The Who – What an awesome show!

The evening began at a restaurant nearby the venue where Derek, my English footballer friend, and I met up with fellow blogger Anne-Marie and her new hubby Austin.

During the 5 minute walk from the restaurant to the ACC it began to snow lightly. Upon arrival, we took our respective seats in different sections of the 100 level. Wow! What seats we had too! While we weren’t close – we were smack in front of stage centre and had a perfect view of the boys with all their sophisticated lighting and video screens … but I’m getting ahead of myself.

When we first entered the venue (a huge concrete and metal “fish bowl” usually used for hockey and backetball), Chrissie Hynde with low key lighting and stage effects had just begun rocking. What an incredible surprise bonus --- to see one of the original female rockers before one of the original British Invasion bands. I was in pure heaven! Being the singer that I am was mouthing all the words to the songs she was singing – especially Ohio and Chain Gang (a personal favourite).

After a short break while smelling “nostalgic sweet smoke" wafting above the crowd and admiring all the "hunky" roadies on stage, the lights went down and Roger, Pete and the boys took stage and opened with “Can’t Explain”. (bonus, a kid is in front of me and when he stands, I can see perfectly over his head while sitting down).

Wow! Here I am at a Who concert! My mind was whirling back in time to those teenage parties listening to The Who while taking my first sips of various potent potables and first puffs of that “now nostalgic smelling smoke”. I was also drifting to memories of a 1970s Who concert and my “sweet sixteen” birthday party where we listened to the entire “Who By Numbers” album!

But, now almost 30 years later, as a mid-lifer, I was in an arena listening to the Who live once again along with thousands of other mid-lifers probably feeling exactly like I did. Sorry Pete, I don’t want to die before I get old – however I felt like I had died and gone to heaven – thank you Pete and Roger!

The concert had a good mix of old and new music and they did a masterful job at controlling the energy of the crowd – well except after they played Baba O’Reilly when we the crowd went so wild that Pete had to ask us to sit down so they could get on with the show. (My favourites were the show opener, Baba O’Reilly, My Generation … oh I can’t really name them all because there were so many !!!)

The chemistry between Pete, Roger and the band were great. Pete also talked about the chemistry he has had with the city of Toronto and the affection for her.

They played for just over two hours!!

After the show, we regrouped with Anne-Marie and Austin and then departed ways with Derek who had to shlepp to the Eastern part of the city. A and A-M drove me home and had a quick drink (of juice because it was a week night) at my place while we relived the concert and looked at pictures from Austin’s camera.

Today, I’m very tired because I went to bed at 1:30 and had a very difficult time sleeping last night. Actually, I was so keyed up I found it pretty difficult to sleep at all. And while I left some extra time in the morning to sleep in, my cats had other ideas and were purring in my ears at 6:00 !! Oh well …. It was worth it .... worth every expensive little penny.

I shall remember this for a long time.