Not having seen them all, you shouldn’t call any single concert “the best of the year,” but let’s throw caution to the winds and say that last night’s spectacular performance by The Who at the Civic Arena was the most exciting rock ’n’ roll event of 1979 in Pittsburgh.

With the exception of a New York concert some weeks ago, The Who’s concert here was the group’s first gig of its current U.S. tour. Not even major sound trouble dimmed the success of the event for Pete Townshend, Roger Daltry and John Entwhistle — and a sparkling debut performance by newcomer drummer Kenny Jones.

Keith Moon is gone, and so are Roger Daltry’s lengthy locks and the crazy stunts of the past, but everything musical is the same or better. Now entering its 15th year of busi-

Post-Gazette Review

ness as the quintessential British rock band, The Who overpowered a standing-room-only crowd with a string of some of the best rock songs ever written, a magic busride from “My Generation” to “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

Along the way, Pittsburgh fans got a special treat in the form of several tunes from the greatly underrated “Quadrophenia” and a goosebump-raising excerpt from “Tommy.”

Nobody sings it better than Daltry. And nobody wrote ’em better than Townshend, a genius of a composer who was the first rock musician with the vision and talent to experiment in forms larger and deeper than the standard three-minute AM radio song.

It also happens that Townshend is one of the best guitarists in captivity, with a rotorblade sidearm windup stroke which became his and the group’s trademark back in the days when manager Kit Lambert encouraged them to smash instruments on stage. Anything went. The more hostile and outrageous, the better. The Who gave vicarious life to the nihilistic fantasies of the day.

Now The Who gives life merely to good music, presenting it in slightly more restrained fashion to a new generation which has only barely survived the stupidities of punk rock — a movement which tried to mimick The Who, but without The Who’s redeeming sense of humor.

“Enjoy it tonight,” Townshend told the Pittsburgh crowd. “We always do. We’re masochists.”

The gorgeous “Quadrophenia” selections were the best of the evening, it bears repeat-

ing, but lesser-known classics such as the Zappa-esque “Boris the Spider” and newer tunes such as “Sister Disco” cropped up. The latter is a gem of a hard-driving rock song which manages along the way to lay bare the vacuity of all disco music (except, of course, “We Are Family”). Especially well received was a rendition of “Behind Blue Eyes,” which prompted some firecrackers to be hurled toward the stage.

“If you see someone with a firework, kill him,” advised Townshend after the explosions, along with specific instructions on how to do so.

These days, The Who sports the addition of a three-member brass section, “which has made absolutely no difference at all” according to Townshend. This trio does in fact, at its best, augment the group’s sound; at its worst, it makes them sound a little like Blood, Sweat and Tears.

But The Who’s “sound” in general has always been to a large extent “studio” in nature, and their efforts to reproduce that sound in live concert has always produced mixed and sometimes bizarre results. The result, here at least, was further complicated by a great excess of feedback which virtually wiped out the stage right speakers for a while.

The Who, however, has been around long enough to survive an acoustically sloppy concert, thanks to the perfect meshing of Townshend and Entwhistle on guitars and to Roger Daltry’s vocal theatrics, jogger-choreography and lasso tricks with the microphone. The survival and increase of their popularity is also due to the fact that they’re unfailingly fun to watch.

Their voices together — evidenced in “Who Are You” — are less harmonious and more uproarious than ever.