On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool, cool rain
I can’t sleep, and I lay, and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Woo, oh God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain

Love, reign o’er me
Reign o’er me, o’er me, o’er me, woah
Love, reign o’er me, o’er me

—-Pete Townshend, Love, Reign o’er Me, from Quadrophenia

This evening, after riding my spin bike for an hour or so – using my BitGym app to ride up the mountains and glaciers of Argentina – I rested a bit and watched the 1979 movie Quadrophenia. I wasn’t overly familiar with the movie – or most of the music behind it. I was just out of school in 1979, isolated out in the Kansas plains and not very hooked into pop culture of the time. I had seen bits of the movie – but not the whole thing until today.

I was interested because I had watched a YouTube video on modern musical films that considered Quadrophenia to be superior to the much more well-known Tommy. And having watched the movie I can see where the reviewer is coming from. Tommy is more entertaining, more fun – but Quadrophenia is deeper, both as a window into a certain time and place (and the Mods and Rockers subcultures) as well as a window into the life of a damaged mind.

So it was good – I actually may go back and watch most of it again. One really cool thing I didn’t know is that Sting is in the film – using his extreme charisma as the character Ace Face – the king of the Mods.