Helpless Dancer

This is the outfit I wore the day after the infamous Roger Daltrey concert. Still in a ‘The Who’ mood, obviously :-D. I’ve been obsessed with the band after I came back from the concert and I have been watching ‘Tommy’ and ‘Quadrophenia’ live with the commentary of Roger and Pete, explaining how they came to write the songs and the circumstances around the songs, what the songs are about etc.. I love it. I find it very interesting to give it my own meaning too but to know what was going on in Pete Townshend’s brilliant mind while he wrote all those magnificent songs is just awesome.

One of the things that I love about ‘The Who’ is that Pete wrote a lot of songs about being a teenager/being from the generation that comes after a generation that fucked a lot of things up. He never talks about it in a condescending way, never ‘when I was a silly teenager I used to think I had it all figured out and this song is about the stupidity of young people’ and all that stuff. I always find it both very irritating and a little funny that, once people turn 20/21 or something, a lot of them start talking about their teenage years like it happened 20 years ago and that they’ve grown a lot cooler and smarter since than. I do understand that yes, there are stereotypical teenagers that start whining about wanting a tattoo and a pierced eyebrow and if they don’t get it, they scream ‘GOD I HATE YOU’ and slam the door in your face but a lot of teenagers are also just teenagers. Just the age of 10+… years. You are very easily put in that tiny little box that claims that any teenager and their opinions should just not be taken seriously because they are emotional and what not.

Quadrophenia, one of my favorite albums of The Who and one of my favorite albums in general, tells the story of Jimmy, a troubled teenager with a multiple personality disorder. Growing up in a post war England in the sixties he feels he doesn’t belong anywhere. Not with his parents, not at school, not with his gang, not at his dead end job and his relationship with his girlfriend isn’t all that either. He gets into fights, abuses alcohol and drugs, he feels so screwed up and he doesn’t know what to do with his life. It’s such a universal story that everyone, teenager/drugabuser/mod or not, can relate to. If you strip down the story you just see that the songs are about a confused human being, trying to make sense of the world he/she unwillingly came into. And yes, while we all go out and go to school/work/whatever and have our family to take care of and have relationships and fun, we all sometimes feel like we’re a tiny little speck in this universe of trouble and worries. All the lyrics of all the songs on ‘Quadrophenia’ are just genious and I really recommend everyone to take a listen to the songs.

The thing that I love most about The Who is that, while they are already making music for forty years and are getting a little older, their music and their message never ages. While I do love me some Beatles, I never really feel an emotional connection with their lyrics. Not as much as with The Who, anyways. Everyone sometimes feels like a Jimmy or a Tommy, unheard and confused. Of course we carry on with our lives as we should but sometimes it’s just nice to listen to those songs and feel that you’re not alone.

(Lyrics)

When a man is running from his boss
Who holds a gun that fires cost
And people die from being old
Or left alone because they're cold
And bombs are dropped on fighting cats
And children's dreams are run with rats
If you complain you disappear
Just like the lesbians and queers
No one can love without the grace
Of some unseen and distant face
And you get beaten up by blacks
Who though they worked still got the sack
And when your soul tells you to hide
Your very right to die's denied
And in the battle on the streets
You fight computers and receipts
And when a man is trying to change
It only causes further pain
You realize that all along
Something in us going wrong...

You stop dancing.

(I don't mind other guys dancing with my girl
That's fine
I know them all pretty well(Is it me? For a moment?)