THE WHO in concert at Kemper Arena. With THE PRETENDERS. Presented by New West and Contemporary Productions.

By Nancy Ball

Entertainment Editor

"When we read our concert reviews," said the Who's guitarist Peter Townshend from the stage at Kemper Arena Saturday night, "they're all amazed we're still here."

I'm not. Neither were the 16,000 fans who packed Kemper to capacity to cheer their heroes in the group's first Kansas City appearance in five years.

The critics have been surprised that the Who has remained so popular for so long in the temporary world of rock stardom, especially after losing Keith Moon, the drummer for 16 years, to an overdose of sleeping pills in 1978.

But the Who, the archetypal rock band for nearly two decades now, has hung on with pugnacious tenacity. Now in their mid-30s, members of the Who are still the embodiment of revolutionary zeal and good-humored belligerence tempered by musical artistry. The energy level of the group's wonderfully cathartic performance Saturday defied musicians half that age to keep up, musically or physically.

Although the pall of the tragic Cincinnati concert in December, in which the stampeding crowd killed 11 person..., still hangs over the group, the concert at Kemper was well managed and more incident-free than most.

The Who is by no means the equipment-smashing theatrical demolition team it once was. The only things close to destruction 1 of either instruments or human tissue 1 exhibited Saturday night were an accidental fumbling of the microphone by singer Roger Daltrey and the usual bloodying of Townshend's fingers resulting from his windmill approach to guitar playing.

Townshend, the group's guiding genius, may not leap as high or as far as he once did, but he still jumps and dances without missing even the most delicate notes. Daltrey, twirling the microphone like a mace, still runs in place while he sings, reassuring fans who may have started feeling, as the Grateful Dead say, "old and in the way."

John Entwistle is, as ever, the group's almost-inanimate foil, thumping out those bass notes like machine gun fire. Though the fans naturally missed the late Keith Moon's blatant

SOUND CHECK

bashing (born of sublime and admitted lunacy), Kenny Jones (formerly of the Small Faces), propelled the group with powerful drumming. John "Rabbit" Bundrick was along to fill in on keyboards, and three horn players sequestered behind a veritable wall of amplifiers added fanfare to numbers like "5.15" and "Who Are You."

The Pretenders, a quartet from Los Angeles, opened the show with a brutal-sounding New Wave set, including the group's current hit "Brass in Pocket." Brass is an apt description of the band's female singer Chrissie Hynde, a gloriously sleazy combination of Patti Smith, Deborah Harry and Lou Reed. This is a group that will either be a huge hit or be gone by the end of the summer.

The Who played for almost two hours under an arrow-shaped lighting rig that eventually spelled out "WHO" in lights. Both the set and the numbers within it were superbly timed from the opening "Substitute" to the third encore "The Real Me." If anyone knows about dynamics, it's the Who.

Suffice it to say that when Townshend drops the volume down to a whisper and Daltrey throws back his head and lets loose with that bloodcurdling scream on "Won't Get Fooled Again," it's still one of the all-time Great Moments in Rock. Who fans will be high for days.