March 8, 2009

            I really didn’t want to post about The Who two weeks in a row, but, since I’ve got nothing else…

            Last week, on his birthday, I wrote about Roger Daltrey.  In the course of that blog, mentioned Pete Townshend’s recurring tinnitus problem, and how it could mean the end of The Who.  Well, here’s an update, directly from Pete himself.  This is from his blog, available at the Who’s website. 

In addition to his hearing problems, Pete writes about the playing Superbowl, and the hat he wore at the show.  Enjoy.

The Super Bowl show is now history, and next up is our concert version of Quadrophenia at the Royal Albert Hall, for the Teenage Cancer Trust, on March 30th. We start rehearsing ten days before the show. So there is almost a month to do some other stuff. 

While Roger does some more solo shows, this time supporting Eric Clapton, I am writing some more songs, testing out some studio and stage in-ear monitor systems, and wearing a Phonak hearing aid almost all the rest of the time. I feel as though I've been reborn in some ways. Not everything I hear is worth hearing, but at least I don't have to turn the TV down in order to tell everyone in the room that what they are watching is rubbish. I don't have to turn it up in the first place. Instead of TV interspersed with conversation, we have TV with conversation that happens at the same time. That kind of family running commentary on what we watch on TV is something I didn't know I missed, but I did miss it. On a higher note, hearing birdsong again is pretty amazing. 

I'm also working on Floss. I've gone back to the story and I'm fleshing out the characters, digging into their fictional past to learn more about them. Quite a bit of what I've been doing until now has been creating new studio set ups for the soundscapes that the hero of the story is so distracted by. I need a lot of triggers, buttons and switches, and powerful software playback systems that will allow me to 'perform' each soundscape in a variety of ways, allowing me lots of takes if necessary. I'm mixing dialogue, sound effects, music-concrete and music. So the set up I need is rather like a movie sound-mixing desk, with almost as many elements sometimes.

By a strange coincidence, while searching for music charts of Quadrophenia for our Music Supervisor on the RAH show, I found technical notes and drawings for studio systems I devised while cooking up the four channel version of the 1973 album - the Quad version that got away. Looking at the plans, designs and drawings I have before me today for Floss it's clear that I haven't lost my mojo when it comes to taking myself to the edge of technological nervous breakdown. 

Thanks everyone who stood by me during the Super Bowl (especially Roger as always), and to everyone who has emailed to say how much they enjoyed the half-time stint. The hat I wore, that was popular with some-but not all-of our fans, contains some ancient technology that helps me hear myself better on stage. It's called, the BRIM. 

PS:  This is the last week for Mad Marchness listener picks.  Remember, there’s ALWAYS room for more Who songs, and I’m STILL waiting for Iron Maiden to get a spot.