The Who \u2013 the original quartet, at least — always had a manic edge, a surplus of visceral aggression channeled and molded (sometimes only just) by a determined artistic ambition.\u00a0 Their best live performances have generally taken the form of barely controlled chaos.\u00a0 They\u2019re never an easy listen; they confront you.<\/p>\n
And so, when I heard that the sexagenarian duo that continues to perform as The Who would be performing at this year\u2019s Super Bowl, my fondest hope was that they would not embarrass themselves (mission accomplished, though not by much), and thereby undercut their vaunted reputation as a live band.\u00a0 In the context of this album\u2014a fresh reissue of a double-disc set originally released by Lilith Records in 1996\u2014that reputation remains alive and well.<\/p>\n
The 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival found The Who at the height of their powers.\u00a0 They had wowed the music world with the rock opera Tommy<\/i> the year before and were starting to figure out how some of the pieces of the failed follow-up project Lifehouse<\/i> might fit together into what would become one of their greatest studio recordings, 1971\u2019s Who\u2019s Next<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The setlist for this date includes a smattering of the group\u2019s high-charting mid-60s singles (\u201cI Can\u2019t Explain,\u201d \u201cSubstitute\u201d), but the centerpiece of this double album is an almost-complete performance of Tommy<\/i>.\u00a0 Now, I have to admit that personally, while there are four or five songs from Tommy<\/i> that rank among the group\u2019s best, I find the piece as a whole disjointed and hard to make it all the way through.\u00a0 That said, the band pulls off the musical changes beautifully, segueing from track to track almost seamlessly, and the climax, \u201cWe\u2019re Not Gonna Take It,\u201d is definitely a highlight.\u00a0 According to the liner notes, at the end of the Tommy<\/i> segment the house lights went up on the 600,000 assembled souls, and while the ovation captured here might not be as much of an earthquake as the opening chords of the following \u201cSummertime Blues,\u201d it\u2019s still damned impressive.<\/p>\n
The Lifehouse<\/i> tracks are interesting artifacts, especially the placement of the rather bloated \u201cNaked Eye\u201d as the next-to-last encore, devolving at the end into the familiar opening chords of \u201cMagic Bus.\u201d\u00a0 Which is just about all that\u2019s familiar about this version of \u201cBus,\u201d which morphs quickly into a steel cage match between Townshend\u2019s windmilling power chords, Daltrey\u2019s keening harmonica, and Moon\u2019s hair-on-fire drumming.\u00a0 The latter half of the track is two and a half minutes of pure unleashed aggression.<\/p>\n
From the proto-punk of \u201cMy Generation\u201d to the overarching artistic ambition of Tommy<\/i>, from the familiar strains of \u201cSubstitute\u201d to the obscure pleasures of \u201cI Don\u2019t Know Myself,\u201d Live At The Isle Of Wight<\/i> offers an absorbing overview of one of the great live acts of the ’60s at the top of their game.\u00a0 It\u2019s loud, it\u2019s messy, it\u2019s in your face\u2026 it\u2019s The Who.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5649],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-42075","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-who","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42075"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42075"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}