some kind of divine right to the blues

The second half of the 1970s were not especially good years for The Who, at least not in my opinion. The Who By Numbers is just that, and Who Are You tries to hard to stay 'current', adding synthesizers and a more up-to-date new wavey sound that does not serve the band well. And then there's the death of Keith Moon in 1978. But in the early 1980s, Pete Townshend put out two solo albums that can be looked upon now as the last meaningful music that was ever made by anybody in The Who. Empty Glass (1980) and All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (1982) were both in heavy rotation on my KLH turntable when they came out. The two albums are like Yin and Yang. Empty Glass is Pete in the throes of addiction; the mood is dark and somber, for the most part. Chinese Eyes is Pete's redemption album where he gets clean and is reborn. I listened to both albums earlier this evening, just to see how they've aged. They both still sound great and take me back to a period in my life when even the most downbeat music could transport me to a place where I felt uncluttered and free. Here's a sampling from each...

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