30 October 2005

Times They Are A Changing

A while back I blogged about a guilty memory of totally humiliating a nice, shy, intelligent, funny, then fairly short Jewish lad.

Since then I have managed to briefly reach 'the Johnson', boyfriend during said distant moment in time, who corrected a few little misunderstandings. The young man in question was apparently not Pete Townshend's cousin, but his little brother, Simon. Well, unless there are two Simons in the same generation of the same family, in which case, heck, I already put both feet in my mouth, I may as well wiggle them around too.

I went and found a few photos of him on the net, specifically a couple of Duran Duran style Eighties ones - poor guy, the "I've been working down a coal mine but my hair is still great" kind, in which he has obviously inherited the family neck, which is designer smudged just like his face and everything else thats showing, in direct contrast to the super-white saggy T-shirt. I won't link, that would be too, too cruel.*

Anyhow, being determined to try and wrap my head round the blog that is big brother Pete's book, I surfed back over there and found the MP3 download of his new Track, In The Ether.

When I told Simon I had never thought much of The Who, I wasn't fibbing and in fact that opinion never changed during the subsequent !"%!&*£% years, but hey, you're never too late to learn something, so I downloaded.

I did not leave a comment. If I had, oh dear, my honest remark would have been along the lines of 'You jammy sod.' I mean the man has talent but not, at least these days, what you could call a singing voice. Good for him, that he can sound like he just lost a fight and still make money/collect worship. Sorry, its personal opinion, but to my mind we are talking sore throat, maybe flu. Honestly.

Judging by all the super-effusive and worshipful comments his blog receives, there are a great number of people who completely disagree with me. All power to them; just don't tell them where I am, please. Sycophants who see their God disrespected can be fairly predictably nasty.

Not so much nasty as bizarre, is this; as I searched for a suitable photo to tart up this post I found that Simon Townshend not only ended up selling out (by his own standards at age eighteen) and becoming a band member for The Who, but has also now started a blog. Refreshingly its a freebie blogspot and not some flash-git all-singin'-and-a-dancin' superstar production, which does suggest that he's still human, although he mentions wearing pyjamas for something called In The Attic, a telly programme for the US. I couldnt find any links on Google, so do educate me, if you've ever heard of it. Gosh what jolly fun these rock gods have.

Yes, I know I just linked, but seeing as I am a mere, insignificant pleb and the site seems very popular, I can't for a second imagine that anyone will backtrack, or if they do, they won't read, so I'm safe.

Who would want to find the blog of a once vacuous, self involved teenage girl, who recalls their acnied school years or the shit time they had with snobs and bullies? Or if they found it, who would mention?

If I had one wish, it would be nice to know what happened to Taylor-Grey, and if he ever grew out of his obsession with goats.

* Ahh, sod it, and sod cruel. All press is good press, yes? Here you go!

6 comments:

Jennifer said...

So we're on a road trip. It's 1978. My brother asks my mom to pop a Kris Kristofferson 8-track into the tape deck. She does. Ten minutes elapse. Finally, daddy looks at mom, makes eye contact, raises an eyebrow, and asks, "Throat cancer?"

Thanks for the memory!

Doris said...

Coooo. His blog misses out on talking about personal stuff and is somewhat lacking for it! But then interesting reading between the lines of some of the comments.

Did you read that post about the song he wrote about the girl in London that he fell in love with....?

As for the pic.... what a cute young guy. Underneath all that moock :-)

Cheryl said...

Will read!
But in all probability it was the sister of the girl who married The Johnson - it all gets a bit parochial in W5.

Milt Bogs said...

If you had been blogging twenty years ago Cheryl, the guy might have become a household name. He looks to me like he should be on an advert for OMO washing powder if they still sell it.

Cheryl said...

Hehe Milt.
Thanks, was that a compliment? Gosh.

I don't know about twenty years ago - poor guy has been told to look, well, - I guess they were aiming for one of those character-free 'I've got lips' shots that Duran and Heaven 17 and that lot went in for, but it ended up making him look a bit gormless, don't you think?

fineartist said...

Okay, I’m confused, and it is not your fault, it is totally on my own befuddled ness. So the guy you met that night was not a cousin of Pete’s but his little brother?

The pic of Simone reminds me of attempted cheese cake. I saw it happen to Peter Frampton. Along comes Peter, a kick axe musician, and PRETTY. He puts out an awesome album, Frampton Comes Alive, and then his next release is, I don’t know, I didn’t buy it they were selling his sex appeal, not his music. I believe they pushed too fast for successive recordings, instead of letting his talents smolder properly. They cashed in on the face.

Oh, yea, the next album was, I’m in you, I think. A real stinker. Then there was the movie, that he was asked to make, St peppers lonely hearts club band, with the bee gees. Even Peter called it a stinker.

He’s back though, his hair isn’t, but that’s not important. He’s back and the music is prime, the music is most important.