The Who, Jobing.com Arena, 2/6/13

Melissa Fossum

Pete Townshend strapped on his red Strat.

In comparison to the 1996 tour, where Townshend mostly played acoustic guitar and let his brother Simon do most of the heavy lifting, this time he strapped on a red Stratocaster and did the lion's share of string bending. Simon Townshend, whose voice is a dead ringer of his brother's sweet young tenor, did the honors on "The Dirty Jobs." Probably a necessity in this show, where there's no break between songs, and there's no talking to the audience until all of Quadrophenia has been dispensed with. Later, we find out that this presentation was Roger's vision of Quadrophenia and his team put all the visuals together. If the '96 Quadrophenia tour was slavishly devoted to presenting the story, complete with filmed narrator talking between the songs, this tour was about slavishly presenting the original album, with not a tea kettle sound effect or a recorded crashing wave out of place.

The two overtures that bookended the album "Quadrophenia" and "The Rock" were used to visually show pre Mod history (WWII, rations, bombing raids, Elvis, teen affluence after the war) and post-1974 Who-story (the birth of punk, Thatcher, the death of Elvis and Lennon, Keith and John, 9-11, and Pussy Riot).

While introducing the band, we learned that the drummer was not Zak Starkey, who Townshend said was dealing with some "tendonitis shit," but Scott Davis who's been with them all of two shows and didn't miss a beat as it were. He and Pino Palladino were great substitutes for the original rhythm section, but both Entwhistle and Moon had their tributes. During the end of "5:15," Palladino left the stage as Davis played along with The Ox on film, doing one of his insanely fast bass solos. Faulty video projection robbed the first half of Moon's tribute, having him singing "Bell Boy" from the screen. Once the problem was corrected, the audience erupted at the singing side of the Moon and Daltrey could give a general's salute to his fallen comrade.

Never leaving the stage to come back and do planned encores, the band remained onstage and Daltrey strapped on an acoustic to deliver some old favorites or as Townshend put it, "Here we go, same old shit."

A priceless exchange between Townshend and Daltrey after "Baba O' Riley" ensued:

Townshend: "I don't know what it is about the ending of 'Baba O' Riley' but it seems to keep getting shorter and shorter. It used to go on for hours and hours."

Daltrey: "A lot of things used to go on for hours and hours."

Townshend: "Not at my house. It still goes on for hours and hours. I do it myself."

Presumably, not with "Pictures of Lily" nearby.

Alone onstage after the hard-to-top "Won't Get Fooled Again," the two men sang the new song, "Tea and Theatre," which Townshend explained was not about the two of them but two old lovers who find each other again after a night at the theater. Okay, so maybe it was about them. During "Who are You," the smell of pot and not brownies wafted up from the floor of the Jobing.com Arena despite being told at the beginning of the show "Violators caught smoking will be asked to leave."

After nearly two hours celebrating teenage rebellion, what better way two-finger salute could there be?

Read the setlist on the next page.