The Who Fillmore East 1968

John Entwistle's Ox was recorded performing live at The Spectrum- March 5th 1975 for The King Biscuit Flower Hour.

I mention this because 1975 is perhaps my favorite year for live Who performances. The band put on some of the best shows ever , too bad no known multi-tracks exist - ??

 

John's tone was incredible, rich and full-bodied but I fear he'd be mixed to inaudibility even if multis did exist.

 

In the UK at least The Who were at their best in the smaller college venues. In 1970 and early 1971 they tended to play these gigs each weekend (not necessarily part of a structured tour). The reviews and audience reactions were always outstanding. A small minority of the shows were recorded by an audience member (and the usually poor sound quality is often still enough to discern that the performance is great). An even smaller number (Leeds, Hull) were professionally recorded, and are outstanding. Given that most UK gigs weren't recorded in any form, I suspect there were dozens of show equally as good as Leeds.

The recent book The Who - I Was There by Richard Houghton provides ample first hand evidence of how great The Who were at a lot of obscure or forgotten gigs during this period.
The Who: I Was There

The book just makes me wish that they had recorded more shows at the time - and then had a more effective policy on releasing them intact!

 

I just wish we could get a definitive understanding of just exactly WHAT Bob Pridden has stashed away. I just can't believe that, from his position and knowing how fond he was / is of the band and everything that they stood for as a live band, he didn't retain at least the odd few recordings as reference markers for the band from this time. Knowing how important the live incarnation of the band was to Pete and how he wanted to project themselves into the audience, surely he / they would have wanted to refer back?

Maybe just being there (the 5 including Bob) was enough of a reference point to go back to though......

 

I asked Bob this very question and even HE wasn't sure

 

Along the lines of:

"I've got lots of recordings but I'm not sure what I have."

Or

"I'm not sure if I've got anything at all."

I never actually wanted to put him on the spot but guess I should have done.....

 

I think he maybe didn't want to elaborate too much?I didn't want to push either.

 

I would love to know how well the Paris ‘72 radio broadcast actually sounded coming across to the people in France actually listening to the radio that evening of the actual broadcast as compared to the supposedly high generation tape source recording of the broadcast that has circulated around for years.

 

Good point. However, French radio b'cast of that era all sounded pretty dire, unfortunatelys; there are low gen. examples of Paris shows by The Stones in 1970, West, Bruce & Laing in 1973 or Robin Trower, also in 1973, and they all sound OK-ish at best. Sigh.

 

Heck, even the sound quality of the French radio broadcast of The Who’s 5/17/79 Paris concert isn’t anything to write home about - even from low gen sources - still mono & bland sounding.

 

Are these radio stations allowed to record the shows they air for possibly future
repeats?
I thought they were allowed to .......as many upgrades seem to appear from digital rebroadcasts on torrent sites .......but never any Who.
Possibly they have the power to prevent it.
Why have Capitol Radio in London never 're aired the Charlton and Swansea shows?

 

Presumably it depends on the agreement.

 

The 1969 Who Paris radio show was on AM radio. Was the 72 show on FM?

 

Probably on AM as the sound quality is similar to the ‘69 broadcast you are referring to.

 

Private radio stations were mono AM only until 1981 (!) in France and most rock concerts were aired on private stations RTL and Europe 1.
So the broadcast quality was quite poor, though the original recording may have been marginally better. The 69 Zeppelin tape, while weirdly recorded, sounds way better than an AM recording.
The Who tapes from 70 (Europe 1) and 72 (RTL) have never surfaced from a pre-AM source as far as I know. They may not exist in the archives any more.
If they did, they would still be mono.

 

I got an e-mail from Amazon UK this morning to say my album was up for listening to on Amazon music & lo & behold, it is.

I'm A Boy, Substitute & My Generation are bonus tracks. I didn't get a chance to listen to it before I had to come into work unfortunately.

 

Not sure that this is the real thing, Mook. I noticed yesterday that Amazon UK are linking the official Fillmore East with this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fillmore-A...3433217&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Who+Fillmore+East

which appears to be a 'semi-legal', especially as "I'm A Boy", "Substitute" & "My Generation" are from Felixstowe 1966. The same company has also released a CD of Paris 1970.

 

Yeah, that's not the official release. Check the label, "RR Live Recordings". It aslo has a different cover. Don't know why Amazon links 2 different releases.

 

Yeah, it had the whiff of 'too good to be true' about it.

Seems odd that Amazon would do that though, I hope I don't get a ropey bootleg CD in the post next week.

 

If I do.......... in the words of Owen Lars to his wife, Beru:

"There'll be hell to pay."

 

Got my Amazon Rip this morning. Sounding good!

Just read other Comments. Concerning. My Gen on the download is 9 mins.

 

See above, doesn't look like this is the official version.

 

I've just noticed the auto-rip email, disappointingly it's the bootleg I've had for years. Oh well, only another nine days for the "proper" one to drop onto my doormat,

 

So, how does this new live show compare with Leeds?

 

We'll see when it's released.