The Who : Classic or Dud

Given how different it sounds from the Daltrey-sung version, I don’t think it was recorded at the Face Dances sessions. And the production styles are almost the opposite of one another (the flumpfiness of Face Dances vs. Chris Thomas’s sharp, vibrant sound on Cowboys/the b-side).

First show in Cincinnati last night since 1979:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELtzqT53DBk

They last played this 40 years ago, when the oldest member of the Who was 38:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9_GrVqL7fc

I do enjoy them as late as Quadrophenia the original lp and did enjoy the film .
NOt sure what I've really heard of them after that point. THink I never got a copy of By Numbers.
Love them mid 60s to early 70s. Love the Pop Art take on mod and so on. & the psychedelic stuff.

Semi wish they'd quit before they got old.

Do have a special place in my heart for those 8 years though.
& the MC5 seem to be close to them plus another guitar plus more overt jazz influence. Seemed that Townshend was working with a lot of influence from jazz after inheriting a record collection from an upstairs neighbour who was being deported in the mid 60s.
Wonder waht would have happened if Eddie Phillips had joined on 2nd guitar.
& the pre Who or at least Pre High Numbers band had been stretching numbers out live in like 64 which I'd love to hear more of.
& see more of things like the Batik button down Pete was wearing in presumably 64 photos of which were circulating a few years ago. JUdging by their hair must have been pretty early. & I think they had settled on the name The Who prior to being renamed the High Numbers for their first single.

Incredibly, even Zak Starkey is 57.

Heard the "Live at Leeds" version of "Magic Bus" on the radio yesterday and realized in the end that may be all I really need from the Who, that live record, but I do put on "Quadrophenia" now and then. And I rarely turn off the radio when something from "Who's Next" comes on.

For UK residents

On Sky Arts tonight:

20.00 Classic Albums: The Who Sell Out (seen it)
21:00 Live At Kilburn 1977 (can't remember if this or Live At Charlton is supposed to be not very good)
22:25 Classic Quadrophenia (Townshend with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra et al. No interest in this I'm afraid!)

Seemed that Townshend was working with a lot of influence from jazz after inheriting a record collection from an upstairs neighbour who was being deported in the mid 60s.

That was actually Townshend's art school roommate Tom Wright, who passed away in July. He later went on to manage the Grande Ballroom in Detroit. Wright was a US expat, and was deported when busted for pot possession. According to Townshend's art school friend Richard Barnes, the record collection included “…all of Jimmy Reed’s albums, all of Chuck Berry’s, all of James Brown’s, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Snooks Eaglin, Mose Allison, all of Jimmy Smith’s, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, Slim Harpo, Buddy Guy, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Joe Turner, Nina Simone, Booker T., Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, the Isley Brothers, Fats Domino, the Coasters, Ray Charles, Jimmy McGriff, Brother Jack McDuff, John Patton, Bobby Bland, the Drifters, the Miracles, the Shirelles, the Impressions and many jazz albums including Charlie Parker, Mingus, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Giuffre, Dave Brubeck, plus albums by Jonathan Winters, Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman and particularly Lord Buckley. There were also about thirty classical albums.”

That was in 1962-63, I believe. My understanding is that very few people in the UK, outside of a handful of hipster collectors, had a collection of that size and scope at the time.

Townshend was also a Sun Ra fanatic, citing The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Volume 1 as his favorite, and a big influence on the My Generation album ("You can't hear it in the music, but it's there somewhere.")

21:00 Live At Kilburn 1977 (can't remember if this or Live At Charlton is supposed to be not very good)

Ha, they're both considered -- mainly by the Who themselves -- a little sub-par, but the Who's "sub-par" is most other bands' "career highlight."

Kilburn was set up so there'd be some post-'75 footage for The Kids Are Alright. But everyone in the band hated the gig, so it was shelved. In mid-'78 they made another attempt, filming just the two songs ("Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again") that would be used in the film.

But I and many other Who fans feel that Kilburn is a far superior performance to the later show. Moon especially is in exponentially better shape on this show than on the '78 songs, and it has the only live performance of "Who Are You" (in a slightly embryonic state) with Moon.

Good, I was definitely going to watch it anyway!

Townshend was in a foul mood which seemed to affect the rest of the band - apart from Moon who was doing his best to jolly things along.

The Isle of Wight 1970 show is worth finding, but mostly if you watch it. It's not a candidate for their greatest show like Leeds or the Fillmore in 1968, but it's a great show nonetheless and aside from the abbreviated sets at Monterey Pop and Woodstock the only show from that era that was properly filmed for almost all of it.

Newly-discovered footage of the December 3, 1979 Cincinnati show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Nv-MUVgTU

The Who were unaware of the tragedy until after the show. Five days later, their Chicago show was broadcast via closed-circuit to local theaters, and parts of it were released. The difference between Townshend's demeanor here and in Chicago is stark (he said in 2019 that he remembered it being a particularly good show). Here he's focused, enjoying himself, energized; on the Chicago show, he's hammered, coked to the gills, distracted, and vacillates wildly between wanting to soldier through the show and seemingly wondering what the fuck the point of it all is, given the tragic events days earlier. As he said years later, the Who should've cancelled the rest of their tour and broken up immediately after Cincinnati.

Man, that's a band even Arthur Carlson could love right there

that baba o'riley vid is stellar!

kinda deserves an xpost to a who thread

― corrs unplugged, Monday, July 31, 2023 3:37 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hit the "marimba repeat" switch on a Lowrey Berkshire Deluxe TBO-1, and you get this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgPtksNqbCk

^^^This video kinda blew my mind, I guess the oral legend I was told/read was the above part was a bit more edited/tape-loop/spliced etc.

That said, does anyone know if Nico's "Frozen Warnings" (song) uses the above technique or something similar?

Cool! But the little image of Don Knotts spooked me a bit.

I don't hear any electric organ on "Frozen Warnings". It sounds like Cale's violas overdubbed on Nico's harmonium, maybe with some kind of gate giving the tremolo effect. Some of the viola is also being played backwards, apparently with the same effect.

Sounds like some "repeater"/stuttering effect (like in the Baba vid) processor being applied to Nico's Harmonium, to my ears at least.

Apparently the Who's organization is working on a Who Are You Super Deluxe set. (That and A Quick One are the only two remaining Keith Moon-era albums without a super deluxe box set.)

It's usually cited as the least of the Who's Keith Moon-era albums, and I would have to agree even though I actually enjoy it. I think it's a fine album, but I rarely listen to it. I'm guessing there's at least one enjoyable live recording in the vaults, and the demos might be fine, but I can't imagine any great, lost outtakes beyond what was already included on the expanded CD reissue from the '90s.

(That and A Quick One are the only two remaining Keith Moon-era albums without a super deluxe box set.)

Ah forgot that one! Nope.

Should feature 275 alternate takes of "Success Story"

I'm enough of a fan that that is maybe unfair, but I've never owned it and never had any interest in owning it (Who Are You?), that is).

There's a Hoffman thread that gets into track speculation: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-who-who-are-you-super-deluxe-edition-speculation-and-wishlist.1182711/

Haven’t listened to that album in decades but just looking at original track listing makes me want to revisit.

The 1996 remix of the song “Who are You” always sounded wrong to me, as the power chords are kinda buried compared to the original LP.

Daltrey's memoir is about as gritty and pugilistic as I expected it to be.

Yeah

"Jimmy the dip and Johnny the squirrel came backstage at the Capri Club in Stepney one night and they brought Electric George with him who had a big stick on the end of a chain, he was mouthing off about some mandrax that Moony stole from him last week in Ladbroke Grove, but that was still well out of order and I told him so, but Pete was all 'Don't hit him'."

^^Best "Wang Dang Doodle" verse.

To celebrate his 60th anniversary at Abbey Road, the studio interviewed Ken Scott, at one point asking him what was the most outrageous session he worked on:

“…there was the time Keith Moon guested on a track on the Truth album and upon leaving the car park at around 11:00pm almost ran over a little old lady walking her dog. Most people would have wound down their window and apologised, not he. He swiftly turned on the PA system built into his Rolls Royce and proceeded to curse her out with the most foul language at a VERY loud volume. EMI received more than a few complaints about that the next day.”

He was more successful at running over chauffeurs.

.

holy cow the "my wife" on here. pete is nuts. 2nd song. about 3:10 in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G1FqWPcO-k

nice and crunchy in 1975. they were trying to save us from punk rock.

for some reason youtube started recommending me clips of the who live where all you hear is entwhistle's bass

it is florid! i don't really like the who after "sell out" (blame the singer) but you have to admit JE had super-nimble fingers

he really did. he was one of a kind. i think. maybe there were others. he played that thing like a flamenco guitar sometimes.

In the last month, I’ve bought both a Hiwatt amp and a 20” cymbal.

The Houston show from that tour was officially released on DVD as Live in Texas 75 and it's pretty great. Cheap too - you can buy a new copy for $10 from Amazon. I feel like it's the kind of thing that would've been a bigger deal 30 or 40 years ago but it kind of got lost in the shuffle when you had a million concert DVD's flooding the market in the '00s. (I didn't even know about it until several years ago.)

^^Terrific DVD, taken from the camera feed for the jumbotrons at the first concert held at the Summit (now Lakewood Church).

Moonie had some fun afterwards:
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/keith-moon-houston-party/

The article is pretty thin about what actually happened, but I remember back when Entwistle died, our local Classic Rock station took listener calls all night, and a woman who was there called in with a version of events. She said the label had a big afterparty and -- in honor of "Squeeze Box" -- they hired several strippers as entertainment, dressing them in accordions (and nothing else!) and staging them on a dais in the middle of a hotel ballroom. The group & their entourage show up, Keith is like, "Right on!" and hops up on the dais with the girls and begins stripping himself.

Meanwhile, the county sheriff's department is also on the hotel grounds, hoping for an easy drug raid and headlines aplenty. They bust in moments after Moon joined the girls on the dais, and...they just stopped, freezing at the sight they never in a million years could have predicted that is now in front of them.

Supposedly there was some palm greasing once everyone came to their senses, and no arrests made or charges brought up.