Brick

Unem­ploy­ment dur­ing the Good Depres­sion is no time to be extrav­a­gant. I tend to be stingy dur­ing good times as well, but blow­ing a fair amount of money for top seats for The Who on Valentine’s night in Tulsa was crazy-right.

Roger Dal­trey (left) and Pete Town­shend of The Who, 2008. Credit Wikipedia

The stop was on their Quadrophe­nia 2012–13 tour, play­ing through that dou­ble album then fur­ther flame the fans with a hand­ful of biggest hits.

It was so won­der­ful — those in the found­ing gen­er­a­tion of rock ‘n’ roll who con­tinue arena con­certs as they move into their 70s leave no stage­craft to chance — that my adding another review to a newsprint pyre seems unnecessary.

Sec­ond, these guys (Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Neil Young whom I’ve seen) con­tinue to hire great open­ing acts. Thurs­day we got Vin­tage Trou­ble.

Lastly, nearly soil-my-cargo-pants shock­ing was see­ing a eupho­nium horn on the stage of a true rock show. Images and sounds of Roger Dal­trey and Pete Town­shend, of the fel­lows in Trou­ble would fill my mind in the hours since — but for that bari­tone horn behind the bass and sec­ond guitar.

Some­where in the very early 1970s when I was a pre­teen I read about the 1969 rock opera Tommy, by The Who. My brother’s fiance bought it for me, on audio­cas­sette. The only other Who album I’ve bought since was Quadrophe­nia, soon after the rock opera’s 1973 release.

Around Thanks­giv­ing 2000, I vis­ited my wife in Lon­don where IBM sent her; get­ting last-minute tick­ets for The Who’s show at the Royal Albert Hall proved too complicated.

They broke up in 1983 so the occa­sional tours since have been reunions. While that Lon­don show hap­pened to have been filmed, I hoped not to miss any fur­ther chance to see Roger and Pete, now ages 68 and 67, respec­tively, the sur­vivors of the orig­i­nal quar­tet. For­tu­nately, Tulsa is a two-hour drive.

Also in the early 1970s, my junior high band direc­tor rec­om­mended I play bari­tone, a three-valve tenor horn (same range as trom­bone) that resem­bles a half-size tuba. In the U.S. a four-valve ver­sion (for bet­ter into­na­tion and hits lower notes) is called a euphonium.

Teeth braces kept me from smaller brass, and I didn’t want to play reeds because my older brother and sis­ter did.

I grew to love eupho­nium: Imag­ine the mel­low sonor­ity of French horn, lower in pitch. It taught me the value of com­pet­ing in small groups. It is sim­pler to achieve first chair among three other eupho­ni­ums than 14 trum­peters or seven trom­bon­ists. Also, I got solos and more intri­cate parts than being in the mid­dle of a pop­u­lar sec­tion. This has been a les­son that’s stood me well in a vari­ety of non-musical cir­cum­stances since.

Its dis­ad­van­tage is that if you love rock and jazz (as well as clas­si­cal), “they” won’t let you play in the school jazz band. You can’t have every­thing, another damnable life lesson.

Shift to the late ‘70s, I bought a valve trom­bone to play in the col­lege (march­ing) band so at last I could rock, although all of the slide trom­bon­ists would dis­agree, albeit amiably.

Another fast-forward to about 1982, when I learned in a Dal­las news­pa­per about Rich Mat­te­son (1929–1993), appar­ently the world’s only jazz eupho­nium player. He played in the city with his band one night, prob­a­bly at Poor David’s Pub. This was before the rou­tine of musi­cians sell­ing record­ings and other “merch” at gigs, but I con­trived a ques­tion to ask him between sets, just to meet him. He told me what mouth­piece he used, and he shook my hand.

Now, on Thurs­day, Feb. 14, 2013, at Tulsa’s BOK (pro­nounced B-O-K for Bank of Okla­homa, by the way) Arena, the man Town­shend intro­duced as J. Greg Miller played a side-facing curved-bell eupho­nium as har­mony dur­ing the “Love Reign O’er Me” Quadrophe­nia finale and ear­lier when­ever that melody was sounded.

Miller’s horn sported a fab­ric bell cover of a Union Jack. Miller though is not a Brit but born in Penn­syl­va­nia. For most of the set he played trum­pet, with the tour’s other trum­pet player. Oth­er­wise, Miller appar­ently is at heart a French horn player, which he played at times Thurs­day. Notably a French horn is heard in Tommy; the Inter­net reports that The Who’s beloved late bassist John Ent­whis­tle played it originally.

The eupho­nium turns up as a com­po­nent of the 1960’s British Inva­sion, as since evolved.

All things are pos­si­ble, aren’t they?

The open­ing band Vin­tage Trou­ble has an accu­rate name, rhythm and blues of the 1950s with the lively lead Ty Tay­lor chan­nel­ing the youth­ful moves and shout-singing of James Brown and gui­tarist Nalle Colt dri­ving a rag­ing 21st-century instru­men­tal blend.

No con­cert review here, not really. Okla­homa City’s The Okla­homan and nat­u­rally the Tulsa World pub­lished highly com­pe­tent write-ups with great pix.

Mel­lowed out, with ears rested, what’s strik­ing for me is see­ing two giants of rock music. Roger nursed his throat with bot­tles of water, cups of cool tea and mugs of hot tea, not to men­tion a con­stantly steam­ing humid­i­fier imme­di­ately behind him on stage. Lead gui­tarist and com­poser Pete dis­plays age-defying energy, pump­ing through dozens of gui­tar solos. His charm­ing character-driven singing cracked at times. He could use Roger’s reg­i­men; the fel­lows have quite a few months to go on the tour.

The tour’s side­men left the stage at last, leav­ing the remain­ing duo the last word. Pete accom­pa­nied Roger on Pete’s “Tea and The­atre” from 2006 — “… A thou­sand songs / Still smol­der now / We play them as one / We’re older now / All of us sad / All of us free. …”

Copy­right 2013 Ben S. Pollock