Word is that The Who will play the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIV next year. They’re obviously not the first rockers to do it: U2, the Stones, Bruce and others have done it before.

But, personally, it feels wrong to me, just like hearing Led Zeppelin on a Cadillac commercial or Bob Seger peddling pickup trucks. Now The Who are just the latest rockers to cash in.

And I guess that’s the way it works these days, when the height of musical integrity a rocker demonstrates is to refuse to lend their music and their likenesses to “Rock Band.”

Maybe I’m just too much of a purist.

Frankly, I don’t watch the halftime shows at the Super Bowl, parpticularly since they’ve become such a hyped-up separate event over the years. And this one seems particularly unappealing.

The Who – or rather Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend – are a shadow of what they once were. Daltrey has lost nearly all of the vocal range he once had and Townsend’s “windmill” guitar playing just seems silly at his advanced age. Sorry, that’s just how I see it.

But that’s what rock has evolved into, and you can’t blame The Who for cashing in the way everyone else has by selling their music to video games and TV commercials.

So, hats off to The Who. But I won’t be watching.

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