The Who - Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 9-29-1969

Having posted a BBC concert by the Who recently made me realize I haven't posted that much live music by them. So I'm going to post some more. This bootleg is a must-have if you're a Who fan.

In posting more live Who music, I want to fill in important gaps. 1968 is well covered with the official album "Live at the Fillmore East 1968" (which is excellent, by the way), and 1970 is well covered with the classic "Live at Leeds," plus "Live at Hull" and "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival." But there really isn't a live album from 1969, the year they did their "Tommy" concert album. 

I think if you want one 1969 Who concert, it should be this one. It was the first time they played "Tommy" in concert all the way through, and it's the only compete recording from 1969 (at least that's publicly available). The sound quality is also very good, since this is a soundboard. There were some audio issues, but I'm using a version improved by Prof. Stoned.

I also made some minor improvements. As far as the music goes, the only significant thing I did was an edit to the song "Eyesight to the Blind." There were a couple of vocals lines that sounded strangely muffled and distorted. So I patched in bits from the Who's Woodstock performance a month earlier to fix those. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in the title.

But I made more changes with all the banter between songs. Unfortunately, there's a noticeable hum through the entire recording. You can't really hear it during the actual songs, unless there are very quiet parts, so I didn't mess with the songs at all. But the hum was very noticeable and annoying to me during the banter. Happily though, I split the talking tracks into individual instruments using the UVR5 audio editing program, and I found that nearly all of the hum was on the drum track. Since there's no drumming for those tracks, I was able to wipe out the hum almost entirely. I also cut off a little dead air here and there, like guitar tuning, and an intro by an emcee in Dutch.

I must say that I'm a little bit sick of "Tommy." I think the Who have played it way too many times. It's nice to have this version when it was fresh, before they played it a zillion times. But also, note that there's 40 minutes of music before "Tommy" begins, and another 30 minutes after it ends. So you get basically an entire concert worth of music - an hour and ten minutes - and then 50 minutes of "Tommy" on top of that. 

I thought it was a bit weird that there was no banter and no clapping through all of the "Tommy" section. Even after big songs like "Pinball Wizard," there's seemingly no audience reaction. But I checked with other 1969 recordings like the Woodstock one, and it was exactly the same: the band played "Tommy" all the way through, and the audience held their applause until the end.

This album is a two hours and one minute long.

01 talk (Who)
02 Heaven and Hell (Who)
03 I Can't Explain (Who)
04 talk (Who)
05 Fortune Teller (Who)
06 Tattoo (Who)
07 talk (Who)
08 Young Man Blues (Who)
09 talk (Who)
10 A Quick One, While He's Away (Who)
11 talk (Who)
12 Substitute (Who)
13 Happy Jack (Who)
14 I'm a Boy (Who)
15 talk (Who)
16 Overture [Instrumental] (Who)
17 It's a Boy (Who)
18 1921 (Who)
19 Amazing Journey (Who)
20 Sparks [Instrumental] (Who)
21 Eyesight to the Blind [The Hawker] [Edit] (Who)
22 Christmas (Who)
23 The Acid Queen (Who)
24 Pinball Wizard (Who)
25 Do You Think It's Alright (Who)
26 Fiddle About (Who)
27 Tommy Can You Hear Me (Who)
28 There's a Doctor (Who)
29 Go to the Mirror (Who)
30 Smash the Mirror (Who)
31 Miracle Cure (Who)
32 Sally Simpson (Who)
33 I'm Free (Who)
34 Tommy's Holiday Camp (Who)
35 We're Not Gonna Take It - See Me, Feel Me (Who)
36 Summertime Blues (Who)
37 Shakin' All Over (Who)
38 talk (Who)
39 My Generation (Who)
40 See Me, Feel Me - Naked Eye - Pinball Wizard - Overture - Sparks (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/ksrDQ

I'm happy to say the cover photo comes from this exact concert. Or I should say "cover photos." I found two good photos from this concert, one of Roger Daltrey and the other of Pete Townshend. So I used Photoshop to combine them into one. But both are from this exact concert.