The Who break up their instruments at the end— and that’s a grand idea.

The Blues Magoo peer out of a wild cacaphony of electronic mayhem they call “total re-creation” music.

No words are intelligible … just amplified madness.

And for this the kids still screamed Monday night when more than 8,000 gathered in The Gardens for another helping of the gigantic hoax called teen-age entertainment.

The whole thing is really no more than a contrived projection of the violent, but vaguely musical, cult fashioned by The Beatles. Now, though, it is gimmick instead of music, outlandish pandering to mass adolescent hysteria.

These groups are not The Beatles, who are mentioned at all because they started the craze that others only cursorily follow. Now the music is no music at all. Just overbearing noise.

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The same need not be said for Herman’s Hermits, though you’d never know it in the outlandish shrieking and wailing that went on Monday night at The Gardens. After three years and nine million records, the Manchester mop-tops with the pleasant songs have a niche all their own.

They have built it on an intelligible approach to music—not rock, rather something more akin to Old English music hall. And there is very little of the self-indulgent gimmickry that nowadays most of the groups have to exist on.

This, the seventh North American tour by the Hermits, visits 40 cities and nets them more than $750,000. A while back they completed their third movie. When they get back to England they’ll do more. They are firmly set while other groups are coming and going on a scene of rapidly-increasing non-musical gimmickry.

Since Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter and Henry VIII, Peter Noone (he’s Herman, and 19) and the Hermits have gone from style to style, always safely away from the chaos. Noone, who has been in television and movies since he was 11, puts it quite simply.

“We all came together at the right time and our sound was right. But we can’t stay on one thing all the time. Every record is different now.”

But the group’s directions are a little undecided from here. Noone, who has been likened to the late George Formby, wants to work more in films. He also has a growing sideline producing other groups on record.

Monday night among other tunes the group did a Frankie Laine oldie Jezebel, and the latest hit There’s A Kind Of Hush All Over The World. But the way it was going throughout the evening noise held the spotlight, and overruled even these youngsters.

However, the major thought from this show is not so much the obvious fact that groups like Herman’s Hermits will be around long after the likes of The Who and The Blues Magoo, but rather amazement that once again the kids have allowed themselves to become a part of the big hoax.

Musically there is much more to be had out of an inexpensive session with a record player. But I guess it is the hysteria that counts.

For instance, when The Who broke up their instruments at the end of their act the kids cheered wildly.

Why?

When the electronic mayhem was literally quivering the rafters they applauded—knowing only by rote what was going on on stage.

It’s unbelievable, inexplicable, totally without rhyme or reason. That they loved every minute of a smoothly run show is absolutely beyond analysis.

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