I don't have By Numbers, but plan to buy it if I see a nice original. Always liked it. Our local FM Rock station played Slip kid quite often, and a few others. I have a good friend who saw them on that tour. His first concert ever. He describes it as a life changing experience.
@mark winstanley, you're going to do the Rush thread and The Who thread every day at the same time? Good luck to ya. Just doing one can be rough when you're not in the mood yet others are waiting on you to brighten their day. I wish you well, sir.
I'm Canadian but don't like Rush. Have nothing to say about Rush .Forget Rush. You're talking The Who now.
My mum still thinks that buying & listening to music is a waste of money & time. She wishes that I would spend my time on something much more useful.
I've seen the Who 3 times but never with Moon. The first time was 1980. Very good concert. They were doing songs from Who Are You which was great because I love that album. Kenny was great, but you know it wasn't the same of course.
Wow, is a joy to hear so many great stories about my favorite band ever, The Who. I am from Chile and in 1997 i was 14 years old and i was having a two years run discovering The Beatles music and becoming a fan. My sister bought at that time a Who best of compilation because she heard My Generation in an ice cream tv spot called Calippo. She tried to show me but i was in my obsessed period of Beatles fanatic. I thought that this Who band was a bad imitation of my loving Beatles. In that time there was a tv cable channel called Film and Arts and they were making a Who tv special with The Kids Are Alright movie followed by Tommy the movie. It was a Friday night and was watching the tv without knowing that that night my life would be changing forever. Suddenly i saw Baba O’Riley performance in Shepperton and i couldn’t believe it. What band was that!!! Then i discovered that they were The Who, the band that my sister show me 1 month ago! I saw the entire movie and then Tommy. I rushed out searching that best of cd. I listened to that like 100 times and then i bought Tommy. The rest is history, The Who is my favorite band and i am a Whonatic. My sister and i had the pleasure to meet Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey in 2017 (see my avatar). A glorious moment for me. Now i am enjoying the new album WHO as much as their better recordigs. What a way to love a band so much. Great thread, thank you for creating it.
Well, I don't have a lot to say about Zoot Suit and I'm The Face. While I love all of the early My Generation stuff, the pre Who 'High Numbers' material has always provided an interesting "huh" moment as to where they came from, but I never purposefully put that stuff on. Its alright enough, just not particularly heavy on melody.
‘I’m The Face’ was also released as a b-side ps single in France in 1974 with ‘Postcard’ as the a-side.
The Who (High Numbers)put down tight professional performances with Zoot Suit and I'm the face. I like both of the songs, but a more reckless band was soon to emerge. On these tracks no one would think amps or musical instruments were in any danger, but they are good tracks. The lyrics use terminology of the mod crowd in England, a scene they joined, embraced and pandered to. I think the mod scene was about amphetamines, particular clothes, scooters and black R&B music. The Who I believe were the 1st actual mod band, filling a void they and their manager perceived. I suspect these were the 1st songs that were released, being targeted at mod culture. Two other bands I consider when thinking of English mods in the 60s are The Small Faces and The Creation,,,,any others?
I'm currently reading Roger Daltrey's book Thanks A Lot Mr Kibblewhite. He glosses over these (his first ever) recordings. Shel Talmy sidetracked what the band really wanted to do.
Just for the record folks, if you weren't around yesterday afternoon ... The guys were really keen to get moving here, so Zoot Suit, and I'm The Face were posted yesterday afternoon (posts 62 and 64 on the previous page). In light of that we will look at the next single this afternoon, to give everyone a chance to put their two cents in on those tracks, because I know I'm The Face is a track a lot of folks really like. Cheers Mark
Hooray it's The Who! First heard a snatch of "I'm the Face" as the coda at the end of "Sea and Sand" on the album Quadrophenia. And I first heard "Zoot Suit" in the film.. Quadrophenia. Which seems quite apposite really in light of the mod-ness of this release. Like most people it was Odds and Sods when I first got "I'm the Face", though I assumed it was always the single's A-side. Actually kind of prefer "Zoot Suit" - and in fact I didn't even realise it was The Who for years - but as they're both adapted covers there's not much in it really. However I do enjoy the sound of early Who (or High Numbers), even on their cover versions. It all changed soon enough, but I love the snappiness and freshness of their R&B period. It makes me feel weirdly nostalgic for an era I never lived through - probably because it seemed, and has been endlessly repackaged as, an exciting, vibrant time to be young. Hey, maybe it was.
I'm along for the ride here, if this ends up anywhere near as good as the Queen thread that Mark ended up owning then this will be a great ride indeed. The Who are my favourite band but it took me a while to discover them properly. I've told this before on the forum but I first got into The Who after seeing their performance at Live Aid. I was still on a high after watching Queen's performance and whilst I had some awareness of The Who it was only vague, that they were a sixties Mod band and not a proper rock band... How wrong I was... Whilst Live Aid is not by any means the band's finest hour I was still feeling positive from the Queen set and there was enough there to show me these were indeed a proper rock band and deserved a bit more investigation. One of my Uncles is a keen music fan and The Who were one of his favourite groups so I asked him where was the best place to start, he told me to get Who's Next, Live at Leeds and Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy as these would give me a great start. I was 17 years old at the time and being a typical teenager didn't listen properly to what he said so the next time I was in my local record shop I had forgotten the name of the live album, Meaty, Beaty had stuck in my mind but they didn't have it in stock. They did, however, have The Story of the Who but this was a double album and I only had so much cash available. I did however see a double live album that seemed to have a lot of the 'hits' on it which I thought must be the live album my uncle had mentioned. This was Who's Last... which of course should not be mentioned in the same breath as Live at Leeds but I wasn't to know at the time... it was also cheaper than the Story of the Who and gave me some room in my budget for another purchase. So along with Who's Next which was on a Polydor budget release these were my first purchases of the mighty Who. Given I knew no better at the time I actually enjoyed Who's Last Who's Next blew me away from the start and over the next couple of years I started to seriously get into what I consider, IMHO, The Greatest Rock and Roll band in the World. Ever. As for the first single release as The High Numbers this has always been a bit of a curate's egg for me. Whilst it is nice to hear the embryonic beginnings of what would soon become The Who again it is not really indicative of what they were about to really become or even what they were like at the time as a live act. Pete Meaden clearly saw the Mod movement as something they could take immediate advantage of and get a record out there but I'm not sure even he would have seen this as anything other than a short term ploy to get as much exposure as quickly as possible. Neither song holds the attention for long, the lyrics are trite and best forgotten and there isn't really much to shout about here beyond the fact this is the first recordings of what were to become one of the greatest acts in rock history and as such are important in an historical sense but not really in the musical sense. As has been said before, The Who were not really a Mod band anyway. They were a band that Mods liked, for sure, but they were never going to be pigeonholed into that world for very long, and they were crying out for a manager with much more ambition and vision. Which I guess we will be getting to shortly and it wouldn't be just one manager, it would be two of them... Apologies for the rambling post, I wanted to get down how I got into The Who and how discovering new music can happen in so many different ways. I promise to stick to each release as Mark get's to them in the future!!
Both are very nice songs. Very thin sounding recordings but the embryo of the Who sound is forming. The drum performance on both is just groovy. Keith Moon knew how to swing and drive a back beat... and fill it with fills. I'm The Face is a nod to Slim Harpo. Really groovy. Zoot Suit is very surf and motown influenced in my opinion, and i'm sure it is probably a rip on something that was big at the time.
There is something weirdly nostalgic about the early Who and the other great acts from the 60's. Like it was something I experienced even though I wasn't even born at the time, or perhaps a yearning for what feels like was a better time... Clearly though it must have been a very exciting time to be young and into film, music, theatre etc. The Swinging 60's!!
I first experienced The Who on their tour opening for Herman’s Hermits in Atlantic City. I only knew the song Happy Jack at the time, and went to the show to see Herman’s Hermits. The Who played a very aggressive and punkish set complete with smashing guitar and exploding drums! Herman’s Hermits immediately took the stage and began their set while there were still pieces of Pete’s guitar on the stage and the smell of sulfur(?) in the air. It was surreal I’ve been a fan ever since!
Nice post... I often ramble, and sometimes the best thoughts come out of it. Yea Who's Last wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time. I had too many great live albums when I bought that, and it soured me for a while. Not the best place for me to start. It wasn't until I saw The Kids Are Alright that I really took the Who seriously. Those Shepperton Studio takes are red hot!
I reckon “Zoot suit/I’m The Face” would have sunk without trace if it hadn’t been The Who’s first. On the sleeve notes on “Odds n Sods” Pete says how much he likes John’s bass “zoops” on “I’m The Face”. It wasn’t much of an indication of what was to come. There’s some film of the band taken around this time. This is not it!
That must have been amazing to see!! Imagine trying to follow The Who... how did the rest of the audience react? I'm guessing most were there to see the Hermits and not all would have been as receptive to The Who as you were?
The Baba and Fooled Again performances on TKAA video are superb!! We are getting ahead of ourselves but this was a band that really did own the stage. I know Moon wasn't at his best here so what they must have been like to see in their prime... man, that must have been something to see.
