The Who did what?

The Who abruptly postpones midway through electric Toyota Center performance

After eight songs, rock legends The Who ended a rockin' Toyota Center performance.

Photo by J. Thomas Ford

UPDATE: The Who has announced a rescheduled show for Houston on April 30, 2020 at Toyota Center. All tickets for the original date will be honored.

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The second iconic British act in the last few months after The Rolling Stones rolled into Houston to solidify its legacy as one of the most influential rock acts of all time. Unfortunately, the group couldn't make it halfway through its set.

The Who celebrated its 55th year as a band this year and with the remaining living members — singer Roger Daltrey and guitarist Pete Townshend — hovering around three-quarters of a century with nothing much left to accomplish in their storied career.

Backed by the stellar session drummer Zak Starkey (Ringo Starr's son); bassist and University of North Texas grad Jon Button; and Pete's brother, Simon Townshend, on backup guitar and vocals, the bandmates acted as if they still had a chip firmly on their collective shoulders. A full-scale orchestra added the requisite dramatics.

Then, after eight songs, it was over.

The Who, formed in London in 1964, always played the younger, bratty underdog to the Big Two in the U.K.: The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. But it made just as much of an impact coming out of the gate with a decade of stone-cold classic albums.

Playing in front of a packed Toyota Center audience, they were set to lean into two of their most influential concept albums: the 1969 release Tommy and 1973's Quadrophenia.

The band came out in fine form, despite the elder Townshend apologizing "the night would start off slow," as they worked through a mini-suite from the groundbreaking album Tommy. "Overture" made it clear the orchestra behind them would make this a special night with extra layers of sound, adding heft to songs from an album that would eventually be turned into a feature film starring Elton John and a hit Broadway play.

And it did start off slow, with "Overture" laying into the orchestral arrangements of the classic Tommy. The band picked up steam through that album's "1921," "Amazing Journey," and "Sparks." Killer single "Pinball Wizard" got the middle-to-older aged fans off their feet, and Townshend sounded fantastic during the sprawling "We're Not Gonna Take It." After the mini-suite concluded, Townshend alluded to the band's history-making set 50 years earlier: "Even when we played at Woodstock, Keith Moon asked the crowd to keep it down because it was a f*cking opera."

The Daltrey-led vocal of "Who Are You," known by a younger generation as the start of the hit show CSI, had the energy in the arena amped up. Then goosebumps were sufficiently raised with "Eminence Front," with an amazing display of guitar wizardry that recalled Townshend as the most inventive guitarist of his generation. It was the start of a fantastic, all-around performance.

A quick break and then Townshend came to the mic to tell the audience the band could not go on.

"We'll come back as soon as we can," Townshend said. "There's a bit of an issue where we do one day on, one day off. ... Roger's vocal surgeon insists he has a day off. So when we can come back, I don't know, but I swear to you, when we come back, we will honor your tickets."

A sense of shock quickly spread through the arena as fans spilled out onto the streets.

The group's killer start added to the unfortunate circumstances of the cancellation. An elder crowd was there to see their heroes, and the room was starting to get into night when the rug was pulled from under them.

Many fans had already scored their mod logo concert T-shirts, and one fan exiting Toyota Center reacted, "I'm disappointed."

The cancellation follows other shows in which Daltrey threatened to shut down the production due to being extremely allergic to marijuana smoke. CultureMap could not confirm this was the reason for the show ending prematurely. A representative from the Toyota Center offers: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, The Who concert tonight has been postponed to a later date. More info will be available soon.‬"

Whatever the reason, everyone in attendance hoped for Daltrey's speedy recovery and The Who's quick return to finish an amazing start of a career-spanning set.

Setlist
With Orchestra
"Overture"
"1921"
"Amazing Journey"
"Sparks"
"Pinball Wizard"
"We're Not Gonna Take It"
"Who Are You"
"Eminence Front"
"Imagine a Man"
"Hero Ground Zero"

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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