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Videos
Substitute
Who Are You
The Seeker
Pinball Wizard
Another Tricky Day
Eminence Front
My Generation
My Generation
The Real Me
I'm One
Love Reign O'er Me
Baba O'Riley
The Song is Over
Tea & Theatre
Press
Review by Lauren J. Hammer
The Palm Springs show was solid, as Who shows almost always are. At this point, Roger, Pete, the band, and the crew are a well oiled machine, putting on an amazingly solid, well crafted, two hour show. The show is incredibly impressive, by any measure, for 81 and 80. No complaints (other than my personal location, the ticket stress, and overzealous security up front).
The highlight of tonight was the fact that they added The Seeker back in without taking anything out. Nice bonus, but personally, as much as I like The Seeker, I would much rather have had Love Ain’t for Keeping.
No real criticisms of the show. Anyone who saw only this gig would (rightly) think it fantastic. That said, it also felt incredibly anti-climatic.
Ending in Palm Springs, a place kind of in the middle of nowhere (apologies to folks who live in the area, but I mean relative to meaningful Who history locations), was an odd, odd choice.
While I wouldn’t have chosen Las Vegas, it had its merits as a reasonable choice. And even with it ending up as the next to the last show, it was much more of an event than the Palm Springs show. The people, the room, the energy, the performance - everything.
Palm Springs, by contrast, was a soft selling show that was a matter of logistical convenience. It was only announced a few weeks before it happened, tacked on as an afterthought between the formerly “final” North American Vegas show and the TCA Backyard event in the LA area, set to take place a few days later. Add to that, Paul McCartney played at the same arena just a few days earlier. On a practical level, it’s not a huge population base, and being the second of two stupidly, expensively priced boomer acts, with The Who having only a few weeks lead time = a rough equation.
Honestly, when Philly and Atlantic City got postponed, I was hoping they’d tack those make-up shows on to the back end of the tour, and maybe add an additional MSG show, ending it on the east coast. I understand, logistically, why it was more cost and energy effective to slip those two in during the scheduled break between Chicago and LA, but bummer, in a multitude of ways.
As it’s been each night, the ending was poignant. Heartfelt words from both Roger and from Pete. They sounded like this was it for North America. Will it be? I dunno.
Additional Note: Before the show, there was quite a lot of buzz going around that Paul McCartney was there and would be a special guest. I heard this from multiple sources, but it did not come to pass. On the one hand, it would have been a very cool and special occurrence. On the other hand, pretty much nobody but Eddie Vedder, is suited to “guest” with The Who. We couldn’t imagine him joining during anything in their set. Our best imagination was them tacking on a version of Twist and Shout after Tea and Theatre. But alas, it was not meant to be.