Yeah, just because this launched a genre as dubious as the rock opera does not make it crap. I think it's an amazingly cohesive piece of work, and in 1969 must have sounded completely unlike anything else.

This album used to freak the shit out of me when I was a little kid--something about the subject matter, which I could never quite get a handle on, and the weird cover art, and "Uncle Ernie" and "you didn't hear it, you didn't see it, you won't say nothing to no one" and the end where the disciples turn against him, etc.

I like the way the same instrumental theme winds throughout the album. "Sparks" is amazing. Peglegasus used to do a great version of it.

I've never seen the movie all the way through, but what I've seen is horrible.

Random thought: I remember that Tommy was one of those double-albums that put sides 1 and 4 on one disc and 2 and 3 on the other, so that if you stacked the records you could hear two consecutive sides in a row without flipping the record.

I have to say, I didn't anticipate this level of animosity when the thread first started, and now that it's been bumped all of us n00bz are tipping the balance and using terrible anagrams and punctuation to explain why!!! I can't crap on the Who. They could record an entire album with Viggo Mortensen and I'd still say NC

tommydski wrote:My great uncle still calls me 'Thomas'.

So do the contents of your wallet, Tommy!

Crap, concept albums for the most part are Crap.

The movie...kind of a guilty pleasure for me, simply by virtue of being the first movie I ever saw, which I've discussed on other threads...

I like Sparks, I actually like Amazing Journey, Christmas, etc...

The Who...with Keith Moon they were great at bombast. Definitely style over substance, and maybe a step or two behind their pretensions, but more or less pulled it off through sheer bluster. And they could write a hook or two. Lyrics, of course, are about as ridiculous as Star Wars dialogue.

After Keith Moon it was apparent that nobody in the band was a great songwriter, but by that point they were a career rock band...