"Quadrophenia: The Director's Cut": Official Press Release for Boxset

There are a lot of photos on the Q cloud site that I've never seen before... including one of Keith in a wheelchair at the airport the day after his famous collapse, loads of tape boxes, mixing notes, Pete recording at home, &c.

 

What's "less than steller" about it?

I think it's a great and completely different take on a great song...

 

Amazon has the 4 disc download for $19.87. Does anyone know if this purchase includes access to the Q:Cloud?

 

Geez, that's uh steal.

 

Yes...

 

The book itself is easily worth at least $50 alone. Beautiful packaging. I'll start to listen tomorrow.

 

Cool.

Stating the obvious. Maybe some future audio/video made available next year on the Q cloud in concert with the rumored/expected tour? Just sayin', .

 

just the fact that you like it is really enough for me

 

...

 

Classy...

 

Could this have any more confusing name?

When I saw it listed for sale I thought: The Director's Cut - So it's the bleeping movie!

Then I found out it is music and thought: Oh, it must be the movie soundtrack, then!

Then I saw it had a DVD and thought: Cool! It's in HiRez!

What else am I misunderstanding?

 

Then again, they seem to have tackled Pete's demos with great gusto over the years, so maybe they viewed it as a challenge. Of course, the final result speaks for itself.

 

oh sure, and there's no way any of the other could have consistently written songs as great as Pete. but those demos really do show just how important the whole band was to the sound of The Who. his songwriting as undeniably great as it was, it took John Entwistle and Keith Moon to make the songs classics.

also, I could probably attribute so much of the Who's sonic success to Moon, just in terms of the way he pushed everyone to do more - for my money, the material where Keith was on his way off this mortal coil and the post-Moon material fall flat because there's a far greater embracing of the status quo on those albums than on any before them. as brilliant as Entwistle was, he became a bass virtuoso because of Moon.

 

The re-recording they did in 1979 for a potential promo 12 inch for the Quadrophenia soundtrack but didn't get released till the Thirty Years box set in '94 is pretty faithful to the arrangement on Pete's original demo.

John Entwistle has said in interviews he came up with the ideas of speeding up the song and his bass line as just experiments in getting out of Who stylistic ruts and everyone agreed he had good ideas.

 

I'm on the fence for getting this. This may be blasphemy to some (if not all), but the album never really appealed to me. I always thought it was a letdown from Who's Next. I've always loved the songs "Love, Reign O'er Me" (one of their best) and "5:15", but I literally haven't played the album proper in about 20 years. My uncle played the hell out of both of these on vinyl when I was a child (along with Who's Next) and obviously even back then, I couldn't get enough of Who's Next.

When I was a teenager, I bought both on CD and eventually found myself reaching for Quadrophenia less and less, while Who's Next never really leaves my CD player for long to this day. Despite being a music collector, I really don't know for myself if this is really worth the hassle to own.

Obviously, if this was a Who's Next box, I would have been drooling right from the start. And yes, I own Lifehouse Chronicles.

 

The full 4-disc set is now up on Spotify...check it out

and, honestly, Quadrophenia smokes Who's Next.

 

I'll have to check it out. Thinking it over, I probably feel the main reason why I prefer Who's Next over Quadrophenia is that with Who's Next, the band was getting their point across with just one album. At least at the time, it felt like to me that Quadrophenia was a disc too long.

 

This is just an excellent box set!!

*************************

 

What makes you say that? (Serious question)

When I first heard that they were doing an expanded set for Quadrophenia with a 5.1 mix, I was pretty excited. This album was one of my big favorites back in my teenage years, though it's diminished some in my estimation compared to some of their previous work. For all the technical virtuosity on display, it sometimes feels overwrought and heavy handed to me, but I was keen to re-evaluate with this new set (particularly with a surround mix--never has a project cried out for such treatment like this). Now I have absolutely no intention of buying the ridiculously overpriced deluxe set, but maybe if they move forward with their plans to complete the 5.1 mix on the Q Cloud, I'll go for the download version (something I don't typically do). But I still think that the whole thought process behind this set was woefully misguided, a missed opportunity.

 

Curious to hear people's reactions on the actual remastered album, compared to '96 remaster and/or the MF '91 of the original mix. Not much is being said about the sound here or on the other thread, I suppose because the difference is not revelatory or anything. But there are subtle differences between the new version and the '96, to my ear anyway.

 

Guys,
The only reason to get Box, is for the book and the extras that come with it! The 5.1 mix is not worth spending the extra money. It sounds way to wet, and it just seems that they did not put a lot of thought and time into it. The Real Me, is terrible! I have been waiting for this mix for years and I have to say I am very underwhelmed! I will say the mis does get better after The Real Me, but I expected much more. It would have been great to see what Steven Wilson would have done with this. I guess I have gotten spoiled with the quality of the latest KC, and JT 5.1 re-mixes!

 

Seventy per cent of what I am reading here is:

a)plain wrong
b)ill informed
c)unsubstantiated
d)copied opinions and not based on own listening/reading/looking at the set experience

e)disguising the fact that you cannot affort buying the set.
f)guided by a desire to spoil other people's(of the easily impressionable kind)enjoyment.

It is a fantastic set!

In one word: crap utterings!

And please:don't come up with outcries of anguish when the box won't be available for decent money after Xmas!

 

This makes me feel better. I got the set for $100 (it's on the way from the UK) so I havent seen it or heard it yet but I was starting to think I wasted my $$. I will wait and see.

 

And yet you still haven't explained why. You just put it forward as an article of blind faith. While I would agree that some around these parts take a certain perverse glee in tearing these kinds of sets apart, I also think that some people automatically commit themselves to embracing sets like this and perform astonishing contortions of logic to justify their investment. What are the selling points exactly? As I understand it, it's the demos which are only of limited interest to me--I enjoy Pete's rough drafts well enough but it really comes to life when the whole band is involved. Beyond that, you're paying for a partial 5.1 mix (which may or may not be of good quality) and a fancy book. Poor value any way you slice it (and yes, I do have the money, but I'm choosing to spend it on better products).