Lowcountry Riffs: Keep on rocking | Columnists | Summerville Journal Scene

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Lowcountry Riffs: Keep on rocking

Published Tuesday, February 09, 2010 12:46 PM

By Jim Tatum
Summerville Journal Scene ®

There’s something telling about a person who watches the Super Bowl largely for the commercials rather than the game. It’s probably not very flattering, though, so I’m not going to admit to that right here.

Nonetheless, it is astounding how one sixty-minute football game has become such a lengthy, glitzy, over-the-top affair, to the point where the game is actually secondary to the rest of the show.

Times have changed, indeed.

Nonetheless, I was glad to see the Saints pull off the win – that’s been a very long time coming – and the game was sufficiently exciting to keep me firmly in my easy chair, hot chicken wings and cold beverages in hand, for the duration.

And yet, the best part of the evening for me was the half time show.

God Bless The Who – or what’s left of them – those silver tips can still rock!

I suppose despite this, our idiotic youth-obsessed culture, the fact that two guys closing in on 70 can still bring down the house with their hard-edged, power chorded anthems of teen rage and angst should not be a surprise. After all, we all get better with maturity. In fact, Townsend was a pretty lousy guitarist when the band got together while they were still in their teens in the early 60s. Or let’s just say he was raw and rudimentary.

The fact that Roger Daltrey can still sing about living in a teen-age wasteland and not look ridiculous doing it should be more of a given and less of an inspiration. Then again, the songs themselves speak to the generations. Townsend, to me, was less of a period-piece songwriter and more of a timeless avatar of Holden Caulfield.

Still, whether I like it or not, whether I should expect greatness with maturity rather than be surprised by it, watching Daltrey and Pete Townsend rock that stadium was, in fact, inspiring. Townsend’s knee slide is no more – and I can’t blame him for that because it had to hurt at age 30 – and his propensity to smash guitars on stage apparently has been under control for a couple of decades now. But that lanky right arm is still wind-milling fiercely, and if age made him throttle back on the showmanship of his youth, he more than replaced it with the skill and taste of a master guitarist still at the top of his game.

Yeah, that’s inspiring.

So call it what you will -- mid-life crisis or Peter Pan syndrome or a dozen other less than flattering pejoratives – I’m not giving up playing rock and roll just because I’m in my mid 40s. I’m just going to start and end a little earlier in the evening.

Rock on.

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