My Own Biggest Fan

Another album from someone else’s past. I’ve mentioned old friend’s musical tastes a couple times in these posts. It’s a recurring theme for these albums because I’m often picking up older music because I find myself thinking “I remember when so-and-so would talk about this album, I should really give it a go.” Month of New Music is giving me a chance to do this.

For those as green as I am to The Who, you probably won’t recognize many songs on Quadrophenia. I am pretty sure I’d heard the album’s finale, “Love, Reign O’er Me” before, but I can’t be sure. It was released as a single, as was “The Real Me” which I am even less sure I’d heard before.

I’ll give you a quick explanation of a complex album: it’s a semi-autobiographical concept album, dealing with all the members of The Who rolled into one character, Jimmy, a mod. It revolves around events stemming from the 1964 Battle of Brighton between the Mods and Rockers. If you aren’t familiar with the history, you might have to do a bit of research to know what they are talking about, but not much. The bulk of the meat here is Jimmy wrestling with his inner demons.

Because of the scope of its subject matter, it would be premature of me to write any sort of review on this album. I’m sure this post will elicit much head-shaking from those that consider this album required listening. I’m tempted to agree that it may be, it’s a stirring work, and it also begs for multiple plays. I also messed up when playing the album, I ended up listening to it in the wrong order. It’s a two record set, and it was pressed for play on a record changer, for a listen interrupted with only one flip of the records rather than three. I didn’t notice this and I didn’t notice until after I heard side 4 before I’d heard sides 2 and 3. This made the experience a little disjointed. I’ll have to remedy that soon.

Rating: 4/4 personalities.