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| Jimmy Cooper, Himself |
So I’m driving to work and I hear the
sports guys on the radio saying that they can offer a prize of Who tickets to
some young babe that just missed finishing in the money in their in-studio
bikini contest. (Thank god for the
Internet and streaming – I think.) Well,
The Who coming to DC is news to me. So I
get to work, fire up the Internets and come to find that indeed, The Who are on
tour, performing Quadrophenia, their second rock opera, and other assorted hits.
Fantastic.
I’ve seen them nearly a dozen times, but you can never see The Who
enough. (I took my oldest son to his
first concert to see The Who five years ago when he was 11 years of age, and it
was a fantastic experience for him and for me.) They
looked in fine form at the Olympics as well.
So, I try to buy tickets on the ticket selling industrial complex known as Ticketmaster,
but I’m two days early. But I do notice
an advance sale sponsored by a charge card company.
And The Who fan club. And Sam’s
Club, it seems. Just for grins, I jump
over to StubHub, and sure enough, even though tickets aren’t on sale to the
general public for 48 hours, every seat in the building is available on StubHub. For a premium, of course. So how are you supposed to get tickets two
days later if they are already spoken for by the sharpies? So my response was to hold my nose, pull out
my wallet and buy four tickets at an inflated price. (Having just bought tickets on Stub Hub for Coldplay and
watched prices rise precipitously as the concert date neared, I wasn’t about to
wait and get killed in two months.) (I
know most of you are saying, Analog Guy, where have you been the last decade or
so, living in a cave? The whole world of
seeing concerts has changed, in fact turned upside down, while you were trying
to get back to the garden. Hey, I’m not
the Analog Guy for no reason!)
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| Like Nicklaus, simply the greatest |
The Who are arguably the greatest rock
band ever. There are really only three contestants
for that title: The Beatles, The Rolling
Stones and The Who. Now if you believe
the Beatles retired the trophy, then it comes down to the Stones and The Who, de
gustibus non est disputandum. However,
as much as I love the Stones, The Who edge them out. So, left to right on my Mt. Rockmore, I have
the Beatles, The Who, The Stones and then an unfinished carving that looks like
it could be Led Zeppelin, the Band, Bruce and the E Street Band, Clapton and
Winwood, emerging from the mountainside all like Michelangelo’s Slaves, the
unfinished sculptures leading up to his masterpiece sculpture David in the Galleria inFlorence,
emerging from the stone as if already there, yearning to escape, to sing, to
rock.
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| John Daly as a youth |
This Who parody (the first of
several, I hope), is an homage to one of golf’s most famous rock n’ roll souls,
John Daly. (John’s musical and parodic
talents are featured in an earlier TGA Blog post.) Daly’s personal issues, demons as it were,
have been well-chronicled, and his laundry list of past difficulties does not
paint a pretty picture. The poet Rainer Marie Rilke in his Duino
Elegies compellingly and poignantly suggested
that one cannot have angels without demons.
This may or may not be true, but Daly does have his golf game, which is
often stellar, to which his two victories in majors attests, to balance the
forces battling within him. Lately, Daly
is playing very well, and he seems to have his game and his demons under
control. Let’s hope that balance
continues into the distant future.
Behind
Blue Eyes
Songwriter/Composer:
Publishers:
BEHIND
BACK TEES
(To John Daly)
No
one knows what it's like
To
be the big man
To
be the sad man
Behind
back tees
No
one knows what it's like
To
be faded
To
be berated
Not
keeping always dry
But
my dreams
They
aren't as empty
As
my golf game sometimes is
I
have hours, only lonely
My
love is vengeance
That's
never free
I
have tour stops, only lonely
My
life’s a struggle
I’m
never free
No
one knows what it's like
To
feel these feelings
Like
I do
I
can't blame you
No
one takes back as far
On
their backswing
All
of my pain and woe
Still
shows through
But
my dreams
They
aren't as empty
As
my golf game sometimes is
I
have tour stops, only lonely
My
life’s a struggle
I’m
never free
When
my grip clenches, pull it open
Before
I rip it and lose my cool
Let
me smile, tell me some good news
So
I can laugh and act like its cool
If
I swallow anything liquor
Put
your finger down my throat
If
I shiver, please give me a blanket
light
my cig, give me diet coke
No
one knows what it's like
To
be the big man
To
be the sad man
Behind
back tees
AMDG
©
R.E. Kelly 2012
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