The Who - Tommy
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Music CD Cover
Artist: The WhoEdition: DVD Audio
Format: Enhanced, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2004-04-27
Music Label: Geffen Records
Soundtracks:
Music CD 1
- Overture
- It's a Boy
- 1921
- Amazing Journey
- Sparks
- Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker)
- Christmas
- Cousin Kevin
- Acid Queen
- Underture
- Do You Think It's Alright?
- Fiddle About
- Pinball Wizard
- There's a Doctor
- Go to the Mirror!
- Tommy Can You Hear Me?
- Smash the Mirror
- Sensation
- Miracle Cure
- Sally Simpson
- I'm Free
- Welcome
- Tommy's Holiday Camp
- We're Not Gonna Take It
- See Me Feel Me/Listening to You
- I Was
- Christmas [Outtake 3][Outtake]
- Cousin Kevin Model Child
- Young Man Blues [Version 1]
- Tommy Can You Hear Me? [Alternate Version]
- Trying to Get Through
- Sally Simpson [Outtake]
- Miss Simpson
- Welcome [Take 2]
- Tommy's Holiday Camp [Band's Version]
- We're Not Gonna Take It [Alternate Version]
- Dogs, Pt. 2
- It's a Boy [Demo Version]
- Amazing Journey [Demo Version]
- Christmas [Demo Version]
- Do You Think It's Alright? [Demo Version]
- Pinball Wizard [Demo Version]
Free Music Notes for Tommy
Free Music Review: Doctor Who
Hit: 5 Stars
A clinical and seminal meditation on alienation, popularity-seeking, and the decline of Western man encased in a rock opera about a handicapped boy. Albert Einstein spoke of his own "retarded" youth, being withdrawn from the world, and how that aided him in opening new vistas in science. "Tommy" isn't so fortunate.
"Amazing Journey" shows the advantage of Tommy's "retardation" yet shadows of "normalcy" lurk. Pete Townshend's medicinal lyrics bring to mind the Christian sentiment that only one with a child's disposition can enter the Kingdom of G-d.
"Ten years old
With thoughts as bold as thought can be
Loving life and becoming wise
In simplicity
Sickness will surely take the mind
Where minds can't usually go
Come on the amazing journey
And learn all you should know..."
Tommy's infirmities are an opportunity for his family and others to practice compassion. The boy is a living embodiment of "The Other" as found in the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Tommy's line of "See me, feel me, touch me, heal me" (and, Levinas might have added, "...in order for both to be healed.") is the invitation to caring. The invitation is ignored.
The boy's path to "normalcy" opens when he becomes a "Pinball Wizard." Pinball reflects Tommy's upbringing, being bounced from one relative to another, one bad experience to the next. Townshend is also opening a window into the culture of games and entertainment and how that is held out by the mass media as the most desirable escape from poverty and isolation for Britain's lower classes. Soccer mania would be the real-life equivalent in today's Europe.
Modern medicine intervenes and, in short order, Tommy is wallowing in celebrity, laziness, and profligacy. Worse, he uses his new circumstances to entice others into the nihilism that Anglo-American capitalism and social democracy abet.
From "Welcome": "Come to my house, be one of the comfortable people..."
"I'm Free" gives us a stark picture of how the worst get on top (to borrow a phrase from F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom") -
"If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high,
You'd laugh and say `Nothing's that simple...' `'
Ten years later "Dallas" soap opera villain J.R. Ewing would state it more plainly - "Once you give up integrity the rest is a piece of cake."
"Tommy" was released in 1969, a time of great confusion about man's individual and social responsibilities (things haven't gotten much clearer since). The Who's music penetrates to the reality of an anarchy of ever-increasing individual rights (read: demands) and unchecked government leading to loss of social cohesion amid waning family, school, and neighborhood affections. This, in turn, breeds popularity seeking as the most attractive island in the rising tide of despair. Fellow Brits Pink Floyd would touch on this in "The Wall" a decade after Townshend.
Is there a better way out? The Who echoes Oswald Spengler in showing that there is. Spengler's "The Decline of the West" (first published in the 1920s; interestingly, the time line of "Tommy" begins around 1921) likened cultures and civilizations to life patterns, calling them "organic." While holding civilization will move in the direction of its destiny, Spengler advised people to discern the direction of movement and contribute positively to it. Townshend and his bandmates did that in "Tommy."
In reckoning outcomes, the workings of the human body, with its voluntary and involuntary organs, are an apt metaphor. How we consciously react and govern ourselves are the voluntary muscles (thus the importance of individual character). Yet some choices and our surroundings impact us in ways of which we are not aware.
The final words of "Tommy" remind us of the importance our individual actions have on others and the social fabric. The mountain imagery remind us of the biblical Moses, the servant of G-d; the early Israelites, and the Ten Commandments, holding out hope that the door swings both ways between the great society (not to be confused with LBJ's version) and the sick society.
"Listening to you I get the music
Gazing at you I get the heat
Following you I climb the mountain
I get excitement at your feet
Right behind you I see the millions
On you I see the glory
From you I get opinions
From you I get the story."
Tommy Poster
Digitally remastered Japanese reissue of The Who's 1969 album in a miniaturized double gatefold LP sleeve with the original packaging intact & limited to the initial pressing only. 24 tracks, including 'Overture', 'Amazing Journey', 'Sparks', 'Pinball WizTommy had the dubious distinction of being the first-ever rock opera; however, it's none the worse for that, Ken Russell's adaptation notwithstanding. Due largely to Pete Townshend's skill as a songwriter and composer, Tommy tells a coherent story and includes quality rock and roll at the same time, an impressive feat by itself. While surprisingly more linear than the later Quadrophenia, Tommy boasts several songs that stand up well on their own, including the classic "Pinball Wizard," "The Acid Queen," "I'm Free," and "Sally Simpson." Much of the rest doesn't make much sense lyrically unless you listen to the entire album, but you'll probably want to do that anyway, preferably with the lights low and the stereo cranked. --Genevieve Williams
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