Heroes, Pt. 8: Who?

My WHO fan-dom didn't begin until after Keith Moon was dead. I might have been twelve when, on Christmas morning, I found a copy of Who Are You with my name on it. I think mom just wandered into the record store and asked whatever pimply geek happened to be there what she should get for her pimply geek. Whether his recommendation was genuine or he was just trying to clear out the bargain bin I have no idea, but it wasn't long before I owned every WHO recording I could find. I'm pretty sure I owned every WHO record before I bought anything by any other band. As far as "classic rock" goes, The WHO were heavier than The Beatles and more experimental than The Stones. I'll be the first to admit they did some positively goofy shit. Who Are You has a track or two that sound like the remnants of some abandoned space opera. But until my friend Doug laid a copy of X's Under The Big Black Sun on me, The WHO were the Titans of my rock and roll pantheon. Even now, I still consider them royalty.

So I'm reluctant to criticize The Two's Superbowl performance last night. Yeah, it was less than stellar. Yeah, the set list was predictable (CBS' CSI soundtrack, basically). Yeah, there was a moment when Roger looked on the verge of a stroke before Camera Control could cut away. But how many of their generation can still take the stage at all, much less manage a few screams and windmills? Not many. But that hasn't stopped the legion of comment-thread quarterbacks from eating up bandwidth with their non-rock-god opinions. The WHO is "irrelevant?" In the middle of the most hyped, testosterone-laden media event of the year, who is?