The Who - Search for Lost Recordings

Email from The Who's official website:

The Search For Lost Recordings
THE WHO are reaching out to fans and collectors around the world looking for rare and lost recordings to complete a thorough trawl of their archives. The band are looking for rare radio and TV performances, home movies from gigs, extraordinary bootleg material, demos, unusual photos and memorabilia for their 50th anniversary releases. If you think it's rare, we'd like to see it! Email us at [email protected].

Any item that is used will be fully credited on any release and the person with the most outstanding find will receive 2 VIP tickets for a show on the next Who tour.

I seem to recall posts mentioning that The Who had been offered 'lost' audio and video recordings over the years but turned them down, presumably due to the asking price. Not sure that 2 free tickets will wield any bargaining power!

More significantly for Who fans, should we interpret this appeal as meaning that some rare, unreleased archive Who material is going to get released? They could well start with the stuff that they don't need to cull from outside sources (e.g. San Francisco 1971, Swansea 1976).

 

And that's only for the "most outstanding find"! Unbelievable. There's something incredibly wrong when a record label as huge as Universal and musicians as rich as The Who aren't willing to pay people relatively peanuts for stuff they want. They don't deserve to to get anything through this, and hopefully they won't.

 

Yes, because that benefits everyone.

 

While I agree that perhaps a bigger prize is in order for something truly rare, the idea of hoarding and holding out for a big payday doesn't help anyone, especially us fans. If I found something fans would love to have, I'd make a copy of it for myself and GLADLY donate it to the Pete and Rog. They've given me enough pleasure in my life already!

If the Who were to pay someone big bucks for a rarity, that would set a bad precedent.

 

The other thing that struck me was that The Who have always been very fussy about quality. OK, this threshold has dropped a bit recently with the Texas 1975 video, and the live Tommy material in the deluxe set. However, both these came from professional sources, whatever the limitations. The Oval 1971 gig was rejected - ditto Fillmore East. Do they think that something better will come from a bootleg source?

There are still the missing masters from the Who's Next studio sessions, of course, and these really should be returned to the band and then used productively to enhance or extend the current catalogue, and not gather dust at Pete's church. I'm not expecting these to magically surface as a result of the appeal, mind.

 

The precedent that rare audio and video that they don't have copies of is worth more than a "thank you" in CD liner notes?

 

Well, not really IMO. The IOW recording was poor quality, some songs are acceptable (e.g. YMB) but it is very far from a normal pro live release. Some of the stuff on the soundtrack for The Kids Are Alright was poor. I'm not complaining. It's better to have it than not. But a lot of the live work released post-Leeds was so-so (on Kampuchea Pete's guitar is barely audible, although it might be more a mix/production issue there. Who's Last sounds terrible). I agree fully with your second paragraph.

 

I agree but I think they are weighing it against the profit from sales, at this point a retrospective release won't find that many buyers.

 

Anyone got a "wish list" of stuff they want to be found?

 

IOW isn't great, especially compared to something like Leeds, but it's hardly "poor". It's still a professional 8-track recording from 1970. Not the cream of live releases, but certainly not near the bottom either.

I think oates' point is a good one. What collector has anything that approaches what's already in the archive but still unreleased? Amsterdam comes to mind. Even if the radio station master reels were unearthed (rather than the fan's/collector's copies where all of the boots have originated), nothing can be done about the mix, which is all over the place. Is it a great historical document? Arguably so. Is it worth large sums of money? Probably not.

 

True, but when I was involved helping with Blur's career-retrospective No Distance Left to Run DVD, they and EMI didn't reimburse either. Not only did I donate a lot of materials to them project, I did a TON of detective work and research, and never got paid a dime. I did it out of passion for the band. Getting my name in the end credits was reward enough for me

 

Bingo. I know FOR A FACT some of the stuff they have in their archive from an inside source, and they should worry about releasing THAT stuff before soliciting things like this. The Who as a band are in my top 5 of all time, but everything else about the band is freaking MADDENING!

 

I think IOW is awful, not scraping but near the bottom.

 

Typical stand off stuff: The band and label believe (understandably) that any performances (live, studio) belong to the artist/label and resent having to pay for that material.

The owners of that material feel that if they have rarities, those should be worth money.

The owners of the material can't release it, but the artist/label can't force them to make it available.

 

The thing is, in the case of a bootleg or something recorded off the TV/radio/etc, it DOES belong to the owner, NOT the band. If the band wanted to own it, they should have made their own recording.

 

I would have thought that the tape/disc the bootleg is stored on belongs to the owner but its content is covered by copyright and belongs to whoever owns that.

 

Yes.

 

Better than London Coliseum, if you want to talk awful.

 

Saratoga 1971 anyone?

 

Never mind that one, how about the Oval tapes from '71? SF '71? Among many, MANY others they certainly have.

 

Not much.

 

IOW:

Performance? Or sound quality?

I won't debate performance. But the sound quality on the Coliseum recording is pretty dismal, at least what has been used for the releases. IOW isn't amazing but I'd say it's significantly better.

 

I am talking only about sound quality. First, the separation on IOW is too wide, it doesn't have a unified sound even given the concert setting. Second, some of the instrumentation is hard to hear especially on parts of Tommy. When Pete plays toggles the volume control for contrast of loudness on parts of Tommy the guitar just doesn't sound right. John's bass is quite distant on a lot of the recording, as Moon's formless thumping. That ain't the Who!

I heard they had to bake the tapes before they were useable at all, not a good sign.,.. Pete had them in his house for years, he knew they weren't that great but finally released them for the fans. London Coliseum is not as good but it sounds more like the Who to me than that other thing.

 

No. A big payout to a fan would inevitably lead to extortion-like dealings in the future. Real fans wouldn't be involved anymore because of the high stakes. Like selling autographs on Ebay, or rich guitar collectors snapping up rare guitars who usually don't know how or care to play them. It's the $$.
Fans lose again.

 

Frustrating this is that they definitely have pristine sounding audio and great film for it...see what's on YouTube and used in TKAA.