The Who - The Kids Are AlrightRating:
Release Date: 12 February, 2001 Retail Price: $19.99 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (14 total) |
The Who - The Kids Are Alright Reviews
Gets better with age? mine, that is!
As a second-generation Who freak, I latched on to this incendiary group right around the year Keith Moon uncharacteristically faded away in his sleep. Soon after, I saw the original "The Kids Are Alright" in the theater and bought an early Embassy VHS tape. Now that the DVD version is out, I think that technical comparisons between 1978 and 2003 will pale against the real story: The Who was the greatest live band and one of the greatest rock groups ever.
The film begins and ends, in a way, with their trademark smash-up finale. The Who, once they began playing, were like a runaway locomotive: imagine Keith Moon as the pistons, John Entwistle as the deep coal fire, Roger Daltrey as the howling whistle, and Peter Townshend as the engineer pushing the knobs and pulling levers. The whole thing veers out of control, and yet, it never becomes a wreck until the last song (according to the era), when by force of smashed guitars and bludgeoned drum kits, the incredible sound is strangled and mashed to a pulp, leaving only feedback and smoke bombs. As Townshend says in one of the film's interviews, he's not himself onstage, and probably close to hurting someone who gets in his way (remember Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock?).
The funny thing is, The Who's shows are a conjurer's trick of sound and sight. These smash-up performances began as a corny gimmick that took on a life of their own: Townshend, in a 1964 London gig, accidentally rammed his guitar into the club's ceiling while trying to spin it theatrically in the air. He was told afterwards to use the same move again, and the rest is glorious history. The spontaneous combustion in The Who's music gets full airing in this film by an amateur director. It captures nearly all of the group's distinct periods: early club days, Mod incarnations, Monterey Pop festival, the "Tommy" and Woodstock era, and the mega-70s appearances. Interviews as a group, or as individuals, span nearly their whole career (while Moon was alive and kicking), and at the end of it all, you get the sense that, as unpolished and ragged as they come across to our modern eyes, The Who defined that overused musical term, honest. Ironically, there's a contradiction when Townshend - who comes across as an unwilling but committed leader - laments to an interviewer that the band is often chained by its history, and yet, no one is willing to break the bonds of ritual between The Who and its fans. In the two performances that director Stein staged in May 1978, the group crash through "Baba O'Reilly" and "Won't Get Fooled Again," and it's clear even to Who freaks that Moon was in sad shape, physically, and gamely keeping up, musically. Townshend parodies himself with arm-swinging and acrobatic leaps; it's almost The Who by the numbers. But when the last note sounds, the ecstatic response from the audience is proof of how much people love The Who and how the music wound its way into so many churned-up teenage souls. There have been bands since who've trashed their sets and gone to the edge, but there's really only one Who.
Hey - where's our Rick Danko???
I loved the film - and would have given it 5 stars if Rick Danko had been in it, as advertised!
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