You Better, You Better, You Bet!

Friday night I saw The Who in concert. They were amazing. They were playing at Mandalay Bay, which is another huge arena like the one at the MGM Grand. My seat wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t close either. I’m just glad I could sit this time if I wanted to.

As an added bonus, The Pretenders opened for them. I had no idea when I bought my ticket they would be there. They were pretty good too, although they didn’t play a lot of old stuff. They have a new album out, so most of the songs were from the new album. Chrissy looked great. I wonder how old she is now? I have no idea. I also didn’t know she was from Ohio. She sang some song about it. Apparently it’s an old song, but I wasn’t familiar with it. What I liked best about them was that they started on time. I can’t think of a concert lately where they actually started on time.

So after the Pretenders finished, there were some advertisements running on the screens about being able to buy recordings of the concert. CD’s or DVD’s of the show. Pretty cool, really. It’s nice to be able to go out and buy a copy of a show you actually attended. I see concert DVD’s in stores and I think, yeah this is nice, but it was recorded at a show I didn’t even attend. I haven’t gone out to the website yet to check out the prices, but I’m sure I will.

I know a few songs by The Who, as I’m sure we all do now if you watch any of the CSI shows at all. They played all of those of course, plus Pinball Wizard, Behind Blue Eyes, and my favorite, You Better You Bet. That song cracks me up. It reminds me of my Dad and long car trips. It also makes me think of ThreeL and college. She liked singing that one. I can picture it clearly. What I thought was really interesting was the dynamic between Pete and Roger. I don’t really know a lot of history about the band, but I was surprised at how little Roger spoke during the show. Generally, I think of the lead singer as being the spokesperson, but that clearly wasn’t the case here. I suppose since Pete writes all the songs, it makes sense that he would have more to say about them. Plus, he sings on most of the tracks too, so there you go.

I was also really impressed by how great a guitar player he is. There were these giant video screens they used during the performance and in a few songs they used old concert footage. It was interesting to see them when they were young and jumping around everywhere and then to see them now. Pete hopped around a bit, but clearly nothing like the early days. Good thing. I was a little worried about him falling and breaking a hip. Roger still sounded pretty good. He made a comment at one point about how hard it is for singers to perform in Vegas, mentioning some condition called “Vegas throat.” I guess the dry air doesn’t help the singing voice. It didn’t seem to be a big deal until he got around to singing Won’t Get Fooled Again. It has that lovely scream in it and I was hoping he could still do it. It didn’t happen at first, but he did try it at the end. It was good and the crowd went bananas.

All in all, it was a great show and I’m so glad I saw them. This Saturday is Streisand. My seat totally sucks, but it’s more important to hear her than see her, so I can live with that. I wonder if she is going to get pissed off at this crowd too? If the trend continues with taping the individual shows, then maybe I’ll buy a copy of this one.