My parents liked this album enough to call me 'Tommy'.
Not Thomas or Tom.

Tommy!

that damned fly wrote:

Nico Adie wrote:(To the tune of Pinball Wizard)

That deaf, dumb and blind band...sure made a crap album.

Crap.

but not to the rhythm, huh?

You knows what I means.

CRAP. Bits of it are good, but there's so much better Who stuff out there. Definitely does not need 2 LPs.

space junk wrote:The record is crap. Played live between 1969 and 1971, it's one of the highest points in rock music. Sparks live at Tanglewood is the performance to end all performances. But the album itself is poor. Very poor.

Agreed. The second disc of Live at Leeds, were they play Tommy straight through without a pause is an awesome, inspiring piece of rock music. The album Tommy is poorly recorded and played. The Who's ambition far outstripped their abilities as a studio band at that point.

tommydski wrote:My parents liked this album enough to call me 'Tommy'.
Not Thomas or Tom.

Tommy!

What does Uncle Ernie call you?

space junk wrote:The record is crap. Played live between 1969 and 1971, it's one of the highest points in rock music. Sparks live at Tanglewood is the performance to end all performances. But the album itself is poor. Very poor.

I totally agree with this.

EDIT: I first got into the Who when I bought Live at the Isle 1970 (the double album) The performance of Young Man Blues -> Face = SLAYED.

How can one call this album crap?
One of the best albums ever. listen to cousin kevin, now that's a song.

The songs are good, but the Who didn't learn how to record themselves until they put out Live at Leeds. I think putting out a live record made them fully realize that more was possible on Who records. The recordings on Tommy are really tame and dull. They didn't start to come close to capturing what they were as a band until Who's Next, Quadrophenia, and The Who By Numbers.

Not crap.

As much as I don't want to like this record for various reasons (most of them listed above) I can't deny the fact that I love it.

Crap. The songs are boring (aside from Sparks), the lyrics are shite (which might be why Sparks is so good).

The live performances of the music from Tommy at that time period are good, but this is not because Tommy was good. It's because The Who were such a face-meltingly badass live band that they could make even horrible songs sound awesome live just by rocking so fucking hard. This was their modus operandi for their entire careers.