Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-18-1967, Evening Show

This is the fifth and last album I'm posting from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I've mentioned previously, the festival itself was divided into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This is the longest album from the festival, and probably the most important in musical history, especially due to the set by Jimi Hendrix.

With most of the previous parts from this festival, I've made reference to a Wikipedia page listing all the songs known to have been performed at the festival. Let me do that again, as I mention the missing portions:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

The Blues Project started the evening show. The two songs here are the only ones listed at the Wikipedia page, but it's known they performed more. Unfortunately, the band was in the process of breaking up when this concert happened. A key member, Al Kooper, left a couple of months prior to this. (He had his own solo set at the festival.) The band collapsed shortly thereafter, though there were later reunions.

The second set was by Big Brother and the Holding Company, starring their lead singer Janis Joplin. As I mentioned previously, they were the only act to perform twice at the festival. That's because they went over very well the first time, the day before, but the band's manager didn't allow them to be filmed at that time. (The cameras were running but pointed at the ground, which at least allowed the audio to be recorded.) By the next day, the band members were convinced that getting included in the documentary about the festival would give their career a big boost. So they played a short set of just 15 minutes, compared to 23 minutes the day before, in order to get enough film footage. It turned out to be a very smart career move indeed. When the "Monterey Pop" movie documentary came out in 1968, Joplin's performance in it helped make her a big star.

The next set is quite a mystery - even the band's name: "the Group with No Name." This band was led by Cyrus Faryar, a singer-songwriter who had previously been in the Modern Jazz Quartet. But no songs from this set have been made public, and none or the names of any of the songs performed are known, nor is the number of songs. It seems they were not well received. A Newsweek review of the festival said they "were terrible and may well not last long enough to get a name." That turned out to be accurate, because the band broke up before they released any music. 

After that came Buffalo Springfield. I'm especially excited about this, because up until 2024, only five of the songs they performed were publicly available. But that year, there was a "record store day" release of their entire set here. That release included three songs that were previously unreleased, and even unbootlegged: "Hung Upside Down," "Nobody's Fool," and "Pretty Girl Why."

Here's a review about the Buffalo Springfield set in Rolling Stone Magazine in 2024: 

First-Ever Buffalo Springfield Live Album Released on Record Store Day 

This performance is unusual in that key member Neil Young quit the band about a week before the festival, only to rejoin shortly afterwards. (He quit and rejoined multiple times.) Young was temporarily replaced by two people: lead guitarist Doug Hastings and rhythm guitarist and vocalist David Crosby. Crosby's involvement was controversial, because he was still a member of the Byrds at the time, and in fact he performed in their set at the festival as well. 

Here's a quote about the controversy by Roger McGuinn, the leader of the Byrds: "I didn't know David was going to sit in with Buffalo Springfield, and that wasn't really a big deal. What was happening was that we were not happy with each other, like a marriage breaking up. He was really upset because we didn’t do his song 'Triad.' That was the big bone. He wanted to be the lead singer of the Byrds, you know, the head Byrd. That wasn't happening. To his satisfaction, we were sharing vocals equally. At Monterey I was trying to be a trooper, like Bobby Darin taught me, and try and soldier on and do it."

I don't know how much Crosby's sitting in with Buffalo Springfield impacted his role with the Byrds, if at all. But he was kicked out of the band a few months later. And his involvement with Buffalo Springfield was key to his future music career, because he would later be a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with two members of Buffalo Springfield: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

The next act up was the Who. Jimi Hendrix moved to Britain in late 1966 and soon found fame there. One he was living there, he and the Who had seen each other perform. They were both impressed with and intimidated by each other. Neither wanted to be upstaged by the other at this festival, especially since both had made destroying their instruments part of their acts. They decided to toss a coin. The  Who won the right to play first.

Adding to the competition between the two acts, backstage before their sets, Hendrix played his guitar while staring at the Who's lead guitarist Pete Townshend, trying to impress him with his skills. Townshend said later, "It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me. Playing at me like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit.'" 

Here's how the Wikipedia entry about the festival describes the finale to the Who's set: "At the end of their frenetic performance of 'My Generation,' the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and slammed the neck against the amps and speakers. Smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage." 

The Who's set was relatively short, only 25 minutes, when they were allowed to play up to 40 minutes. So their set here is complete. But their performance was very impactful, especially due to the destruction of their instruments. They were a British band, and hadn't had any hits in the U.S. yet, except for "Happy Jack" in 1966, though there already was a lot of buzz about them. Their performance at the festival would raise their profile in the U.S., helping them to have two more U.S. hits later that year, "Pictures of Lily" and "I Can See for Miles."  

Eric Burdon of the Animals later commented about the Who's performance: "The American audience went: 'What the hell is this?!' The climax of the show was just like a terrorist attack, with the bombs and the smoke. It was just shocking!"

After the Who came the Grateful Dead. The band would go on to play concerts for decades, becoming one of the most popular touring bands in the U.S. But keep in mind this was very early in their career, with their debut album ("The Grateful Dead")coming out only three months prior to this festival. In a Newsweek review of the festival, music critic Michael Lydon commented: "The Grateful Dead were beautiful. They did at top volume what Shankar had done softly. They played pure music, some of the best music of the concert. I have never heard anything in music that could be said to be qualitatively better than the performance of the Dead, Sunday night.

The next act was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was possibly the most musically historic set of the entire festival. As an aside, Hendrix was not well known in the U.S. at the time of the festival. The main reason why he appeared at the festival, and especially at a pivotal spot near the end of the final night, was because Paul McCartney of the Beatles was a member of the board of governors for the festival, and he absolutely insisted that Hendrix had to perform there. The Wikipedia entry on the festival has a good summary of what happened during Hendrix's set, so I'll quote that here:

"Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced [Hendrix]. His use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, aware of the Who's planned explosive finale, he had asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he'd placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of 'Wild Thing,' which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike." 

Actor Dennis Hopper had this to say: "Hendrix was certainly a great guitar player. He became part of the guitar, it was an extension of his, ah, his feelings and his sex and everything. He was unmatched in that."

And music critic Robert Christgau wrote this in The Village Voice decades later: "Music was a given for a Hendrix stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour de force. It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire, but the showboating does distract from the history made that night - the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying."

The final act of the evening, and thus the entire festival, was the Mamas and the Papas. They had had many big hits of their own by this time. But the band's main songwriter John Phillips had recently wrote a single meant to promote the festival, "San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair]." Rather than had his own band play it, he gave the song to Scott McKenzie, who was having a huge hit with it right when the festival was happening (as I detailed in the write-up in the first part of this festival). McKenzie wasn't just a random singer though. He and Phillips were friends since childhood, and played in different bands together. When Phillips created the Mamas and the Papas, he invited McKenzie to join, but McKenzie turned down the offer, wanting to try a solo career instead. In any case, towards the end of this set, McKenzie joined the band and sang his hit song with the Mamas and the Papas backing him.

Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar had this to say: "The group who really made me feel good, I can't tell you how nice, was the Mamas and the Papas. There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - and they looked so good together." (As an aside, he enjoyed many of the other acts in the festival, but hated the destruction of instruments by the Who and Hendrix.)

Now, this is going to be an extra long write-up, because before I finish with this festival, I want to write a little bit about how it came to be in the first place. I'm putting that explanation here because it turns out the main instigators of the festival were actually the members of the Mamas and the Papas, so I think it's fitting to put this explanation after talking about their set. The festival came together rather quickly, in just a few months, but during that time the band members worked tirelessly on it, basically putting the band on hold for a while to do so.

The band put on a pretty good performance despite being too busy organizing the festival to rehearse much beforehand. But in retrospect, the fact the band spent so much time organizing the festival was probably a sign that they had grown tired of being in a band together. Phillips remembered as the apex of the band's career, saying, "There would never be anything quite like it again." The band put out a new album in October 1967. But after that, they decided to take long vacations to "get the muse going again," according to Phillips. But instead, the band fought during their vacation time, resulting in an announcement that they had broken up. They did manage to reunite for another album in 1968, only to break up again.

The festival was originally conceived as a money-making event. But the people involved didn't have the money to pay for star acts. So the organizers changed the idea to a benefit concert (although first class transportation was paid for all the acts). The profits from sales of albums drawn from the festival still help fund charities decades later, especially due to steady profits from the hit "Monterey Pop" movie documentary. Ravi Shankar was the only act to be paid, because he signed a contract early on, before it was changed to a benefit concert.

The festival had a very unusual board of governors to help organize it: John Phillips, Donovan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Roger McGuinn, Johnny Rivers, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, Lou Adler, Terry Melcher, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Alan Pariser. All the next except the last four were famous musicians at the time. The last four were successful music producers or managers. Some, like Phillips and Simon, were very involved, while others like Smokey Robinson basically just gave their name to the effort.

By the way, one of the last things I want to mention about this festival is all the bands that didn't play. Here are some names, plus the reasons why they didn't participate in paranetheses: the Beach Boys (internal squabbles), Donovan (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to a drug charge), the Kinks (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to being banned due to a union dispute), the Lovin' Spoonful (fighting a drug charge, plus internal squabbles), and Dionne Warwick (cancelled right before the festival because she had a schedule conflict). Kaleidoscope (the U.S. band, not the British one) did play at the festival, but only outside, for the crowd who didn't have tickets to get inside.

There were still more acts that were asked but declined. Producer Lou Adler later said, "There weren't a lot of tours [at the time]. We're still talking 1967. Not a lot of acts [were] working all the time. The San Francisco acts [were] playing around San Francisco. The big acts couldn't get visas to get in. The Motown acts were working, the blues acts were working, but the acts that we went after, they had time even though we had a short window [to get them]. ... Everyone jumped on very quickly. We tried for the Impressions. We got some no's, from some of the Motown acts, and Chuck Berry passed."

In my recent write-up about the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, I mentioned that legendary 1950s star Chuck Berry was notoriously cheap. This is another good example of that. John Phillips tried to invite Berry. "I told him on the phone, 'Chuck, it's for charity,' and he said to me, 'Chuck Berry has only one charity and that's Chuck Berry. $2,000.' We couldn't make an exception." 

Anyway, that's the festival. I hope you enjoy. Personally, if I could get in a time machine and see just one rock festival, I think it would be this one, even over Woodstock in 1969. Actually, the people who created the Woodstock festival came up with the idea immediately after watching the "Monterey Pop" documentary movie in 1968. Like many others, they wanted to repeat the success of Monterey, but make a lot of money from it instead of doing it as a benefit concert.

Here's an interesting quote from Chris Hillman of the Byrds, contrasting the two festivals. "I didn't do Woodstock, and I remember Gram Parsons and I were sharing a house in the San Fernando Valley, and Woodstock was on the news. The situation there. We were laughing, and I said, 'That's no Monterey.' And it wasn't! There was a sense of commaraderie at Monterey." 

This album is three hours and 35 minutes long. 

01 talk (Tommy Smothers)
02 talk (Paul Simon)
03 The Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
04 talk (Blues Project)
05 Wake Me, Shake Me (Blues Project)
06 talk (Tommy Smothers)
07 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
08 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
09 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 talk (Peter Tork)
11 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
13 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
15 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
16 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Pretty Girl Why (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
23 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
24 talk (Eric Burdon)
25 Substitute (Who)
26 talk (Who)
27 Summertime Blues (Who)
28 talk (Who)
29 Pictures of Lily (Who)
30 talk (Who)
31 A Quick One while He's Away (Who)
32 talk (Who)
33 Happy Jack (Who)
34 talk (Who)
35 My Generation (Who)
36 talk (Bill Graham)
37 talk (Bill Graham)
38 Viola Lee Blues (Grateful Dead)
39 talk by emcee (Grateful Dead)
40 talk (Grateful Dead)
41 Cold Rain and Snow (Grateful Dead)
42 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
43 Alligator (Grateful Dead)
44 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] (Grateful Dead)
45 talk (Bill Graham)
46 talk (emcee)
47 talk (Brian Jones)
48 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
49 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
50 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
51 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Jimi Hendrix)
53 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
54 Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)
55 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
56 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
57 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
58 Can You See Me (Jimi Hendrix)
59 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
60 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
61 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
62 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
63 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
64 Wild Thing (Jimi Hendrix)
65 talk (Paul Simon)
66 Straight Shooter (Mamas & the Papas)
67 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
68 Got a Feelin' (Mamas & the Papas)
69 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
70 California Dreamin' (Mamas & the Papas)
71 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
72 Spanish Harlem (Mamas & the Papas)
73 Somebody Groovy (Mamas & the Papas)
74 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
75 I Call Your Name (Mamas & the Papas)
76 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
77 Monday, Monday (Mamas & the Papas)
78 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
79 San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair] (Mamas & the Papas & Scott McKenzie)
80 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
81 Dancing in the Street (Mamas & the Papas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8vU9t776

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3WanaF2nlZaXyl8/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: David Crosby (with hat), Richie Furray (with glasses) and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (smashing his guitar) of the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, and Jimi Hendrix.

The Who - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: Electric Proms, Roundhouse, London, Britain, 10-29-2006

About a week ago, I posted a BBC album by the Who that I'd previously missed. It turns out I actually missed two. So there's been a lot of renumbering. There's one after this that I had originally called "BBC Sessions, Volume 6," but now it's "Volume 8," due to two added albums that come before it. 

That newly named "Volume 8" took place in 2007. This one took place in 2006. That's pretty close in time. However, I think both are worth listening to if you're a Who fan, because the set lists are quite different. In 2006, the Who released their first new studio album since 1982, called "Endlesswire." In my opinion, it's the weakest of all the Who's studio albums. (I even like their 2019 album much better.) 

That said, if you like that album, you're in luck with this concert, because it is heavily featured. Eight of the songs performed are from that album. By contrast, the 2007 album (now "Volume 8") is a concert from the massive annual Glastonbury Festival. The band focused on their biggest hits and only played two songs from Endlesswire. The new songs go by pretty quickly here, however. Five of them are less than two minutes long.

This is unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent.

By the way, here's the link to what is now "Volume 8," if you want to get the renumbered version:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-who-bbc-sessions-volume-6-in.html

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Who)
02 I Can't Explain (Who)
03 The Seeker (Who)
04 Who Are You (Who)
05 talk (Who)
06 Fragments (Who)
07 Sound Round (Who)
08 Pick Up the Peace (Who)
09 Endless Wire (Who)
10 We've Got a Hit (Who)
11 They Made My Dream Come True (Who)
12 Mirror Door (Who)
13 Baba O'Riley (Who)
14 My Generation (Who)
15 talk (Who)
16 Mike Post Theme (Who)
17 Pinball Wizard (Who)
18 Amazing Journey (Who)
19 Sparks (Who)
20 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
21 Tea and Theatre (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/rMs4An1R

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/gh6HIqtLBxG4TQd/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

The Who - BBC Sessions, Volume 5: Charlton Athletic Football Ground, London, Britain, 5-18-1974

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I recently found a couple of BBC albums that are parts of album series that I thought were already finished. This is another one of those. I've already posted a "BBC Sessions, Volume 5" for the Who, as well as "Volume 6." So what was "Volume 5" has been renamed "Volume 6," and what was "Volume 6" has been renamed "Volume 8." Wait, 8, you say? Not 7? That's because I also found another album that needs to be slotted in there. I'll post that one soon as well. Let's hope there won't be any more renumbering after this!

Here's the link to what is now Volume 6:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-who-bbc-sessions-volume-5.html

And here's the link to what is now Volume 8:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-who-bbc-sessions-volume-6-in.html

This apparently was a pretty big deal of a concert at the time. It was kind of a rock festival (called "Summer of '74"), actually, due to the size of the crowd and all of the musical acts involved. It was held at a huge sports stadium that held 75,000 people, and it was sold out. The Who were the headline act, going on last, and the support acts were: Lou Reed, Humble Pie, Bad Company, Maggie Bell, Lindisfarne and Montrose. Those were all well-known, popular acts at the time. I wish I had the recordings for those too, but apparently only the Who portion was broadcast on BBC radio at the time, so worthy sounding bootlegs of the other acts aren't in the public domain.

In 1973, the Who released their epic rock opera double album "Quadrophenia," then toured to support it. That tour went into early 1974, but then the band took a few months off. They didn't put out a new studio album in 1974. They would only do a few concerts for the rest of the year, and this was the biggest one by far. It was one of the largest audiences the Who had ever played for up until that point, with only the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and a couple other big rock festivals around that time being larger. For the band's "Quadrophenia" tour, they basically played that album plus a few other hits. But with this concert, they went back to a "normal" set list, with songs taken from all points of their music career. Only four songs came from the "Quadrophenia" album ("Drowned," "Bell Boy," "Dr. Jimmy," and "5:15").

Apparently Pete Townshend (the band's lead guitarist and main songwriter) was going through some issues in 1974. He played this concert totally drunk, as well as the rest of the concerts the band did in 1974. As a result, he's said he doesn't have fond memories of this big event, and has said he thinks the band didn't play their best. However, I don't any problems with his playing or the band's as a whole, and their set went over very well with the crowd. The Who were in their musical prime in the early 1970s, so imagine even an off night by their standards was still pretty damn good.

This album is an hour and 46 minutes long.

01 I Can't Explain (Who)
02 Summertime Blues (Who)
03 Young Man Blues (Who)
04 talk (Who)
05 Baba O'Riley (Who)
06 talk (Who)
07 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
08 Substitute (Who)
09 I'm a Boy (Who)
10 talk (Who)
11 Tattoo (Who)
12 talk (Who)
13 Boris the Spider (Who)
14 talk (Who)
15 Drowned (Who)
16 talk (Who)
17 Bell Boy (Who)
18 talk (Who)
19 Dr. Jimmy (Who)
20 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
21 Pinball Wizard (Who)
22 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
23 5-15 (Who)
24 Magic Bus (Who)
25 My Generation (Who)
26 Naked Eye (Who)
27 Let's See Action [Nothing Is Everything] (Who)
28 My Generation Blues (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/eq7b5

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/21dD3Xs2

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/gr3Kkb5sIKp7giC/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert. The original was rather blurry and low-res, so I used the Krea AI program to fill in some detail. It still is somewhat blurry, but at least it's better.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 8: 1977-1978: Who Are You

It's been so long since I posted an album in this series (it's been almost a year as I write this), that I thought I would try to catch up a bit by posting two albums in a row. So here's another album of Pete Townshend demos of songs that ended up appearing on albums by the Who. In this case, all the songs were for the band's 1978 album "Who Are You."

Five out of the nine songs here have been officially released. Decades later, Townshend released various versions of his 1971 "Lifehouse" project, such as "Lifehouse Chronicles" and "Lifehouse Elements." Most of those come from that (tracks 6 through 9). But the song "Empty Glass" is actually a Townshend demo that ended up as a bonus track on the "Who Are You" album. That song, plus one other here, "Keep on Working," eventually ended up on Townshend's 1980 solo album "Empty Glass."

There's one undisputedly great song on the "Who Are You" album: "Who Are You." There are two versions of that here. The second one is much longer.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Love Is Coming Down (Pete Townshend)
02 Who Are You (Pete Townshend)
03 Empty Glass (Pete Townshend)
04 Guitar and Pen (Pete Townshend)
05 Keep On Working (Pete Townshend)
06 Music Must Change (Pete Townshend)
07 New Song (Pete Townshend)
08 Sister Disco (Pete Townshend)
09 Who Are You [Long Version] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2u2PUJoM

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/MA90k4u6t2H2xQZ/file

In 1978, a video was created of the Who performing the song "Who Are You" in Shepperton Studios in London. It's really great, you should watch it on YouTube. The cover is a screenshot of Townshend I took from that video. In 2025, I sharpened it a bit with the help of the Krea AI program.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 7: 1972-1973: Quadrophenia

I've posted many albums of Pete Townsend demos, with still more to go. I posted a whole series of albums of his demos for songs that never made it onto albums by his band the Who. I'm still posting another series of albums of his demos for songs that did make it onto Who albums. As I've moved forward chronologically with that series, I've reached around 1973, the year the Who's classic double album "Quadrophenia" was released. 

I've been hesitant to post this album. I usually have a rule not to post something that has been officially released and still in print, when I haven't made any changes to it. But this is an exception. I figure I've been posting a whole series of Townshend's demos for the Who, and it would be odd to have a giant hole where the Quadrophenia sounds would be. In 2011, a super deluxe edition of the album was released, called "The Director's Cut." This is just two discs from that, combined, in the exact same song order.

The songs order generally follows the released 1973 version of the album. However, there are some exceptions, especially songs that didn't make the album, like "We Close Tonight," "You Came Back," "Joker James," "Wizardry (Electronic Wizardry)," and more. The Who eventually would release their versions of some of these in 1979, in conjunction with the release of a movie about the album.

One classic song from the album, "5:15," is not included here. That's because Townshend never made a demo for it. Instead, it was the only song on the album that was created spontaneously while the Who was jamming in the studio.

Note that Volume 5 in this series actually envelops this album chronologically, with demos from 1970 all the way to 1975. That includes some songs from the next Who album, "Who by Numbers," which was released in 1975. Most of the songs here were recorded in 1972 or 1973. Because it was a double album, it took a while for it to come together. Apparently, the "Drowned" demo dates all the way back to 1970, before Townshend even came up for the concept of the album.

This album is an hour and 43 minutes long.

01 The Real Me (Pete Townshend)
02 Quadrophenia - 4 Overtures [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
03 Cut My Hair (Pete Townshend)
04 Fill No. 1 - Get Out and Stay Out (Pete Townshend)
05 Quadrophenic Four Faces (Pete Townshend)
06 We Close Tonight (Pete Townshend)
07 You Came Back (Pete Townshend)
08 Get Inside (Pete Townshend)
09 Joker James (Pete Townshend)
10 The Punk and the Godfather (Pete Townshend)
11 I'm One (Pete Townshend)
12 Dirty Jobs (Pete Townshend)
13 Helpless Dancer (Pete Townshend)
14 Is It in My Head (Pete Townshend)
15 Any More (Pete Townshend)
16 I've Had Enough (Pete Townshend)
17 Fill No. 2 [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
18 Wizardry [Electronic Wizardry] [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
19 Sea and Sand (Pete Townshend)
20 Drowned (Pete Townshend)
21 Is It Me (Pete Townshend)
22 Bell Boy (Pete Townshend)
23 Doctor Jimmy (Pete Townshend)
24 Finale - The Rock [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
25 Love Reign O'er Me (Pete Townshend) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/nHWKvw6H

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fvf3vmMN06cXQ6n/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/eJEkP

The original cover of the Quadrophenia was basically colorless. But a person named Stuart Gilbert colorized it. I thought that was interesting, so I've used it here as the cover.

The Who - Civic Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, 12-13-1971

Perhaps I shouldn't post this album, because the entire thing has been officially released. But I feel it needs a lot more exposure. A recording of this concert has been kind of a holy grail for serious Who fans for many years, and for good reason. This shows the band at their absolute live peak.

The Who were great in 1971, a year that included the release of their classic album "Who's Next." However, it seems very little live music was professionally recorded, other than a concert at the Young Vic in London in April, and this. The Young Vic concert was released on a deluxe version of "Who's Next" back in 2003. But only a song or two from this concert was released here and there, until the whole thing finally came out in 2023 on a super deluxe edition. 

There was a bootleg of this concert available for decades, but the sound quality was so poor that it wasn't worth listening to, in my opinion. Now, we can finally hear what the anticipation was all above, and in my opinion it lives up to all the hype.

By the way, the super deluxe edition of "Who's Next" is no less than eight CDs long. Two of those CDs make up this concert. If you're a fan of the album, there's a lot more to enjoy from that massive edition.

This album is two hours and six minutes long.

01 talk (Who)
02 I Can't Explain (Who)
03 Substitute (Who)
04 talk (Who)
05 Summertime Blues (Who)
06 talk (Who)
07 My Wife (Who)
08 talk (Who)
09 Baba O'Riley (Who)
10 talk (Who)
11 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
12 talk (Who)
13 Bargain (Who)
14 talk (Who)
15 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
16 talk (Who)
17 Baby Don't You Do It [Don't Do It] (Who)
18 talk (Who)
19 Overture [Instrumental] (Who)
20 Amazing Journey (Who)
21 Sparks [Instrumental] (Who)
22 Pinball Wizard (Who)
23 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
24 talk (Who)
25 My Generation (Who)
26 Naked Eye (Who)
27 Going Down (Who)
28 Magic Bus (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/j298q

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vF311PA6

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HAgfaWU3tNoYiyU/file

The cover photo of lead guitarist Pete Townshend is from a concert at Cobo Hall, in Detroit, Michigan in July 1970. I picked it because I'm so impressed with Townshend's leaping ability.

Live Aid - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 7-13-1985, Part 5: The Who, Elton John with Kiki Dee and George Michael, Freddie Mercury & Brian May, and Paul McCartney

This is the last of five albums of the London portion of Live Aid. With this, I'm finishing my Live Aid posts. It's true there were smaller Live Aid related concerts in some other countries on that same day, but the vast majority of the musical acts were only well known to the people from those countries.

First up for this part of the concert was the Who. The band broke up in 1982, and made it official in 1983, so this was a reunion. (They would reunite for good in 1989.) Apparently, there was a red light in front of the stage to indicate when the musical act was going over their allotted time. Lead guitarist Pete Townshend broke the light while jumping around. I don't know if that was accidental or not, but the band ended up going five minutes over their time slot.

Townshend wrote a song specifically for Live Aid called "After the Fire." The Who was supposed to perform it in this concert. However, they didn't commit to joining the concert until the last minute, so they didn't have enough time to practice it. Townshend gave it to the band's lead singer, Roger Daltrey, who had a minor hit with it later in the year.

The Who were also beset with some serious technical difficulties. Part way through their first song, "My Generation," a blown fuse caused their stage TV feed to cut out. Ironically, this happened during the line "Why don't you all fade away," right on the word "away." As a result, they couldn't be seen for the rest of the song, and most of the next song, "Pinball Wizard." Some of the vocals could still be heard for these two songs, though they were very low in the mix. I used the audio editing program UVR5 to boost the vocals relative to the instruments. They sound decent now, but the sound quality is still not as good as the other songs on this album. That's why those two songs have "[Edit]" in their titles.

Elton John was next. At 32 minutes, it ended up being the longest set in either Live Aid concert. This was actually too long. Maybe because of the broken warning light, he went over his assigned time slot. George Michael was still part of Wham! at the time (he would go solo a year after this). The plan was to have Wham! play a set after John finished, but this was cancelled due to all the delays, not just from John, but other delays accumulated earlier in the concert. But John somewhat compensated for this by having George Michael join him in a duet of the song "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me." This was the first time they performed the song as a duet. In 1991, they would release a studio version of the duet and it would hit Number One in both the U.S. and Britain.

John also did a duet with Kiki Dee on "Don't Go Breaking My Heart," since those two performed it together when it hit Number One in 1976.

After that, two members of Queen, lead singer Freddie Mercury and lead guitarist Brian May, returned to the stage to play an encore of sorts. They wrote the song "Is This the World We Created?" together in 1984 in direct response to news reports about the famine in Africa. So that's presumably why it was performed towards the very end of the concert instead of part of Queen's set earlier.

Note that this song has "[Edit]" in the title. That's because some strange noise got onto the recording. For a section towards the end of the song, one could clearly hear some thumping as well as the sound of a person talking. I used the UVR5 program to break the song into different tracks and then wipe out most of the talking and thumping. Only a little bit remains, from where some of the talking was simultaneous with some of the singing.

The last proper act was Paul McCartney. According to the Wikipedia article about Live Aid, the concert organizers considered it a high priority to get at least one surviving member of the Beatles, especially McCartney, to help give the concert credibility with the politicians they were hoping to influence. Apparently, former Beatles Ringo Starr and George Harrison also seriously considered taking part in the concert. However, they declined doing their own sets for fear that they would be dragged into performing with McCartney and turning it into a quasi-Beatles reunion. (A full reunion obviously could never have occurred, since John Lennon died in 1980.)

Given the fame of McCartney, and especially the importance the organizers put on having him involved, it's surprising that he only played one song, "Let It Be." My guess is that the TV coverage was due to end at a certain time, and the concert was still running late, so he had to cut his set short. That was bad enough, but his microphone also failed for the first two minutes of the song, making his vocals for that section almost totally inaudible. He wasn't aware of this problem. However, off stage, Bob Geldof, Pete Townshend, Alison Moyet, and David Bowie noticed the problem and rushed onto the stage to help sing backing vocals. They did so, although right at that time his microphone finally started working again.

Live Aid was supposed to be a truly live event, with no album or film of it released later. However, McCartney must have had a good feeling something would eventually be released anyway, because he rerecorded his missing vocals the next day so they could be used for any future versions. That turned out to be a very good idea, since a DVD of some Live Aid performances were released in 2004. And it's lucky for me, because I was able to use those rerecorded vocals. So there's no problem with his performance here.

After McCartney came the usual finale, where all the stars returned to the stage to sing "Do They Know It's Christmas?," the song that started the music industry's response to the Ethiopia famine. Near the end of the song, concert organizer Bob Geldof was raised up onto the shoulders of McCartney and Townshend to celebrate all he accomplished in putting the concert together.

So ends Live Aid. Phew! It was a lot of work putting this whole thing together. I think I'll go back to posting normal albums for a little while before tackling another one of these big rock festivals.

This album is an hour and three minutes long.

088 talk (Tommy Vance)
089 My Generation [Edit] (Who)
090 Pinball Wizard [Edit] (Who)
091 talk (Who)
092 Love Reign O'er Me (Who)
093 talk (Who)
094 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
095 talk (Billy Connolly)
096 I'm Still Standing (Elton John)
097 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John)
098 Rocket Man (Elton John)
099 talk (Elton John)
100 Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John & Kiki Dee)
101 talk (Elton John & George Michael)
102 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me (Elton John & George Michael)
103 Can I Get a Witness (Elton John)
104 talk (John Hurt)
105 Is This the World We Created [Edit] (Freddie Mercury & Brian May)
106 Let It Be (Paul McCartney)
107 Do They Know It's Christmas (Band Aid)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15749031/LveAidJFKStdiumLondnPA__7-13-1985_Part5.zip.html

There were three main acts in this portion of the concert, so I included photos of those three: Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (jumping) of the Who are in the top left, Elton John is in the top right, and Paul McCartney is in the bottom left. That left one more spot. I considered a photo of Freddie Mercury and Brian May, since they performed a song too. However, I saw a photo from the finale of "Do They Know It's Christmas" that showed Bono, Paul McCartney, and Freddie Mercury all singing into the same microphone. I thought that was so cool that I had to include it.

Popgala '73, Sporthal de Vliegermolen, Voorburg, Netherlands, 3-10-1973, Part 5: The Who

This is the last album from the Popgala '73 festival. For most of the others, I have only vague ideas about the order of the performances. But I came across a mention that the Who closed the festival, so this justly is the last album.

The Who were in a strange place at the time of this concert. By the standards of the time, it had been quite a while since the release of the band's last album, "Who's Next," which came out in August 1971. But their next album, "Quadrophenia," wouldn't be released until October 1973, six months after this concert. They were generally busy in the studio for a full year, since "Quadrophenia" was a challenging rock opera and a double album. It turns out this was the only concert the Who did for about a year, from September 1972 to October 1973. They elected not to play any of the new songs they were still working on, so their set looks much like one from 1971.

I had to piece this set together from two sources. But I came across an accurate set list, so I was able to place all the songs in the correct order. From that set list, I know there's only one song missing - an encore of "Naked Eye." I actually heard a couple of seconds of the start of it at the end of "Magic Bus," but I edited those seconds out since it's frustrating not to hear more. 

Anyway, even though the set list was nothing new for the band back then, and the show was relatively short for them, this still was the Who in their prime. Like virtually all the other performances from this festival, I boosted the lead vocals relative to the instruments using the UVR5 program.

This album is 47 minutes long.

092 Pinball Wizard (Who)
093 Baba O'Riley (Who)
094 talk (Who)
095 Summertime Blues (Who)
096 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
097 talk (Who)
098 My Generation (Who)
099 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
100 Magic Bus (Who) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/17205467/VA-POPGLA197308TWhoo.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/tPoodGL3

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/RSqtMwwZCRXVDPi/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-29-1970: Part 7: The Who

The next musical act for August 29th at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was the Who. It's pretty remarkable to consider that the Doors preceded the Who, after many other great acts, and there were still more to come before the night ended!

The Who were one of the few big acts to play both the 1969 and 1970 versions of the Isle of Wight Festival, so this is an opportune time to explain a bit about the history of the festival. 

The first Isle of Wight Festival was in 1968, and started out relatively small. Only about 10,000 people attended. Some of the acts that played were Jefferson Airplane, Arthur Brown, the Move, T. Rex, Fairport Convention, and the Pretty Things, but as far as I know, no known audio recordings exist. 

The 1969 festival was a much bigger deal, with about 150,000 people attending. The main draw was Bob Dylan, who played with the Band. It was Dylan's first full length concert since he'd been sidelined due to a motorcycle accident in 1966. Others who performed included the Band (by themselves), the Nice, the Pretty Things, the Who, Free, Pentangle, the Moody Blues, and Joe Cocker. As far as I know, there are no known recordings of any of these performances, with the notable exception of the Bob Dylan set, which eventually got officially released decades later.

By the way, the 1970 festival would be the last one until 2002. It became an annual festival after that. The 1970 one was so very large that it upset the people who lived nearby. The backlash was so severe that local officials made sure to foil any further festivals there. There was even an attempt to ban this time to festival nationwide, but it didn't pass because it proved impossible to make legislation that banned only festivals of music that establishment types didn't like.

Anyway, as mentioned above, the Who played both the 1969 and 1970 festivals. It turned out their set lists were very similar, because both featured full performances of the "Tommy" rock opera. At one point in this concert, lead guitarist Pete Townshend even commented on how similar their act was to one at the previous festival. The problem was the Who was taking a long time getting their next album ready. It wouldn't come out until 1971, the classic "Who's Next" album. Furthermore, in May 1970, the live album "Live at Leeds" was released, and most of the songs that they played that weren't a part of "Tommy" were included on that album.

They only played one song, "I Don't Even Know Myself," which they said was from their next album, though in the end it wasn't included on it. "Water" was another new song played here that ultimately didn't make it to that album.

But despite the fact the Who was treading water in terms of new material (in an era when acts usually released one album a year - Creedence Clearwater Revival released THREE in 1969!), they delivered an impressive, long performance. Murray Lerner, director of the "Message to Love" documentary about the festival, later commented, "The Who’s performance was really fantastic. A great, theatrical presentation, with huge spotlights behind them that dazzled you. The ending of Tommy was really incredible. And Naked Eye was great.  And of course, [drummer] Keith Moon was fantastic – playing around and having fun." 

This album is an hour and 52 minutes long.

095 talk (Who)
096 Heaven and Hell (Who)
097 talk (Who)
098 I Can't Explain (Who)
099 talk (Who)
100 Young Man Blues (Who)
101 talk (Who)
102 I Don't Even Know Myself (Who)
103 talk (Who)
104 Water (Who)
105 talk (Who)
106 Overture [Instrumental] (Who)
107 It's A Boy (Who)
108 1921 (Who)
109 Amazing Journey (Who)
110 Sparks [Instrumental] (Who)
111 Eyesight to the Blind [The Hawker] (Who)
112 Christmas (Who)
113 The Acid Queen (Who)
114 Pinball Wizard (Who)
115 Do You Think It's Alright (Who)
116 Fiddle About (Who)
117 Tommy Can You Hear Me (Who)
118 There's a Doctor (Who)
119 Go to the Mirror (Who)
120 Smash the Mirror (Who)
121 Miracle Cure (Who)
122 I'm Free (Who)
123 Tommy's Holiday Camp (Who)
124 We're Not Gonna Take It - See Me, Feel Me (Who)
125 Summertime Blues (Who)
126 Shakin' All Over (Who)
127 Spoonful (Who)
128 Twist and Shout (Who)
129 Substitute (Who)
130 My Generation (Who)
131 Naked Eye (Who)
132 Magic Bus (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/VqzSUY3e

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/1hBHAUlUbxEGcJn/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/awMth

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Concerts for the People of Kampuchea, Hammersmith Odeon, London, Britain, 12-26-1979 to 12-29-1979: Day 3: The Pretenders, the Specials & the Who

Here's Part Three of the four-part Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. It has the highlights from the third night. Just like Part Two, there were three big music acts. This time, it was the Pretenders, the Specials, and the Who.

If you want to know more about these concerts in general, check out my write-up for Part One. The track numbering here begins with track 47 in case you want to put all four parts in one folder. If you do, you'll have a mega-concert nearly five hours long.

As I mentioned previously, there was an official double album released of these concerts, but it is long out of print. Three songs by the Pretenders, one song by the Specials, and four songs by the Who come from that. In addition, a bootleg of outtakes from the official album was made public eventually. The rest of the Pretenders and Specials songs come from that, as well as some of the Who songs. 

But on top of all that, I found a bootleg of the entire set by the Who. However, I've only included some of the songs from that, for a couple of reasons. One reason is that while the sound quality is very good, it's not quite as good as the songs from the other sources. 

The other reason is that it was an off night for the Who. Lead guitarist (and occasional lead singer) Pete Townshend was going through a phase where he was going overboard with drugs and especially alcohol. It was very obvious to concert goers that he was very drunk during this concert. He danced around much more than usual, but sometimes flubbed his guitar or vocal parts. He also gave a kind of political speech during the "Dancing in the Street - Dance It Away" medley. It was meant to support the goals of the benefit concert, but it was done in a sarcastic style that could have been easily misunderstood.

Because of all that, I tried to only pick the Who songs that sounded the best and didn't have obvious flubs. 

I would have liked to have more songs by the Pretenders and the Specials, but I think there's just enough for both acts to put up a good showing. But for all three acts, there were many more songs played that what's included here. I'm sure about the song order for the Who set, but the songs might be a bit mixed up for the other two acts, I'm not sure. Also, I'm guessing some of the banter between songs is missing. But since I've heard the full Who set, I know there was no banter before the starts of any of their songs.

This album is an hour and 33 minutes long.

47 The Wait (Pretenders)
48 Precious (Pretenders)
49 Tattooed Love Boys (Pretenders)
50 Brass in Pocket (Pretenders)
51 Private Life (Pretenders)
52 Monkey Man (Specials)
53 talk (Specials)
54 It Doesn't Make It Alright (Specials)
55 Stupid Marriage (Specials)
56 talk (Specials)
57 Too Much, Too Young (Specials)
58 Baba O'Riley (Who)
59 Sister Disco (Who)
60 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
61 Who Are You (Who)
62 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
63 I Can See for Miles (Who)
64 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
65 Summertime Blues (Who)
66 Dancing in the Street - Dance It Away (Who)
67 The Real Me (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mqTe6o6o

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/mlzNvPL6h789zg0/file

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/DZ7ETVr3I2XqGoN/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Pete Townshend is closest to the camera. Roger Daltrey is in the middle ground, and John Entwistle is farthest away. I sharpened the picture using Krea AI, and made some additional changes in Photoshop.

The Who - BBC Sessions, Volume 8: In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-24-2007

Here's the eighth and probably last BBC sessions album by the Who. This wasn't mainly a BBC concert, but the Who had the most prestigious spot of being the headlining act for the final night of the Glastonbury Festival in 2007, playing in front of over 100,000 people. Many sets from that festival every year get played on the BBC, so that makes this a BBC concert.

This concert came about six months after the Who released the studio album "Endless Wire" in late 2006. It was their first studio album since 1982. I'm not a fan of it. (I think their 2019 album "Who" is much better.) But it turns out that's not much of a factor here, because they only played two songs from it, "Fragments" and "Tea and Theatre."

Considering this comes from a bootleg of a BBC broadcast, the sound quality isn't as good as I would expected. Very good, yes, but not excellent. One big problem was the lead vocals were surprisingly low. But I did my usual thing, using the UVR5 audio editing program to boost the vocals in relation to the instruments. Now, the sound quality is better, maybe borderline excellent.  

The Who did played the Glastonbury Festival after this, in 2015. But the band suffered equipment problems, and lead guitarist Pete Townshend said the show "it was one of the very worst we ever played." So I don't have that one, and I'm not planning on posting it. I don't know of any other BBC concerts they'd done after this one.

This album is an hour and 23 minutes long.

01 talk (Who)
02 I Can't Explain (Who)
03 The Seeker (Who)
04 Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere (Who)
05 Fragments (Who)
06 talk (Who)
07 Who Are You (Who)
08 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
09 Baba O'Reilly (Who)
10 talk (Who)
11 The Relay (Who)
12 You Better, You Bet (Who)
13 My Generation (Who)
14 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
15 The Kids Are Alright (Who)
16 Pinball Wizard (Who)
17 Amazing Journey - Sparks (Who)
18 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
19 talk (Who)
20 Tea and Theatre (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1yhoeTVi

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/dlhp2UQHqII2jOg/file

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. However, in the original, Roger Daltrey (holding the microphone) and Pete Townshend (playing the guitar in front) were what I'd guess about ten feet further apart. There was nothing but empty space between them, so I used Photoshop to move them closer together. There also was a distracting video screen behind the drums, so I removed that.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 6: 1971: Lifehouse

Since it's been sooo long since I last posted a Pete Townshend album of Who demos (I just checked, and it was in 2019 - yikes!), I'm posting two in one day.

This consists entirely of demos for his attempted rock opera "Lifehouse." I saw "attempted" because he scrapped what would have been a double album in 1971 and had the Who put out the single album "Who's Next" instead. It seems that nobody but Townshend really understood what the concept was about. Townshend returned to the project and put out versions decades later, but I must admit I still don't really understand. If you can see a story through all the songs below, please explain it to the rest of us!

Anyway, not all of these became Who songs, but the vast majority did. (I think the only exceptions are "Greyhound Girl," "Mary," and the variants on "Baba O'Riley," "Teenage Wasteland" and "Baba O'Riley [Instrumental].") The songs are generally from 1970 or 1971. However, two of them, "Join Together" and "The Relay," were written in 1972 when Townshend briefly made another attempt at finishing his Lifehouse project.

Normally, I wouldn't post this, because all the songs come from one source, the 2000 box set "Lifehouse Chronicles." But I'm making an exception because this is just one third of the box set, and I want to post all of his demos, not all of them except for this one project. I've put the songs in the same order the box set did, except that I didn't include four songs, because they were written much later in the 1970s: "Slip Kid," "Music Must Change," "Sister Disco," and "Who Are You." ("Slip Kid" might have been written in the 1971 time frame; I've heard conflicting accounts. But if so, he sure kept it a secret. Also, any connection to the Lifehouse concept is a total mystery to me.)

If anyone has a better suggestion for the song order, I'm all ears.

This album is an hour and 50 minutes long. In my opinion, nearly every song is a stone cold classic, and Townshend's demo versions are often as good as the Who versions, or at least close.

01 Teenage Wasteland (Pete Townshend)
02 Goin' Mobile (Pete Townshend)
03 Baba O'Riley (Pete Townshend)
04 Time Is Passing (Pete Townshend)
05 Love Ain't for Keeping (Pete Townshend)
06 Bargain (Pete Townshend)
07 Too Much of Anything (Pete Townshend)
08 Greyhound Girl (Pete Townshend)
09 Mary (Pete Townshend)
10 Behind Blue Eyes (Pete Townshend)
11 Baba O'Riley [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
12 I Don't Even Know Myself (Pete Townshend)
13 Put the Money Down (Pete Townshend)
14 Pure and Easy (Pete Townshend)
15 Getting in Tune (Pete Townshend)
16 Let's See Action [Nothing Is Everything] (Pete Townshend)
17 The Relay (Pete Townshend)
18 Join Together (Pete Townshend)
19 Won't Get Fooled Again (Pete Townshend)
20 Song Is Over (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HsxYdCwS

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/M33nO1e9tIgNRH9/file

The cover photo is said to have been taken in Twickenham Studios in London in 1971. In January 2025, I upgraded it with the Krea AI program.

Pete Townshend - Who Demos, Volume 5: 1970-1975

Here's a series that I started and then completely forgot about. But hey, no worries, I still plan to finish it off.

Pete Townshend of the Who has created lots of high-quality demos all through his music career. I've divided them into demos of songs later done by the Who, and all other songs. I've fallen behind on posting albums of his Who songs. In 1971, he recorded much for his planned rock opera "Lifehouse," which ultimately turned into the Who album "Who's Next." In 1973, the Who released another one of his big rock operas, "Quadrophenia." This album is meant be a grab-bag of all his Who demos from 1970 to 1975 that weren't part of either of those big projects. Even then, I have some stuff from those projects. The first four songs are all Lifehouse and/or Who's Next ones, but they're different demos than the ones I've put on a Lifehouse demos album. And tracks seven and eight are kind of Quadrophenia floatsam and jetsam.

As for the other songs, "Long Live Rock" ultimately appeared on the "Odds and Sods" compilation album in 1973. And tracks 9, 10, and 11 appeared on the 1975 Who album "The Who by Numbers." "Ordinary Fellow" never appeared anywhere, but apparently was considered for that album. And the last song, "Keep Me Turning," ultimately showed up on the "Rough Mix" album split between Townshend and Ronnie Lane. I'm putting that here because my albums of Townshend demos all contains songs not on his studio solo albums.

There are a lot of missing demos from this time period. For instance, it would be great to have more than just three "Who by Numbers" songs. But this is what's publicly available right now, as far as I know.

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 Behind Blue Eyes [Early Version] (Pete Townshend)
02 Going Mobile [Acoustic Mix] (Pete Townshend)
03 Baba O'Riley [Long Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
04 Let's See Action [Nothing Is Everything] [Incomplete Acoustic Demo] (Pete Townshend)
05 Long Live Rock (Pete Townshend)
06 Recorders [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
07 Unused Piano Quadrophenia [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
08 Slip Kid (Pete Townshend)
09 Squeezebox (Pete Townshend)
10 No Way Out [However Much I Booze] (Pete Townshend)
11 Ordinary Fellow [Instrumental] (Pete Townshend)
12 Keep Me Turning (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/EJYMmxqx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/eQo2gTJTb8aBPhD/file

The cover photo shows Townshend in his home recording studio around 1971. In January 2025, I upgraded the image with the Krea AI program.

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/iE9YP

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/7WvJW8dt

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/2kSCvctgvqKdBUt/file

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.

The Who - BBC Sessions, Volume 6: Grugahalle, Essen, Germany, 3-28-1981

I thought I was done with the Who and the BBC. But it turns out I have two more albums to share, starting with this one. Admittedly, this is only a BBC recording on a technicality. This actually was a short for the German TV show "Rockpalast," filmed in the expected location in Germany. But I found out that it was simultaneously broadcast on the BBC as well, something that happened occasionally with Rockpalast. So that makes this a BBC recording. More importantly, it's a lively concert with excellent sound quality.

Nowadays, I suppose the two Who albums done with drummer Kenny Jones ("Face Dances" in 1981 and "It's Hard" in 1982) don't get much love. The band's main songwriter Pete Townshend tends to dismiss them. But I think they get a bad rap. Townshend was in a very creative phase at the time, putting out solo albums and Who albums practically every year. Concert-wise, the band was probably better in 1981 than in 1982, when they were a little overcooked with lots of musicians on stage. 

This concert is a good mix of older, well-known songs with a few less well known ones from their latest album "Face Dances," like "The Quiet One" and "Don't Let Go the Coat."

This album is an hour and 35 minutes long.

UPDATE: On October 11, 2024, I updated the mp3 download file. The music is exactly the same, but I renumbered this album from being "Volume 5" to "Volume 6" due to finding another BBC concert that took place before this one.

01 talk (Who)
02 Substitute (Who)
03 I Can't Explain (Who)
04 Baba O'Reily (Who)
05 talk (Who)
06 The Quiet One (Who)
07 talk (Who)
08 Don't Let Go the Coat (Who)
09 Sister Disco (Who)
10 talk (Who)
11 You Better You Bet (Who)
12 talk (Who)
13 Drowned (Who)
14 Behind Blue Eyes (Who)
15 talk (Who)
16 Another Tricky Day (Who)
17 Pinball Wizard (Who)
18 Who Are You (Who)
19 5.15 (Who)
20 My Generation (Who)
21 Won't Get Fooled Again (Who)
22 Summertime Blues (Who)
23 Twist and Shout (Who)
24 See Me, Feel Me (Who)
25 talk (Who)

https://www.imagenetz.de/mfh5b

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/awSXAagv

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Po4wQdiWWOyNSdu/file

I could have gone for a screenshot from a video of this concert, but the quality wasn't that great. Instead, I opted for this photo, of the band in Manchester, Britain, in March 1981.

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:

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

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/14kqspZSK5FmhwS/file

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

Pete Townshend - The Roundhouse, London, Britain, 4-14-1974

If you're a Pete Townshend and/or Who fan, this is a must have album. I've never shared it before because the sound quality was a little under par. But yesterday (as I write this in November 2022), musical associate Lil Panda posted an improved version. He used audio editing programs like Spleeter or X-Minus that have emerged in recent years to improve the mix. Most importantly, he boosted the lead vocals. This is basically his version, though I trimmed the dead air between songs a bit. This still is based on an audience bootleg and the sound quality isn't stellar, but now it's good enough to be very listenable.

What makes this special is that it's a unique concert in Pete Townshend's musical history. For all of the 1960s and 1970s, he was fully dedicated to the Who. He didn't play any solo concerts until 1979, and precious few for many years after that. The first good recording of any such concert comes from 1985. Yet he did this one concert in 1974 for a local charity, playing many songs that he's never played before or since.

Here's a blurb about it written by rock critic Dave Marsh in his book "Before I Get Old - The
Story of The Who":

"On April 14, 1974 (Easter Sunday), Townshend played a solo gig-the first of his career, for the Camden Square Community Play Centre ... Meant to be a quiet afternoon's entertainment, the solo show was blown out of all proportion when the press got word of it. Townshend spent a panicky week's preparation, then came out and did a fairly casual show using electric and acoustic guitars, piano, some synthesizer tapes and the original "My Generation" demo as he ran through a set that also included 'The Seeker', Jimmy Reed's 'Big Boss Man', 'Substitute,' and 'Pinball Wizard'. Despite a drunken heckler, the show was well-received and Pete was surprisingly confident."

The concert featured just Townshend, on either piano, electric guitar, or acoustic guitar. But he used some tape loops for drumbeats on a few songs. He also played some recordings, for instance demo versions of "My Generation." The most unusual feature of the concert are the many cover songs that he rarely played in concert again, if ever: "Big Boss Man," "Amoreuse," "If I Were a Carpenter,"  "Going to New York," "Girl from the North Country," "Corrina, Corrina," and "No Face, No Name, No Number."

This album is an hour and 14 minutes long.

01 The Seeker (Pete Townshend)
02 talk (Pete Townshend)
03 Big Boss Man (Pete Townshend)
04 talk (Pete Townshend)
05 Substitute (Pete Townshend)
06 talk (Pete Townshend)
07 Amoreuse (Pete Townshend)
08 talk (Pete Townshend)
09 If I Were a Carpenter (Pete Townshend)
10 talk (Pete Townshend)
11 Happy Jack (Pete Townshend)
12 talk (Pete Townshend)
13 Tattoo (Pete Townshend)
14 talk (Pete Townshend)
15 Join My Gang (Pete Townshend)
16 talk (Pete Townshend)
17 Behind Blue Eyes (Pete Townshend)
18 Going to New York (Pete Townshend)
19 talk (Pete Townshend)
20 talk - My Generation Demos (Pete Townshend)
21 Girl from the North Country (Pete Townshend)
22 Corrina, Corrina (Pete Townshend)
23 talk (Pete Townshend)
24 No Face, No Name, No Number (Pete Townshend)
25 Let's See Action [Nothing Is Everything] (Pete Townshend)
26 Pinball Wizard (Pete Townshend)
27 See Me, Feel Me (Pete Townshend)
28 My Generation (Pete Townshend)
29 Magic Bus (Pete Townshend)
30 My Generation [Second Version] (Pete Townshend)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/seKvMbeh

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/nrdJTsTTOGcGasj/file

For the cover, I was able to find a photo from the actual concert featured here. The picture quality wasn't that great, but I was able to improve it some using Photoshop. In January 2025, I improved it a little more with the help of the Krea AI program.

The Who - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1966-1967

This is the second of four albums dealing with the Who's performances at the BBC.

Note that, on November 28, 2022, I split what had been "Volume 2" into two parts, after finding more material from this time period. Part of what had been "Volume 2" is now "Volume 3." If you're interested in this at all, you should get that too. Here's the link:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-who-bbc-sessions-1967-1970.html

Additionally, I renamed what had been "Volume 3" to "Volume 4" for obvious reasons.

There is an official album of this BBC material, called "BBC Sessions." But I think I've improved that in some ways, such as adding some songs that were missed or were done for other radio or TV shows, as well as removing the BBC DJ talk over some songs.

The main reason I found enough material to split an album in two is due to a blogger named Prof. Stoned. He's done a great job finding the best versions of albums by classic rock artists, often remixing them to get the most out of them. Here's his blog:

http://www.profstoned.com/

He had improved the Who's BBC sessions, so I wanted to redo my albums based on his work. While doing so, I realized he'd found some BBC recordings I'd missed. For instance, on this album, "So Sad about Us," "Summertime Blues," "Our Love Was," and "Relax" are all actual BBC studio performances is fine audio quality, so I'm not sure why they weren't on the official album.

Another ten songs here are BBC studio versions from the official album. I used the Prof. Stoned versions for all of those too.

Two other songs come from non-BBC bootleg sources. "Barbara Ann" was done for a French TV show. "Glittering Girl" is an odd one. This song was never done by the Who in concert, and only came out on an archival release decades later. But there's some footage from a German TV show of main songwriter Pete Townshend singing part of the song on acoustic guitar for the band's managers. Then there's another snippet of the full band practicing it in a rehearsal. I cleaned up these sections a bit, removing some talking over the music and cutting out some talking between sections. (That's why there's an "[Edit]" in the title. All together, the sections only amount to about two minutes of music. But still, I thought it's interesting enough to inclusion.

Four other songs have "[Edit]" in their titles too. That's due to the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. As usual, I used the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe out the talking while keeping the underlying music.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 Boris the Spider [Radio 1 Jingle] (Who)
02 Substitute (Who)
03 Barbara Ann (Who)
04 Disguises [Edit] (Who)
05 I'm a Boy [Edit] (Who)
06 So Sad about Us (Who)
07 Boris the Spider [Edit] (Who)
08 Run, Run, Run [Edit] (Who)
09 Happy Jack (Who)
10 See My Way (Who)
11 Glittering Girl [Rehearsal Version] [Edit] (Who)
12 A Quick One while He's Away (Who)
13 Summertime Blues (Who)
14 Pictures of Lily (Who)
15 Our Love Was (Who)
16 Relax (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WjFiEmBs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/JaQ1gkrlcoxAMpn/file

The cover photo comes from the band playing on a Danish TV show called "Klar I Studiet" in October 1966 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Who - Old Red Wine - Non-Album Tracks (1994-2020)

It's taken ages, but this is finally the last of stray tracks for the Who. I had delayed posting this because I found out two previously unreleased versions of songs from the band's 1982 album "It's Hard" were released in recent months (as I write this in July 2022). It took a while, but I finally got copies, and added them to the previous stray tracks album in this series, "After the Fire." That album was rather long with the two songs added to it, and this album was rather short, so I moved what had been the last song on that one to be the first song here. So I recommend you download that one too.

Unfortunately, after 1982, the Who became more of an "oldies" band, frequently playing their hits in concert, but rarely releasing new music. They have only put out two new albums in all the years since then, "Endless Wire" in 2006, and "Who" in 2019. This collects what occasional new music they did that wasn't on either of those albums. 

Also, I didn't include anything from Pete Townshend's solo career, because I think almost everything he did is very good and worth listening to. But I did consider fair game Roger Daltrey's solo songs if they were A) good songs and B) either sounded particularly Who-like and/or had some Pete Townshend connection. I think it's unfortunately that Daltrey generally tried an MOR (middle of the road) approach with his solo material instead of rocking out like the Who, so the number of songs that fits my criterion is fairly small for this era. 

The first song is a Townshend song from one of his solo albums but in a different version that's sung by Daltrey. The second song is a medley of Johnny Cash songs done live in acoustic mode by the Who. The next three songs are original Who songs added on to various compilations of the band's best songs. The three songs after that come from a 2018 Daltrey solo album called "As Long as I Have You" that was particularly good and rocking by his solo standards. Two of them even featured Townshend on guitar, and the other is a 1960s soul cover. The remaining four songs are bonus tracks from various editions of the band's 2019 album "Who." The last two weren't performed and released until 2020.

Although it's very slim pickings on a yearly basis for new Who material during these years, what they did do is pretty solid, in my opinion. 

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 The Sea Refuses No River (Roger Daltrey)
02 There You Go - I Walk the Line - Ring of Fire (Who)
03 Real Good Looking Boy (Who)
04 Old Red Wine (Who)
05 Be Lucky (Who)
06 How Far (Roger Daltrey with Pete Townshend)
07 As Long as I Have You (Roger Daltrey)
08 Get On Out of the Rain (Roger Daltrey with Pete Townshend)
09 This Gun Will Misfire (Who)
10 Danny and My Ponies (Who)
11 Break the News [Acoustic Version] (Who)
12 She Rocked My World [Acoustic Version] (Who)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/B73LSK4d

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jdcGyl0fReFYcwQ/file

The cover photo was taken at a press conference in 2000. Unfortunately, bassist John Entwistle, shown on the left in the photo, died two years later.