Michael Jackson had talent regardless of whether you liked the Music or not).
Cannot think of much after that totally mainstream pop music.
Rick Rubin and people like him probably have provided more than any of the artists.
Porn has more in common with pop Music now than anything to do with Music.
Very true, there's too much brilliant talent around working hard with very little recognition while some total dross makes it into the charts on hype and publicity. Go to open mic nights around the country (i live near Guildford, which thanks to the ACM there is overloaded with really good musicians), and you'll see lots of great music.
I can still remember real music from when I was a child, sitting in the parlor listening to evening song accompanied by the the pump organ. Then all the new shit came along. People were suddenly dressing up to dance at the music hall. We don't dance while eating supper so why the fuck do they want us to dance while listening to music?? I blame the gramophone for making music popular among the wrong sort.
This post has been deleted by its author
You don't need to read his autobiography, as his defence is summed up here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Townshend#Operation_Ore_investigation_and_police_caution
But lets recap what Stuart Hall said originally - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2274913/BBCs-Stuart-Hall-reveals-living-nightmare-dealing-spurious-sex-allegations.html
And that later turned in to something quite different - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22379286
Just sayin'...
This post has been deleted by its author
Sadly, this is not them at all. They don't write or arrange their music, and they probably know little or nothing about The Who. Boy bands like these are a product, their job is (in order of importance) to be cute, dance, and sing the songs given to them by their producer. The songs are commissioned from professional songwriters, which you can safely assume are middle-aged men with a solid background in music and familiar with The Who.
This is not to say that the members of boy bands may not be genuinely talented (e.g. Robbie Williams), but they have zero freedom and near zero influence while in the boy band.
This post has been deleted by its author
Since their has been some very loud media ranting about people on twitter threatening murder and rape and how such people deserve to be chased down and arrested t by the police, I assume Scotland Yard's finest are chasing down these 1 Diuretic tossers and bringing them before the courts?
Whilst its "probably" safe to assume that there are no real threats in that lot, how can you be sure one isnt real? At the very least it might begin to get the yoof of today to realise that what you do online CAN be taken into account in the REAL world!
Or do we only chase after the twitter "trolls" when they are abusing women now?
Well, I for one am...
<checks the DM Website for guidance>
..shocked, appalled and offended by their language and I feel that David Cameron should do something about the Wand Erection and their reckless psychological impact on the decent, middle class white people of today.
Look mate, while I agree with you in principle, even we 'Merkins don't have enough jails to hold them if we mete out appropriate sentences. So much as it pains me to say it, Pete taking it like a man is the best that we can manage. I wish we could do better by him.
" — ❤ ilysm liam ❤ (@l4rryy) August 15, 2013
I SWEAR TO GOD IF IT GETS DELETED YOU WILL BE IN LOTS OF DANGER YOU'LL HAVE 15M+ PISSED GIRLS AT YOUR DOOR #DontTouchBestSongEver"
Surely any Rocker getting on a bit (not just Pete T) would love to have 15 million pissed girls outside their house
I quite liked this one:
"or else you will wake up to billions of directioners with knives and guns"
So at least a third of the world's population are not only 'directioners', but are crazy enough about their beloved 1Dimensional (thanks Nick Ryan, I'm using that now) that they're willing to wait outside Pete T's house with 'knives and guns'. I think I'd be crying with despair if I wasn't laughing about it.
Still, as it's Friday let's find the bright side. Apart from the lack of any punctuation, at least this one has no cringeworthy spelling mistakes. Clearly that individual hasn't yet figured out how to turn off predictive text.
So at least a third of the world's population are not only 'directioners', but are crazy enough...they're willing to wait outside Pete T's house with 'knives and guns'"
So, if all these people manage to arrive in the UK at the same time and then stand in nice even circles around his house, shoulder to shoulder, waving knives and guns in the air, what area of the UK will they cover? And how many portaloos will be required?
It'd be best if they fly into the UK through major airports to be sure of getting through security with all that illicit hardware.
Dunno, and why aren't the - (oh let's be charitable) - band's PR munchkins on Twitter telling their fans to cut back on the rapey threats?
Today, the 1-D fans are in uproar because Channel 4 showed some of them as borderline terrifying monomaniacs. Rather than reminding their fans that there are other things to do than obsess over the group, the publicists blame the TV station and fan the flames.
Christ only knows what will happen when the band inevitably (and please make it soon) breaks up. I can only guess it will look like something from World War Z - only less musical.
There was a previous twitter storm from 1D fans a week or two back in response to GQ magazine producing 5 versions of their magazine each featuring a different member of 1D on the cover so that "true fans" were obliged to buy 5 copies and either that or some response to complaints that GQ received generated a similar torrent of hate. There's a couple of rather "interesting" articles on the Guardian where they try to put the blame on GQ for "exploiting fans" and they deserved what they got while at the same time trying to maintain that these hate-tweets from teenage girls to GQ were clearly completely different from gate-tweets from men to female journalists etc.
If the young male following are smart and straight, then they will be following 1D for the huge female fanbase, would be like shooting fish in a barrel for them.
On another note it's clearly obvious there will be no follow up by the Police as a threat from a young teenage girl to rape an older male is less of a threat and probably hoped to be more of a promise. The death threats might get a look at though, females tend to be the more vicious of the species.
Oh, and before you say "parental influence", I don't particularly like Rush myself, and his mum most certainly doesn't. I've no idea about his stepfather (yes, I'm happily divorced), but on the basis that the wee man hates him with a passion then I doubt he'd be influenced from that direction.
I think actually it might well have been Guitar Hero.
Well I have a few, boys not bothered but like rock music, just let them play Minecraft and they are happy.
Daughter likes Florence and the Machine, but used to be Two Door Cinema Club mad, but she never went beyond a poster, CDs T Shirt and seeing them live.
She HATES no direction!
I always thought it was odd how the Mods followed The Who, quite a bit different to their usual stuff.
Back in the last revival in the early 80s Mods were everywhere, but the rock fans used to take the piss out of their scooters.
Only thing is the rock fans usually loved NWOBHM and 70s heavy rock, but also liked the heavier Who songs. Common transport for rock fans then were Jap motorcycles.
Baba O'Riley of course owes a clearly acknowledged debt to A Rainbow in Curved Air by Terry Riley, whihc is echoed in the opening synthesiser riff, and to Meher Baba, who Pete Townsend was significantly influenced by. It is a deep song, and goes well past "teenage wasteland".
And, I just wasted five minutes of my life I won't get back again, and listened to the new song. The opening is quite clearly Baba O'Riley, it isn't a coincidence, in even has a hint of the Terry Riley atonal synthesiser riff in the background. It is only a few bars, and if anything I would say that it is a homage to The Who more than anything else. Whoever wrote it knew exactly what they were doing. The rest of the song is mostly a ripoff of the 80's big hair band anthemic songs.
What it might do is get a few yoof of today listening to The Who, ones that had never heard them before. That can't be bad thing.
In Germany there's a way to shift legal liability from underage and not prosecutable people to their parents, as to make them personally liable for anything their offspring did, as long as they are not at legal age. Does this exist in the UK also? if so, this may be a nice way to educate parents about parenting on your little island. Then maybe even your Great Pornfirewall of UK may become obsolete!
I have had a little look at and a listen to this ?band? and clearly Simon Cowell is the latest incarnation of Stock Aitkin and Waterman just churning out average plagiaristic bands where-ever the current money is. In other words the POP business as opposed to the music business.
I was waiting for a client in Ibiza airport the other day and noticed a bunch of teen girls and then later a bunch of teen boys with hairstyles that looked remeniscent of a bald guy's scrape-over but on the front of their heads! Wondered what it was about; now I know.
I thought the girls looked weird but boys definitely looked as though they would fit well into the large summer gay community we have here.
Compared to the Who they are nothing, I was at the Charlton concert in '76 Headlined by the Who with supporting bands Alex Harvey, Keef Hartley, Little Feat, etc Now that's what I call music!
The day started with pi.. pouring rain, everything was late but well worth waiting for and I think that concert is still in the record books as one of the loudest ever.
Just found this; http://www.timeout.com/london/music/the-who-break-noise-records-at-the-valley-it-happened-here
It was really depressing to have my daughter show me videos of this dismal nothingness (and a few other even worse ones) on youtube, and expect an impressed reaction. My hopes of bringing up an enlightened new generation that was better than the previous one were dealt a severe blow.
My son is five and still likes stuff like Orbital and Royksopp, so I'm holding out hope I can protect him from pop music. I even got him to listen to a couple of tracks from Coltrane's Stellar Regions, but when I asked him what he thought he just scowled for a moment and said, "Hmm... I don't know...."
My advice would be to play good music as much as possible. It's exposure that matters, and even if she doesn't start -liking- good stuff any time soon, she'll subconsciously start to learn to -understand- it whether she wants to or not. And with that will come hope for the future...
Meanwhile, my daughter at age 6 was in her room dancing/grooving to Jumi Hendrix. And just the other day (at 7 years old), she wanted me to play the YouTube video for "Hey Jude". Didn't even know she knew the song, but she was kind-of singing along with it.
Now, if I could play guitar or keyboards, I'd be teaching her.
What's up with you Brits threatening to rape people all of a sudden? For years nothing, and then WHAM, inside two months I swear I've seen so much news about it that you'd think nobody in the UK was doing anything -but- announcing their intentions for violent sexual assault. Is it because everyone's on holiday? It's all very odd, I must say.
They were babbling on about 1 Erection and some old farts trying to get a song banned because 1 Erection copied it. - Didn't have the details so I quickly switched to discussion on copyright in music (normally do this later in term) and gave local examples - love these teaching moments
Not because i'm from the censorship camp, i have flamed, close to the knuckle, with the best of them back in the day, i hold freedom of speech close to my heart, however any resulting legal action may actually help to focus the mind of the younger generation regarding online abuse, newsround here we come, it may also do the same for the couldn't care less parenting attitude that obviously exists when it comes to the appropriate use of today's technology. It may also help to dismiss the stereotypical view about internet trolls being sad 20-30 something guys in their mums house locked in the bedroom (i'm in my 40's before you start fucktards).
The uproar amongst the teenyboppers (as they were called then) when their idol Rick Astley got an award but wasn't shown receiving it because the show was running late; and their outrage was magnified because some old farts (The Who) got as 'Outstanding contributors' did start playing as he was walking to the stage.
A Poison Pen letter has always been a female crime. Just like hitting blokes has always been a male crime.
And like "stalking", a poison pen letter has always been the crime of a person with too much time on their hands.
Has trolling been a male crime up to now? I know of no particular evidence either way, but certainly the existence of sexist misogynistic content is no evidence: that has always been a characteristic of female-on-female poison pen letters.
but it seems unlikely the 'directioners' idiots would have read this article it probably contains too many loong words, still I will continue.
It is likely that I like the song in question as the name One Direction rings some distant bells in my memory but I can categorically state that to me it isn't 'the best song ever' nor, come to that is the Who's.
Personally I would find it impossible to name what in my opinion might fit that title and I think most intelligent people would find the same problem as myself - too many options in my reasonably long life.
How stupid we can be when young - sad.