Today’s Vinyl: Pete Townshend (picture disc!)

Pete Townshend’s All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes almost single-handedly got me through the latter years of high school. Why a record by an aging rock star largely concerned with the tribulations of aging rock stars would have enormous emotional resonance for a geeky high-school student is still beyond me to this day. Might have just been that the minor-key sadness of Slit Skirts combined with a 4-pack of California Coolers turned out to be a potent antidote to the solipsistic lamentations of an awkward teenager who couldn’t get laid to save his life. All I know is when that bastard Paul Dees broke my vinyl LP, we got into some kind of stupid, half-ass fistfight and didn’t speak for days. At least I still have this gem.

I’m not sure I’ve ever played this; the B-side was re-released at least a few times so there was no need to bust this out to hear it, and the disc was almost impossible to get out of the sleeve this morning. All in all, Cowboys stands as a pretty strange record, full of artifice, philosophy and middle-age existentialism, an exquisitely-crafted way station between the “Fuck you, I can do my own thing” brashness of Empty Glass and the heavy politics and heavier sound of White City. As to the current emotional resonance of Slit Skirts after a couple of my own failed marriages, well, ahem…no comment.