Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

Dear Who: I Think Your Time Machine’s Busted

By Bob Wire, 2-09-10

	"People try to put us down...just because we...why did I come into this room?"

I know we’re at least two news cycles past the Super Bowl, but I’m just now coming out of my shock over the horrific halftime spectacle. The Who? Really? What’s the matter, were Bill Haley and the Comets already booked up? Way to keep it fresh, halftime producers. Do you realize that most of your audience wasn’t even born yet when The Who were playing their first farewell tour?

Thanks, though, to Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend for giving 103 million Americans a good reason not to buy tickets to their next one. My god, these guys were an embarrassment. They looked like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets. I don’t care if the fancy light show emitted a secret pattern that hypnotized every viewer into buying a copy of “Quadrophenia,” and Roger Daltrey tore off his trousers to reveal that he’s a centaur. Their live performance was just sad. The Who stunk it up like the Dolphins in December.

Look, that shit probably goes over great in the activity room at the Angela Lansbury Lethargic Living Suites™ in Marmalade-Upon-Toast, England. But NFL entertainment honchos are way off the mark if they think the Super Bowl is the domain of geriatric couch (mashed) potatoes.

Every year the halftime band is getting older and older. Evidently when over a billion people saw Janet Jackson’s nipple (that’s even more than have seen Madonna’s in person) five years ago, some network geezer who “felt it move” decided that sex and football would never cross paths again. I mean, except for the cheerleaders. And the Bud Light commercials. And the GoDaddy commercials. And Pam Oliver.

So the next year they invited Paul McCartney. He’s old. Then it was the Rolling Stones, who already were older than the grandparents of any active NFL player. Having nowhere to go beyond that but to the Abe Vigoda Experience, they took a shot at raging youth by having…Prince? Sure, he was only pushing 50, and he did put on the best halftime show in ages, and he’s got more talent in his little finger than somebody like Lil Wayne has in his whole hand. But we’re still talking about a middle-aged guy, and the Super Bowl people seem inexplicably intent on ignoring that text-happy, Xion-driving, Dew-doing, 18-to-35 demographic.

Then they turned ahead the hands of time by having Tom Petty, whose first hit was on the radio when Rosalyn Carter was still hanging drapes in the White House. After that? AARP cover boy (really) Bruce Springsteen. And now we get The Who. And it’s not even The Who. It’s Who’s Left. Keith Moon died from an overdose of pills (for a rock ‘n roll drummer, that’s “natural causes”) in ‘78. Monster bass player John Entwistle died from a cocaine overdose while humping a stripper in Las Vegas in 2002 (again, “natural causes”). So that left The Who with a creaky, preening front man suffering from LSD (Lead Singer Disease), and a cranky old guitar player with a shady interest in child porn who shambled onstage looking like the befuddled granddad of Axl Timberlake. It was like watching a couple of 65-year-olds out there, flailing around like they were singing “Those Were The Days” at their daughter’s retirement party. Oh, wait—they ARE a couple of 65-year-olds.

The halftime show has been sponsored for a few years now by Bridgestone Tires, which will now forever be known as Tires For The Tired. They should have been sponsored by the La Brea Tar Pits. I’m glad they didn’t sing “I Can See For Miles,” because I doubt if Daltrey can even see the set list taped to his monitor. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” sounds a little disingenuous coming from somebody with Alzheimer’s. Remember when Daltrey used to swing the microphone around above his head? Nowadays he annoys everybody at the rest home buy doing that with his cane. Townshend’s famous scissor kicks? He can barely manage a tweezer kick now, as he yells at the roadies to “get off my stage.” His windmilling was impressive, but each time his arm flew around to hit his guitar strings, I held my breath, hoping he wouldn’t miscalculate his swing and break his own hip.

I’m not saying that The Who should quit performing. By all means, old gummers, keep flogging your flabby man-titties onstage until you’ve soiled your band’s legacy as badly as your adult diapers. I won’t be in the audience. But for god’s sake, move aside and let somebody halfway relevant entertain the world during halftime of the Super Bowl. Hell, baseball has it figured out. When Jay-Z and Alicia Keys sang “New York State of Mind” during the World Series, it was huge. It was moving. It was classy. They probably sold a million downloads just on the strength of that performance.

Do Roger and Pete seriously think that The Who’s halftime performance will boost their album sales? Not bloody likely, mates. What happened was most people turned off the halftime show and switched over to a Tivo’d episode of CSI so they could hear The Who when they were still The Who, not The Who In The Hell?

[Bookmark NewWest.net/BobWire today, and you won’t have it hanging over your head.]

Join the Bob Wire Appreciation Society

Stumble It!

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.

Tags for this article

satire (41), music humor (4), madonna (2), the who halftime show (1), roger daltry (1), john entwistle (1), the who (1), prince super bowl halftime (1), janet jackson super bowl halftime (1), wardrobe malfunction (1),

Tag cloud for all articles

missoula, politics, environment, idaho, colorado, montana, development, bozeman, salt lake city, travel & outdoors, utah, boise, western montana, land use & development, new mexico, outdoor recreation, northern idaho, idaho northern/panhandle, bend, boulder, flathead valley, wyoming, columbia gorge, idaho politics, real estate, montana politics, snow blog, music, community blogs, wildlife, public lands, jackson hole, wildland fire, colorado politics, technology, oregon, featured photo, utah politics, abq / santa fe, wild bill, tourism, washington, climate change, bob wire blog, outdoors, books, transportation, demographics, diary of a mad voter, front range, new mexico politics, wyoming politics, new west blog, planning in the west, fire updates, satire, the new west magazine, panhandle, travel, bob wire,

By Bob Wire, 2-09-10 | comments (21) | email story | print story