I presented this one at the 2004 Pop Conference. It was later published in the academic journal Popular Music, with an introduction by Jason Toynbee, and followed by some back and forth between Jason and me, in which we argued good-naturedly about the different ways academic writing and popular writing tend to analyze the same phenomenon. In other words, the piece was a microcosm of everything great and infuriating about the Pop Conference itself.

We’re going to start with some film — the Who playing “Young Man Blues” at the Isle of Wight in 1970. I’ve always loved the Who, but I never really cared for their version of this song until I first saw this clip, which just nailed me to my seat. I actually got goose bumps – all the hairs on both my arms stood straight up. I watched it again the next morning when I wasn’t so stoned to make sure I’d seen what I thought I had, and it still blew me away.

The song lasts for about five and a half minutes, and during that time you witness a wild transformation: the band starts out playing the song, but by the end it’s the other way around — the music takes over, and it’s the song that’s playing the band. As a fan and a critic, of course, I live for moments like that. More importantly, though, as a guy who spent a good ten years on the road in a band that very much wanted to be the Who (actually, the Clash, but it’s really the same thing), I know just how easy those moments are to fake, and how that can make chasing after genuine onstage epiphanies not just a point of honor, but a physical craving that gets harder and harder to satisfy the more often you do it. Continue reading →