I’m fascinated by the notion of influences and inspirations, especially when they’re mashed up and twisted by geographical and cultural differences. Listening to any The Soundtrack Of Our Lives album conjures up bits from the historical nature of rock n roll—how it was served like a flaming tennis ball across the pond to Britain by Chuck Berry, volleyed back by the Rolling Stones and returned again by Otis Redding.

Often they cram the entire playlist of a classic rock station into one song, other times appropriating (doppelganger-style) a signature sound, as in the Doors’ knockoff “Age of No Reply” from Origin, Vol. 1.

For some reason, and much like their fellow Swedes the Hellacopters, it works. It must be the earnestness and reverences they employ. American bands who try this approach end up sounding like Matchbox 20, or are Matchbox 20.

Communion, the new T.S.O.O.L album continues this trend. The album, however, does not hew to serious indie sensibility nor will it receive much critical love. It is fun, though, and well crafted. Songs like “Flipside” finds relation to the Who’s “Goin’ Mobile” while “Fly” gets all Mamas and Papas.

One could argue that the double album approach includes too much filler. True, Communion does have its share of ballad-y cheese, but I prefer to view it from a the standpoint of jazz musicians who use space and silence—the cheddar numbers with their drops in tempo enable a bigger impact in the the rock songs.

RA 88 from Communion:

Flipside from Communion:

Age of No Reply from Origin, Vol. 1:

Infa Riot from Behind the Music:

Her Strut – the Hellacopters

Which isn’t to say that the Who in its current incarnation lacks vim, vigor, or even cheek…just that the guys who came to prominence as purveyors of auto-destructive art now seem more intent on self-preservation.

Townshend was the star of the evening—his voice gruff, his guitar crisp, his stage presence spry and occasionally airborne.  He also made time for some typically inscrutable bons mots between songs:

On cannibalism: “Someone took the child.  They’re gonna boil her in a pot and make soup out of her.”

On the election: “We hope you get what you want tomorrow.  And we’re here to share in your misery.”

On disco: “Back then disco was huge.  It was pretty great, but it was ubiquitous, and we thought rock n roll was gonna get swallowed up by it.”

“That didn’t happen,” he said after a beat, to predictably massive applause.  (And the band launched into—what else?—”Disco Sister.”)

Elsewhere, “5:15″ got a powerful workout, including some very horn-like guitar duets from Townsend and his brother Simon; “Love, Reign O’er Me” soared broodingly; and the extended jam in “My Generation” was beautifully propulsive.  The only real disappointment was “Gettin’ In Tune,” a ditty on band-audience synchronicity and a favorite of mine.  Monday’s rendition worked until what should have been the coolest bit: the Daltrey-Townshend harmony on “there’s a symphony that I hear in your heart / sends my head a-reeling.”  Daltrey entered a good four bars early, sending the band into a minor tailspin (from which Townsend quickly rescued them).  It was an awkward moment—if amply redeemed—and I was left nursing a weird sympathy for the lead singer.

Oh, and while we’re picking nits: the mix.  Townshend’s guitar approach depends so much on chordal isolation (cf. turnaround in “Won’t Get Fooled Again”), which in turn requires a rhythmic space that the current six-piece lineup doesn’t preserve.  Instead we get a wall of sound and a sporadically muddled version of the classic Who attack.  Also: Palladino needs a treblier bass if he really wants to capture that Entwistle sound.

But, you know, whatever.  These guys soldiered through over two hours of (yes) maximum R&B, hitting all the right spots in their catalog without seeming to sag too hard.  For sexagenarians, that takes balls and blood sugar.

“I feel like I’ve been through ten rounds with Mike Tyson,” Daltrey said at the end.  “But it’s been a pleasure.”

Below: setlist and a very special slideshow of photographs by Brian Reed.

Setlist

• “Can’t Explain”
• “The Seeker”
• “Relay”
• “Fragments”
• “Who Are You”
• “Behind Blue Eyes”
• “Real Good-Lookin’ Boy”
• “Disco Sister”
• “Baba O’Riley”
• “Gettin’ in Tune”
• “Eminence Front”
• “5:15″
• “Love, Reign O’er Me”
• “Won’t Get Fooled Again”
• “My Generation”
• “Naked Eye”

First encore

• Tommy medley: “Pinball Wizard” -> “Amazing Journey” -> “Sparks” -> “See Me, Feel Me” -> “Listening to You”

Second encore

• “Tea & Theatre”

Though not characterized by the bump ‘n’ grind, Sunday’s 10 p.m. show at Blues Alley drew a rapt and well-dressed crowd of LP nerds, precocious twenty-somethings, and couples in search of an atmospheric canoodle to see Mose Allison, a man whom Pete Townshend once dubbed “the Blues Sage.”

Mose knows, as the saying goes. And more to the point, he still puts on one hell of a show.

It is now 50 years since Allison’s first release—the groovy Back Country Suite, with which Richard Fariña fell in love—and 80 since his birth, but heck if he ain’t still the cat of cats. His elegant blues (or is it demotic jazz?) is as sharp as ever, his swagger intact, his delivery sly but unaffected (few bluesman can pull off a phrase like “your little psychic walkabout”). Joined by Tony Martucci on drums and Tommy Cecil on bass, Allison stuck almost exclusively to originals, and his few covers tended less toward Nat “King” Cole smoothness and more toward the down-home stuff of Lefty Frizzell (”If You’ve Got the Money…”) and Muddy Waters (a fantastic “Catfish Blues”).

Punctuating each quip with a sneaky piano lick, Mose kept the interstitial passages jumping with manic rhythm in the right hand over the left hand’s open fifth/stride patterns—funky enough to make middle-aged white cats in wraparound shades convulse with (or against) the music, but not so frenetic as to threaten the breeziness of lyrics like “If silence was golden/You couldn’t raise a dime.”

There’s something tremendously boyish about an 80-year-old singing this stuff. Allison has always been an insistent naïf (with a nod, of course, and a wink), but now he seems doubly so. Sure, he occasionally finds himself a bit short of breath, and his upper register may have shriveled somewhat; but the sheer delight he takes in his own contradictions seems more exuberant, more self-evident—unshriveled, one might say, by the miles and the years. A “certified senior citizen” by his own account, Allison has broadened the facetious strain in his blues to make old age seem pretty cool.

In other words, the fellow who taught “Young Man’s Blues” to the Who certainly seems to be enjoying the fruits of his own senility.

It’s not just the ever-present half-smile, not just his private scat (which through the years has morphed from a Neal Cassady-type exhortation to a vaguely apprehensive creaking sound), not just an evergreen predilection, in both composition and interpretation, for the zippy one-liner…it’s the reactive dissonance of the old man singing the songs of youth, the wise guy playing the innocent, the white boy stealing the blues.

Parchman Farm:

Young Man’s Blues:

Set list, and recommended discs, below.

Oh, and here’s a video of “Mind on Vacation”:

Sunday’s 10 p.m. setlist:

• “Just Like Livin’”
• “Fool’s Paradise”
• “Swingin’ Machine”
• “Days Like This”
• “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time”
• “Trouble In Mind”
• “Do Nothin’ Till You Hear from Me”
• “Certified Senior Citizen”
• “Ever Since I Stole the Blues”
• “How Does It Feel? (To Be Good-Looking)”
• “What Do You Do After You Ruin Your Life”
• “Middle-Class White Boy”
• “That’s The Stuff You Gotta Watch”
• “Hello There, Universe”
• “Your Mind is on Vacation”
• “Catfish Blues”
• “This Ain’t Me” (encore)

Recommended discography:

• Back Country Suite (1957)
• The Seventh Son (1972)
• Middle-Class White Boy (1982)

…and, of course, the totally fun Greatest Hits (Prestige), to which Christgau gives the most lukewarm A- in CG history. Though it does overlap prodigiously with The Seventh Son.