It could be the biggest thing in these parts since sliced bread, one of the best entertainment packages ever.

Next weekend Charlotte offers a pair of firsts — "Hair," the first rock musical and The Who, the English group credited with the first rock opera, "Tommy."

On the heels of a federal court decision allowing its performance in Ovens Auditorium, "Hair" comes rolling in for six performances spread from Thursday to Sunday night with matinees on Saturday and Sunday.

And almost right in the middle of that comes The Who, Saturday night at 8 p.m. at the Coliseum, promoted by Concerts East.

Two of the top rock attractions around, each offers a different view of the counter culture.

The Coliseum people are holding back 500 front row $6 tickets (others are $4 and $5) until they know just how many amplifiers The Who will use. About the loudest acid rock group around, it has often socked the sounds through two dozen speakers and amplifiers.

Those who hear The Who usually leave the concert mumbling "The What?"

Formed by four schoolmates from suburban London in 1964, The Who is ranked third best English group right up there with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

Peter Townshend is lead guitarist, Roger Daltrey lead singer, John Entwistle bass guitarist and Keith Moon drummer. Townshend plunges ever onward on guitar and Moon plays drums like a lead instrument.

The Who attracted a following with singles like "I Can See for Miles," but two years ago with its sixth album and the first rock opera, "Tommy," it made it big.

"Tommy," a truer rock opera than "Jesus Christ Superstar," has some religious symbolism in its plot about a kid who, after seeing his father murder his mother's lover, goes blind, deaf and dumb. He becomes a pinball champ, regains his senses and reaches fame as a messiah.

In the end, when he carries the cult stuff too far, he is forsaken. Townshend, who wrote most of it, is a disciple of Indian guru Meher Baba.

Aside from the music, the group has been known to smash guitars, dissemble drums and cast the bits and pieces into the audience.

Such gymnastics were captured in the film "Woodstock." There is Roger Daltrey in the spotlight, another light from behind fuzzing his hair into a blue halo. Bare-chested, wearing a buckskin fringed vest, holding his arms straight out, Daltrey looked like Tarzan wearing a Little Orphan Annie wig.

And what he did with the microphone — twirling it, throwing it, playing catch with it. Could be he has the compacted sexuality about to explode that the late Jim Morrison of the Doors had.

Pete Townshend was there too doing jumps, kicks and splits like a birdman, and, with his right arm moving like a windmill, raking out chords.

No doubt about it. The Who was big stuff at Woodstock which brings us to "Hair," the American Tribal Love-Rock musical which started all that Aquarius business Woodstock was supposed to typify.

"Hair" opened off-Broadway in New York in 1967, moved further off into a discotheque, Cheetah, and then moved uptown and made it big, especially after the Fifth Dimension recorded "Aquarius-Let The Sunshine In," the tunes that open and close the show.

"Hair" is a benchmark in the annals of the young, like the earlier West Side Story. That one told people, if they didn't know already, that kids were not like Archie and Jughead in the comic books but more like the J.D.'s, the juvenile delinquents everybody was worried about.

And in case nobody knows, "Hair" told people their sons and daughters were hippies. The musical's barebones plot revolves around Berger and Claude, two friends who hang