THE WHO are what rock is all about. What they play doesn't wait to be listened to: it grabs its audience and screams at it.

All the aggression in the group's music was in evidence at their concert at the Civic Hall, Wolverhampton, on Monday and the sell-out audience submitted without a struggle.

But the evening provided a paradox.

For, while the music may have been intense and often churlish ("Don't pretend you know me — I don't even know myself"), the group were relaxed and friendly. The Who were having a ball.

They were on stage for more than two hours, during which they exploded through some new songs by lead guitarist Pete Townshend, a precis of their pop opera "Tommy" and a selection of rock hits from the past.

POUNDING

"Tommy" was an unexpected treat and the highlight of a concert that deserves more than a few well-worn superlatives.

The opera tells of a deaf, dumb and blind boy who becomes, in turn, a pinball wizard, and LSD tripper and a religious leader.

It contains some weird, pounding music and some memorable songs which sound just as good outside the context of the work as a whole.

The Who are an immensely watchable group. Their antics are just as much a part of the performance as the music. The two parts combine to produce one thoroughly enjoyable happening.

Pete Townshend, in psychedelic jump suit, leapt about in front of his sombre, black amplifiers like a stiltman on a trampoline, pausing only long enough to kick a cymbal with a step that would have made any seven-foot cancan girl jealous.

Roger Daltrey, shaking his freaked-out hair and swinging his microphone on the end of its lead, looked like some demented drum major.

Drummer Keith Moon ricocheted round his kit like a nervous moth on a light bulb, bouncing drumsticks ten feet into the air from his snare and missing them with gay abandon.

Only John Entwistle, whose bass guitar work is the foundation on which the group build, was reasonably subdued.

The Who's music may not be built to last, but while it's around it ought not to be missed. Anyone who failed to be moved by it on Monday was doing a "Tommy."

On the same bill were Trapeze, the Wolverhampton group, who might well have been more enjoyable had the amplifiers they were using been turned to a less painful level.

The concert was the first of a fortnightly series. It was a fine start.