On the tube and on tour, Who still rocks.

Byline: Scott Maben The Register-Guard

The music of the Who, forged from blue-collar indignation and youthful defiance, now plays on commercials hawking $50,000 SUVs and inaugurates each episode of network television's expanding "CSI" franchise.

But don't toss these graying musicians onto the retread pile just yet.

Surviving members Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are again on a world tour that's winning raves for sheer energy and faithfulness to their roots. A Rolling Stone critic pronounced a recent Madison Square Garden performance the best of the Who's New York City shows since 1979. And later this year, they'll record an album of new material.

Forty years after the first mod band stormed the UK, the group is enjoying a surge of cross-generational popularity that makes the songs seem as enduring - if more mainstream - as ever.

Townshend and Daltrey are among a pack of veteran rockers (David Bowie, Paul McCartney) still filling auditoriums across the globe.

If indeed the Who is hot again, it's perhaps by a measure of a few degrees. Like the staying power of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, the group has persevered despite long breaks and creative lapses - and the deaths of bassist John Entwistle in 2002 and drummer Keith Moon in 1978.

"They've never gone away, so it's hard to call it a comeback or a re-emergence," says Greg Sutherland, 38, a buyer at House of Records in Eugene.

Kids today aren't necessarily clamoring to discover the Who, Sutherland says, but older fans reared on the music are replacing their record collections and seizing loaded reissues, including a double CD of 1970's "Live at Leeds" and a deluxe, two-disc DVD of the 1979 documentary "The Kids Are Alright."

"Maybe part of the renewed interest in the Who are people who have always been interested in them," Sutherland says.

Mark Raney, 47, a disc jockey at the classic rock station KZEL, agrees that the Who has an indelible quality shared by a handful of older rock bands.

"Just about the time you start writing them off, you go to one of their concerts," Raney says.

"Maybe old means seasoned and experienced, and they know what they're doing. These guys still have it."

Some diehard fans may cringe whenever they hear "Happy Jack" play in the Hummer ad featuring an enterprising boy taking an offroad shortcut to win a boxcar derby race. But that's not the first time the Who sold a song.

Nissan used "Bargain" to sell cars and Claritin tapped "Overture" from "Tommy" - deals that make the band's satirical 1967 album "The Who Sell Out" seem prophetic. The Who's music also has appeared on soundtracks of such recent films as "Rushmore," "American Beauty" and "Shanghai Knights."

Townshend and Daltrey certainly aren't alone. Bowie did it with "Changes" (Fidelity), Van Morrison did it with "Moondance" (Infiniti) and the Rolling Stones allowed Sheraton Hotels to pitch rooms with "Let's Spend the Night Together." And Bob Seger's "Like a Rock" has become synonymous with Chevy trucks.

Although some critics gripe that such marketing is crass and subverts rock's anti-establishment message, the Who's recent success doesn't offend longtime fan Scott McLean, founder of Leisure King, an independent record label in Eugene.

"I think it's absolutely fantastic," says McLean, 36. "I think it's great that financially they get another go-around on these songs. I'm not going to go out and buy a Hummer, but that commercial would not have been anywhere near as good without that song on it."

It's so common today, it's hard to denounce the practice as sacrilege, says another local fan, Cherry Poppin' Daddies guitarist Jason Moss.

"It's a drag to hear your favorite song in a car commercial," says Moss, 35. "On the other hand, musicians have a right to earn money from the music they make, and in the current music industry, that has become one of the key ways musicians can make money."

It certainly doesn't detract from what the band, scheduled to perform Aug. 7 in Mountain View, Calif., and Aug. 9 in Los Angeles in the tour's only West Coast appearances, is accomplishing on stage, he says.

"I think music is artistically at a real low, and possibly the Who and the Rolling Stones are the best rock groups on the road."

CAPTION(S):

The Who of the '60s: (clockwise from left) Keith Moon, John Entwistle, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend.