Now, I also had a crush on him--he was only 15 himself (don't ask about the uncle thingy...but it's true, he was my 12 year old best friend's uncle). And I definitely worshiped the ground he walked on, puka beads & all (it was the 70s, yeesh!). He had this cool attic "tree house" that he'd rigged for stereo sound & it was there, in the throes of pre-teen lust, that I fell for the Who (and the uncle too). He played me Pinball Wizard in its entirety, & that was it...done. I was a convert & from there, well, My Generation, I Can't Explain, Quadrophenia.....followed until I had amassed every single Who album known to man & some bootlegs too. The uncle was soon out of the picture but my love for the band that he also loved remains. To this day, I still think that The Who is my favorite band in the world, even if Pete & Roger are close to my mom's age & can't quite windmill as well, twirl the microphone 10 feet in the air, & don't destroy guitars anymore...so what, their voices are surprisingly still pretty damn good.
Cut to present time, or about 4 years ago. I had just started sailing again & was bringing my son with me for Wednesday races on the West River. If you go back in the blog archives there's a lot about getting back into racing down there. Anyway, after racing, the crew would have dinner together & one evening I sat near one of the guys who appeared to be around my age--turns out that it was Xing Fu but at the time, he was just another dude that I sailed with. We got to talking & found out that we were around the same age & had kids & after a bit of that kind of exchange we also found out that we both loved The Who. We talked about which albums we liked & continued to have a great convo about music. And from that point on, we would sit at the table together after racing & talk about music. He became my "Music Buddy" & then, well...here we are almost 3 years later going to see the band that started it all before we were an us. WOO WHO!
