Concert Review: Legendary Band The Who Defies Time

 

There are many time travel-themed films such as "Back to the Future," "Interstellar" and "The Terminator." There are also a bunch of acclaimed time travel-themed books such as "Slaughterhouse Five," "Kindred" and "A Wrinkle in Time." 

Traveling through time is clearly a universally popular notion. But I always thought it was a purely fictional enterprise. However, after seeing The Who on Saturday night, I'm not so sure.

The legendary rock band's lead singer, Roger Daltrey, 78, and lead guitarist and songwriter, Pete Townshend, 77, were in impossibly good form when they performed with a full orchestra at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif. I was flabbergasted by how youthful they looked and sounded. It literally felt as if they were visiting us from another time.

 

Roger is singing as powerfully and with as much nuance as he did 40 years ago. Maybe even more so. Pete is singing and playing with the energy and passion of a teenager, and still does those trademark windmills. And that alone is inconceivable. Both of these living legends have tremendous energy on stage. It borders on the supernatural.  

 

The most memorable scream in rock and roll history is of course Roger's joyously blood-curdling wail near the end of "Won't Get Fooled Again." I did not expect him to reach the same emotional, eardrum-shattering level as he did back in the day. But he did. It was bloody brilliant!

It was the same raw, gut-punching, emotional roar that I heard the first time I listened to the song from "Who's Next," which could very well be the greatest rock album of them all. I was ten years old when I first heard that record. It is now written into my DNA.

There are basically three untouchables in the history of rock and roll. Three bands who tower above the rest in terms of, well, greatness. There is no real need to name them, but of course they are The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. And The Who is the only one of the three that is currently active. 

Yes, original drummer Keith Moon and original bass player John Entwistle are both sadly no longer with us. But Roger and Pete keep the fire burning. 

Townshend's energy belies time and physics. I'd have been happy just to hear these guys sing and play. But what I did not expect was how powerfully and superbly they sang and played, and how much visible, palpable joy they felt as they performed.

With a superb orchestra behind them, the band opened with several songs from "Tommy," the iconic rock opera which of course was made into a wild and wildly acclaimed film of the same name directed by Ken Russell. 

Then the orchestra departed, and the band continued to rock with such favorites as "You Better You Bet," "The Seeker," "Won't Get Fooled Again" (as mentioned above) and "Behind Blue Eyes." 

When the orchestra returned, the band played a few songs from "Quadrophenia," the group's other rock opera and concept album that has been called the "anti-musical," but whose songs are genius. 

They ended the show with two of their epic best: "Love, Reign O'er Me" and "Baba O'Riley," which many refer to as "Teenage Wasteland." 

I guess we all get more sentimental as we grow older. We all begin to sense our own mortality, though I try not to dwell on that. I'm not ashamed to say that I had tears of joy in my eyes for a good portion of the show. 

Music has been a huge part of my life since I can remember. I have an absurdly clear memory of myself at age 5 flipping over plastic buckets and kitchen pans to use as a drum set as I played along with the "I Saw Her Standing There" by The Beatles. And of course I remember vividly when I bought my first guitar at age 14. 

Besides the love of my family and friends, there has been no greater joy in my life than music. And getting an opportunity to see these masters play at such a high level this late in their careers is touching, reassuring and amazing. 

Thank you Roger and Pete for all the music you have given given the world. And thanks, too, for the amazing work you have been doing for teen and young adult cancer patients for the last 30 years with the Teenage Cancer Trust in the UK and for the last 10 years in America with Teen Cancer America. 

The band gave $2 per ticket to Teen Cancer America on the recent tour. That’s worth over $400,000 to the charity and makes every fan feel like they are helping young people with cancer.  

The Who rocks, and cares! 

Outer Space & Inner Space: A Potentially Game-Changing New Cancer Test Has Just Arrived

When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft sent back the first high-resolution outer space views of Pluto in 2015, they were the most remarkably vivid close-ups of the "dwarf planet" that humans had ever seen. NASA scientists and then the rest of the world were stunned by the breathtaking, high-resolution photos.

Meanwhile, in inner space (the human body), cancer scientists, too, are seeing things they have never seen before and working in an equally vast and mysterious universe that they are just beginning to comprehend. 

On that note, I participated in an enlightening interview this week with Dr. Rick Baehner, Chief Medical Officer, Precision Oncology at Exact Sciences. It's a dynamic cancer screening and diagnostic testing (liquid biopsy) company that I've been following for several years. 

He put it all in the proper perspective with an insightful and appropriately cosmic take. 

"Working with liquid biopsy technology is like looking at the horizon and seeing Pluto and its moon imagery," said Baehner, who was eager to talk about the company's breakthrough test and what it means for people with cancer. 

This week, the company turned its relevance in the cancer arena up yet another notch. My conversation with Baehner was a bit like speaking with astronomer/scientist/author Carl Sagan and physician/biologist/author Siddhartha Mukherjee at the same time. 

The conversation made me consider both outer space and the human body, which can feel just as ominously vast and unfamiliar.

But thanks to companies like Exact Sciences and scientists like Baehner, that is changing. And people with cancer are the beneficiaries of this change.

Cancer cells in the body

Exact Sciences has just launched a personalized cancer test that provides doctors with vitally important information needed to make important decisions about therapy based on the specific patient's cancer. 

"As diagnostic medicine continues to move forward," said Baehner, "the importance of having genetic information about a specific tumor becomes even more essential and will ultimately benefit the person who is taking the test."

The OncoExTra therapy selection test was announced this week in the United States. 

OncoExTra is a next-generation sequencing (NGS), comprehensive DNA and RNA based genomic test that provides physicians and their patients with a complete molecular picture of the patient's cancer. 

The test provides reliable and actionable results personalized to each patient. Remember that word: Personalization. It is the future of cancer medicine, and ideally all medicine. 

"The OncoExTra test substantially enhances our ability to characterize and understand solid cancer tumors, giving out patients the best chance at treating their cancer successfully," said Stephen Gruber, MD, PhD, MPH, vice president  of the City of Hope National Medical Center and Director, Center for Precision Medicine at City of Hope in a press statement this week.

"With this test, I have a much better picture of my patient's cancer, allowing me to prescribe the most effective treatment for their specific tumor," Gruber said. 

Personalized Cancer Treatment

As you read this, the majority of eligible cancer patients do not receive comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) to help understand their disease and guide treatment. 

Personalized medicine, powered by CGP, helps oncologists understand the unique biology of each patient's tumor and prescribe treatments  that offer the best outcomes. 

In a press statement this week, Kevin Conroy, chairman and CEO of Exact Sciences, said the company continues to build its leadership in cancer diagnostics by offering innovative tests addressing clinical needs at every step of a patient's cancer care.

"We are glad to add OncoExTra to our growing portfolio of cancer solutions across the cancer-care-care continuum, and deliver new levels of tumor-specific information and insights to doctors and patients that guide vital treatment decisions to achieve the best outcomes," Conroy said.

The OncoExTra test uses NGS to assess the tumor's RNA and DNA, providing actionable information to inform treatment decisions and uncover variants possibly missed by only evaluating DNA.

NGS is a method used to determine a portion of the nucleotide sequence of an individual's genome. 

 This technique utilizes DNA sequencing technologies that are capable of processing multiple DNA sequences in parallel. 

The test works by profiling the entire exome and the transcriptome across 20,000 genes. 

The “exome” consists of all the genome's exons, which are the coding portions of genes. The "transcriptome" is simply the sum total of all the messenger RNA molecules expressed from the genes of an organism.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has updated its guidelines to recommend FNA-based fusion testing for patients with no actionable information provided by a standard  DNA, multigene panel test.

Medicare covers the OncoExTra test. And doctors can order the test for all advanced solid tumors.

Bottom line

Cancer scientists are now discovering remarkable, game-changing things related to cancer in the human body that they have never seen or identified before simply because they did not have the tools to look. 

This is truly the golden age of cancer screening and treatment. Only 2o years ago, we knew very little about how cancer really works in the body. 

But scientists have learned more about cancer in the last ten years than they did in the previous century.  

For more information, visit precisiononcology.exactsciencves.com