VETERAN rockers The Who are talkin’ about a new generation — the dot-commers.
The legendary group, which disbanded in 1983, announced yesterday yet another reunion tour , but this time it’s to support their first foray onto the Internet — a live CD being released through custom CD Web site Musicmaker.com.
While the middle-aged band members have no new material, frontman Roger Daltrey reacted badly to the 20-city stint being labeled a nostalgia tour.
“It’s my life up there, it’s what I do,” he told The Post. “The f—-ing music’s great and we were the originators of it. It’s not nostalgia at all — it’s the music that’s important.”
He insisted the fans wanted to hear the classics such as “My Generation,” “Magic Bus,” “The Kids Are Alright,” “Pinball Wizard” and “I’m a Boy.”
“I believe if you announce you’re doing a new song there’s a certain amount of resistance from the audience,” he said. “You play a new song and half the audience will go to the bar or the toilet. They’re not as familiar with it so it breaks the flow of the night.”
Songwriter-guitarist Pete Townshend said the band had no plans to record another studio album, but he expected new material to “evolve” when he, Daltrey and bassist John Entwistle hit the road with the drummer and keyboardist from their 1996 American tour.
“It’s a hope, not a promise, that somehow, somewhere something happens and we can refine it and introduce it,” Townshend said. “If it comes from what we do together on the road I think it will be healthy and real.”
In their heyday The Who were famous for their on- and off-stage theatrics, often smashing up equipment and trashing hotel rooms. Their classic anthem of rebellion, 1965’s “My Generation,” contained the immortal lyric, “I hope I die before I get old.”
Now aged in their mid-50s, the three remaining members have mellowed into rock’s elder statesmen. But Daltrey says the songs are still blisteringly relevant.
“The courage and honesty of Townshend’s music speaks to every generation of adolescents coming through the same way it spoke to us when we were that age,” he said.
“And it doesn’t matter how old we are, how tired we are, what we look like, what we’re wearing, when we play that music it still retains the same energy and integrity and it still helps people through their lives.”
The new live disc, “The Blues to the Bush,” was recorded last year during a low-key reunion for charity at Chicago’s House of Blues and the Empire Theater in Shepherd’s Bush, London.
Twenty tracks will be released as a custom CD — with fans choosing the songs they want in the order they prefer — or as a download from the site.
“The idea was to find a new audience and reach people in a new way,” Townshend said. “As well as provide the money to fund another stage of touring. We found this album under our fingernails and it’s coming out.”
Townshend, who is almost totally deaf from decades spent standing next to blaring speakers, said he would return to playing electric guitar for the tour but would use less amplification.
“I don’t know quite why we needed to be so loud,” he said of the band’s earlier gigs.
The Who’s summer tour will kick off in Chicago on June 25 and comes to Jones Beach on July 9. Tickets go on sale April 15.