The Who - The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA, 12-4-1973

A lot of live music from the Who has been officially released. But an issue I have is that they tended to do the same songs over and over, especially songs from "Tommy." A really great album they did was "Quadrophenia" in 1973. But usually they only did songs from the album in the 1973 tour, other than a few of the best known songs from it, like "Love Reign O'er Me." And no full concert from that 1973 has ever been officially released, despite the release of a super deluxe edition of the "Quadrophenia" album. So here's the live album they should put out.

The Who's 1973 had many musical problems. Most of them related to the use of prerecorded tapes in order to capture the full complexity of the music from the "Quadrophenia" album. But playing along to prerecorded tapes hadn't been done much before, and they kept having technical problems. But luckily, the second to last show of the tour, in Philadelphia, is considered of the best shows of the tour, if not the best. And that one happened to be professionally recorded for a radio station broadcast. The last night of the tour, in Landover, Maryland, was also recorded for the same reason, but that performance isn't considered as good, and it had technical issues. Also, the Philadelphia concert has an extra encore of "Naked Eye" that the Landover show doesn't have.

At first, only parts of both shows were broadcast, combined into one highlights show for the "King Biscuit Flower Hour." But eventually, bootlegs of all of both shows appeared. However, the Philadelphia one is missing the key song "Love Reign O'er Me." So I've used the Landover version to fill in that gap.

There also were some mixing issues with the Philadelphia recording. Specifically, some of the vocals weren't prominent enough. This was especially the case when John Entwistle or Pete Townshend were singing. It seems their microphones weren't set to the same volume as the band's usual lead singer, Roger Daltrey. So for a few songs, I used the X-Minus audio editing program to boost some of the vocals (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names). This recording is a soundboard, which is great, but one could hear so little of the audience that the reaction after each song seemed muted. So I boosted the applause after each song. I also think there's some missing bits between a few of the songs, especially towards the end. One could tell for instance when loud applause was suddenly cut to near total silence. I made some more edits to make those transitions sound natural.

I think "Quadrophenia" was one of the band's best albums, and this live version is excellent. If you're a Who fan, you should get this.

This album is an hour and 51 minutes long.

01 I Can't Explain (Who)
02 Summertime Blues (Who)
03 talk (Who)
04 My Wife [Edit] (Who)
05 My Generation (Who)
06 talk (Who)
07 I Am the Sea (Who)
08 The Real Me (Who)
09 The Punk and the Godfather [Edit] (Who)
10 talk (Who)
11 I'm One (Who)
12 talk (Who)
13 5;15 (Who)
14 talk (Who)
15 Sea and Sand [Edit] (Who)
16 talk (Who)
17 Drowned (Who)
18 Bell Boy [Edit] (Who)
19 talk (Who)
20 Doctor Jimmy [Edit] (Who)
21 Love Reign O'er Me (Who)
22 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
23 Pinball Wizard (Who)
24 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
25 Naked Eye (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mgHR2

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6rPMfmWn

The cover photo was taken in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 27, 1973.