This blog was begun late night on November 1, 2022 and finished the next afternoon:
I just got back from seeing The Who at the Hollywood Bowl. Grim and I took the subway from NoHo, so there were no traffic problems. We arrived at the Hollywood and Highland station with an hour to spare, and walked down Hollywood Boulevard, looking at the Walk of Fame. We were dismayed to see all the so-called "stars" who now have their names laid down in gold, so we continued on to Graumann's Chinese to remedy that feeling by standing over the foot and handprints of Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Shirley Temple and Bette Davis. Quentin Tarantino, anyone? He wore sneakers to make his footprints. When we got to the Bowl, there was a humongous mass of people waiting in line. The Who Sell Out was a reality. Luckily, Grim knew of a little-used entrance. He goes to the Bowl all the time. Our seats were six rows from the very top but they were dead center. We got there in time to catch most of Mike Campbell's opening set. He played a lot of Petty stuff with a few bluesy jams mixed in. Cool guy, good band. The Who came on at 8:40 and opened with a half hour straight of the Tommy suite, complete with orchestra, and wow. Can you say Holy Smokes? I've seen other bands play with orchestras, but this was the best fit. Townshend's music often features brass, percussion and strings, and this orchestra was LA Phil quality. They brought out the dynamics in the Tommy suite, and I imagine that's the way he always wanted it to sound.
Roger Daltrey is incredible for a 78 year old singer. hell, for a 58 year old singer. He has to check himself on a few high passages, but only a few, and he can still hit most of the powerful segments in the songs we all know. Townshend was windmilling the daylights out of his Candy Apple Red Strat. I remarked to Grim that he's switched to Strats (of which he had several) and didn't play a single Gibson Les Paul. his former trademark. We were cracking up because he also did some finger tapping. Pete has made it known that he always wished he was a better lead guitarist. Maybe he was trying to channel Edward Van Halen.
Speaking of Pete, he's kind of an eccentric guy with his stage banter. He's very funny, but some of his comments are so off the wall that you don't know if he's joking or not. When the first orchestral section was over, he told the musicians to "get off the f-king stage!" and "don't f-king make me angry!" He also went on and on about why he was wearing sunglasses ("so you can't see my diluted pupils") and rambled some abstraction about why charities are admirable but he doesn't donate to them.
The middle section with just the band (featuring extra musicians including Simon Townshend) was also good, but the song selection was a little tepid: "You Better, You Bet", "Who Are You". At least they didn't play "Squeezebox." "Eminence Front" was well done, and a ballad from Live at Leeds that I'm not sure I've heard before. Zak Starkey absolutely killed it on the drums. Someone needs to talk to Ringo and ask him What the Hey? "How come your boy is a better drummer than you are"?
When the orchestra came back out for the final 30 minute Quadrophenia suite, you better get the heck out of town. It was freakin' incredible - as prog and as pro as a Rush concert. Again - and this is key - I think the way they played it with the orchestra is how Pete's always heard it in his head. The dynamics were as full as you'd hear in classical music or progressive rock, and he chose the instrumental section of the album (I think it's called "The Rock") to connect between "5:15" and "Love Reign O'er Me". A fist-to-table Tra-MENN-duss! is required here. Overall, I give the concert it a 9/10. I was surprised it was that good, like a Rush concert except for maybe 10-15 minutes in the middle. They played 2 hours 10 minutes without a break.
it was as much fun for Townshend's oddball running commentary as for the power of the music. There was no early stuff, no "My Generation" or "I Can See For Miles". I think he is most proud of Who's Next, Tommy, and Quadrophenia. He even remarked that "we haven't made that many albums", but then went on to point out that "we made one in 2019 that was f-kin great". How many times have you heard a rock star brag onstage about how great his last album was? So yeah, he's a character. And man, he's still got it at the age of almost 80 and so does Daltrey. We'll have to do away with Bob Wetzel's old adage because The Who don't Suck, after all. Quite the contrary. The light show was fantastic as well, soft bloomings of red pops, mostly, with some greens and blues thrown in. It was set to the music, rather than focused on the performers.
Getting out of the Bowl is slower than at the Greek, where you can sprint down the hill to your car, so it took almost 2 hours for me to get home, which is why this blog is late. Anyhow, on to our most recent movie.....
On Halloween night, I actually found an unseen flick called "Terror in the Crypt"(1964), It's a Spanish/Italian co-production, which usually means a movie is gonna suck (no vampire pun intended). As you know, I don't care for Spaghetti Westerns, and most of the genre films that come out of Europe (whether Westerns or horror) are terrible. I picked this one for two reasons: It had Christopher Lee and we'd never seen it before. I also needed something to watch. You can't have Halloween without a horror movie, can you? I generally can't watch dubbed films, but this one wasn't too bad. What hooked me early was the atmospherics. They used a huge stone castle that looked like the real deal, sitting on a hill above a ruined stone village. The aristocrats in the castle, whose patriarch is Christopher Lee, are beset by an ancient curse, from an ancestor who was said to be a vampire. Five centuries ago, the villagers set upon and killed her, probably because she'd been sucking on their necks.
Mow she's possessed her great, great, great, great, granddaughter - Lee's daughter "Laura" (Audrey Amber), who sleepwalks in the middle of the night and has possibly murdered her stepmother. Lee is worried about Laura, who is having nightmares in which she experiences herself as the ancestral vampire. Lee hires a folklore expert, a Vampire Detective if you will, to come to the castle and examine Laura, and try to find a likeness of the ancestor, which may be hidden in a painted-over painting.
Shortly after the detective arrives, there is an accident on the castle road, in which a wagon overturns and a young female passenger is hurt. Her name is "Ljuba" (Ursula Davis). Lee offers to let her recover at the castle, and Laura nurses her injuries. She also falls in love with Ljuba. The subtext isn't subtle because by 1964, taboos were being lifted, and you could show women looking longingly into one another's eyes, if nothing more.
Ljuba stays and lives at the castle because she and Laura are in love. But there is also a caretaker woman on the premises who is a Satan worshipper. She has taken Laura down into the basement and conduced rituals on her when she was in one of her trance states. Her nemesis is a poor, crippled young man with a dog, who wanders the countryside with a crutch and ekes out a living selling potions and talismans against evil.
At around the one hour mark, something happens that I am absolutely not going to tell you.
The movie, which has been somewhat dreamily paced until then (but gripping), becomes utterly terrifying at that point. The photography is top notch. Christopher Lee plays a good guy for once. This one would benefit from a Criterion restoration, the production values are that good. And, in the last twenty minutes, when Lee and the Vampire Detective go into the ruined village in search of answers, and go down into the crypt of the title, be prepared to have the bejabbers scared out of you. It's very well done, especially for a Euro collaboration. Two Big Thumbs Up. It would have Two Huge with a restoration and a better dubbing or subtitle job. As it is, the picture is soft but watchable. Highly recommended, don't wait until next Halloween! ////
And that's all I know for the moment. We'll get back on schedule with another blog tomorrow. Have a great rest of your day, I hope your week is going well, and I send you Tons of Love as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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