Concerned citizens of the world, listen up, if you can. Doorknob Pete Townshend, the legendary Who guitarist who must have found the time to become an otologist between stints as a Broadway producer and kiddie porn cyber vigilante, has finally spoken-out about the iPod craze. His diagnosis? Those headphones are going to leave teenagers' hearing a wasteland.

Townshend's concern is over the use of headphones, the in-studio use of which he blames for his own hearing loss. Presumably Townshend was able to rule-out decades of flailing away in front of a twenty foot tall stacks of Marshalls as a cause after rigorous study and clinical trials. Never one to shirk responsibility, Townshend messianically warned:

I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal components deaf. Hearing loss is a terrible thing because it cannot be repaired. If you use an iPod or anything like it, or your child uses one, you MAY [childish emphasis his] be OK... But my intuition tells me there is terrible trouble ahead.

Unfortunately, it's doubtful the terrible trouble will come soon enough to spare us all from having to hear about next year's Who reunion tour, announced today on Townshend's website.


Dr. Townshend, above, didn't before he did, and now we're all left to suffer the consequences.

Analogcabin @ 11:48 AM
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