Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes - 1982 (2000)

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Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes - 1982 (2000)

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Product Description: A lot of critics panned this album when it came out in 1982, but it's very highly regarded by many fans. A good artist makes music that comes out of the heart and soul, with the true fans in mind, instead of writing ordinary pop fluff that might be very commercially successful and critically-acclaimed but not remembered or thought highly of in the long run. This was the first of Pete's solo albums which I got, after having queried the girls on the lists I'm on for female Who freaks about which of his solo albums would be best to start with. It really is an ideal album if you're just getting into his solo work (EG is also a great place to start). Personal introspective songs like "Stop Hurting People," "Stardom in Acton," "Somebody Saved Me," and "The Sea Refuses No River" weren't written to make some fast money or get rave reviews, but to share one's soul and heart, in all their naked, raw, painful, poignant glory, with people who truly care about the artist. It's saying "This is who, how, and why I am; take me or leave me." And expressing one's inner spiritual and emotional turmoil in song was no longer hip by 1982, so of course critics wouldn't like it.
Unlike EG, this would not have made a good Who album as well as a solo album. There's no wonder Pete got such a huge female following when he went solo, because the types of songs he wrote changed in scope. Female Who freaks are a minority because most women don't get into the type of loud angry rock they did, but Pete's solo work is just the sort of thing that the average woman would fall in love with, being so personal and sensitive. Too many other artists tank when they go solo, since they're still singing the type of songs they sang with their original band and can't break out of the mould to create their own new identity, with a unique identity and vision.

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Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes - 1982 (2000)

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Review: 'Chinese Eyes' is simply his best, as all Pete fans know, coming at a time when The Who was winding down with two lackluster albums ('Face Dances' and 'It's Hard'). The fact that this disc is out-of-print in the U.S. is shocking, especially to a Pete fan like me who regards this as my second-favorite album ever, from any artist (#1, btw, is The Sundays' 'Static and Silence'). Superior to both 'Empty Glass' (which tends to sound like a polished edition of a 'Scoop' release) or 'White City' (good, but with too much gloss on the production), 'Chinese Eyes' exudes so much emotion, so many personal insights, that it's impossible for me to listen to it and not be deeply affected. Tracks such as 'Uniforms' and 'Communication' may be wry commentaries, but the rest of them (e.g. 'People Stop Hurting People,' 'The Sea Refuses No River,' 'Slit Skirts') offer the listener an engrossing, overwhemling melancholy. My fave, 'Somebody Saved Me,' may be Townshend's greatest achievement, and those final chords on the lone accoustic guitar still give me chills. BTW, it's 'Stardom in Acton,' not 'Action,' for Acton is a London suburb. Was Pete punning? Only he knows.

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Pete Townshend - All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes - 1982 (2000)

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