Mod to Suedehead

[The Saint]

Great choon, though yeah the album itself doesn't really stand the test of time. I'm a pretty avid 'Oo fan and celebrate a good wealth of their catalogue, but this album is nonessential in my book.

I concur. I have been listening to the 'orrible 'Oo for a very long time and l would say Sell Out is an early concept album from a time when they were really still a great , singles band.
I still think that Who's Next is probably their most accessible album and the album most likely to be bought by the casual music fan .
Do we need another edition of Sell Out?
As l said , l would rather they used a bit of modern tech and rolled out an album of the 1964 stuff .
My most recent 'Oo purchase was a 3 disc vinyl cut of Live at Leeds which was cut at half speed . Well worth the money , that bit more tuneful than other copies l have , in particular Substitute.

 

[Swampster]

I would reckon I Can See For Miles is the high point of the album , in particular the stereo version(for years l only had it on mono for some reason). The intro' is quite staggering if your equipment is set at the right volume, classic Who I recall a pal of mine dahn saff telling me how he got a speeding ticket listening to it in the car at a high volume whilst singing at the top of his voice . Irony is , he the guy isn't even a Who fan .

Armenia City in the Sky (amongst others) shows them trying out what stereo can do. It's only quite recently that I've listened to much on headphones since heaven knows when, and you can feel the sound passing through you.

From a style pov, I think it is Daltrey's dodgiest hairdo days.

 

[Swampster]

I concur. I have been listening to the 'orrible 'Oo for a very long time and l would say Sell Out is an early concept album from a time when they were really still a great , singles band.
I still think that Who's Next is probably their most accessible album and the album most likely to be bought by the casual music fan .
Do we need another edition of Sell Out?
As l said , l would rather they used a bit of modern tech and rolled out an album of the 1964 stuff .
My most recent 'Oo purchase was a 3 disc vinyl cut of Live at Leeds which was cut at half speed . Well worth the money , that bit more tuneful than other copies l have , in particular Substitute.

I jump around as to my favourite Who era. It is probably the early stuff at the moment - I even like the High Numbers tracks, for all their faults.

A lot of Sell Out needs you to be in the right mood, which is more specific than most music. The story side of Ogden's and much of early Pink Floyd are the same - if you aren't after a bit of whimsy, it doesn't work

I was never that keen on Live at Leeds but then there aren't many live albums that I am particularly fond of. I think for many bands, the live tracks start to ramble on (appropriately, Led Zep are particularly prone). I think 'Get yer ya-yas out' and 'Five Live Yardbirds' are probably my top two, and IIRC the tracks on them aren't very extended compared to studio versions.

 

[The Saint]

Armenia City in the Sky (amongst others) shows them trying out what stereo can do. It's only quite recently that I've listened to much on headphones since heaven knows when, and you can feel the sound passing through you.

From a style pov, I think it is Daltrey's dodgiest hairdo days.

If I remember correctly , Townsend was quite scathing of the Beatles early attempts at stereo(music out one channel , vocals on the other), so he put himself under pressure to get it right with the 'Oo. .
Maybe l ought to revisit Sell Out as it has been a while .

I did buy Live at Leeds not long after it came out , on the single album with all the extra photos etc The quality was pretty poor compared to the remastered version many years later , particularly noticeable on Magic Bus when l heard it on that filum , Jerry Maguire.

 

[Bob the Badger]

Never really rated Live at Leeds. I saw The Who at Rock at the Oval 1970 and they were fantastic there. We were very tribal back then and had travelled over from East London to follow Rod and the Faces and thought that the Who from West London had lost their earlier style. The sound system let Rod down but the Who with their own sound system bossed the Event.

 

[Bob the Badger]

I studied at Leeds from 1972 and during Freshers week we did a tour of the Refectory where The Who played back in 1970. A smashed ceiling light shade was pointed out and the story goes that Keith Moon threw a drumstick in the air and damaged the light. It wasn't repaired for years. We passed the story down during later Fresher years.

 

[Bob the Badger]

I still have two Who singles in my record collection.
I can see for miles
Pictures of Lily
I rated early Who music when they were raw and had energy

 

[Botolph]

Never gave too much attention to the original Live at Leeds, but the reissue CD with the whole gig(or an amalgam of gigs) is monstrous. That version of “Heaven and Hell” makes me want to throw a 55 gallon oil drum through a supermarket window or something.

 

[Man-of-Mystery]

Never really rated Live at Leeds. I saw The Who at Rock at the Oval 1970 and they were fantastic there. We were very tribal back then and had travelled over from East London to follow Rod and the Faces and thought that the Who from West London had lost their earlier style. The sound system let Rod down but the Who with their own sound system bossed the Event.

I was at that gig too! During Won't Get Fooled Again they left the stage and let the pre-recorded organ track running. When they came back on, Moon used a couple of cricket bats to play his drums.

The Grease Band (of Joe Cocker fame) announced themselves as "John Arlott and the Grease Band."

Also, when I talk about Rock at the Oval, I tend to tell it as "The Day Me and Rod Stewart Invented the Pogo."
I was sitting on the gound with my friend Yvonne (we were sort of dating-without-dating, on and off) and I desperately wanted to stretch my legs a bit. Well, the standard hippie form of festival exercise was something generally known as "the idiot's jig," which involved standing there waggling your head about and waving your arms in time to the music. I was buggered if I was going to do that, so instead I started jumping up and down on the spot, like a Maasai warrior. Rod Stewart spotted me, and started buncing up and down on stage in perfect sync with me! The rest is history...

 

[Bob the Badger]

If you remember the Who kept everyone waiting for ages. We nearly left early because we had to travel back across London. In the end luckily we stayed. I had forgotten that the Who did leave the stage for a while.
Your Rod story rings true as that day he was really up for reacting with the crowd.
I think he auctioned off his gold stage jacket to someone in the audience. In my bottle green Harington I thought thanks but no thanks.

 

[Thin White Duke]

I was a young teen in the eighties and got to see loads of bands live. Wouldn’t have skipped that period for anything.

I was just a kid when that Oval gig happened. Other than singing along to The Beatles and the The Scaffold (Lydia Pink) in the nursery my first conscious awareness of ‘pop’ music was through my older sister who was mad for Rod Stewart so I remember Maggie May and soon after Coz I Luv You by Slade being number one when we listened to the Radio One Top Forty countdown with Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman on a Sunday night after our tea.

Sorta happy to have missed most of the seventies’ gruesome fashions and drippy hippy bollocks but can’t deny there must have been some momentous gigs back then as the groups who were new in the sixties and survived really found their footing in the seventies. When I worked in a pub in the early eighties there were lots of older regulars who were around for the seventies scene and had some great stories. There’s a book called ‘A Promoter’s Tale’ by local lad Geoff ‘Pizza Face’ Docherty who tells the story of many of these big bands (The Who, Faces, Clapton etc) coming to the north east. Jethro Tull sold out the Bay Hotel and had to break into their own gig as it was locked up so hit the stage very late. It was a school night and loads of lads broke their curfew and were late home and late to school the next day. My mate’s Dad cut off his sideboards as punishment. He was embarrassed going to school the next day till he saw loads of other lads who’d had their sideboards cut off too!
John Peel wrote that the Faces gig at the Mayfair in April 1973 was his favourite ever show as Sunderland had just beaten Arsenal in the FA Cup semi final and it was mental in there with all the team.

 

[Bob the Badger]

If we are talking NE England then I should mention Lindisfarne played at the Oval concert. We were big fans and used to do a fine rendition of 'Fog on the Tyne' in cockney accents

 

[Bob the Badger]

I used to think I was working class until at University I was friends with two girls from Newbiggin by the sea. Their dads were coal miners. Their rendition of 'Lazy Sunday Afternoon' in Geordie matched our 'Fog on the Tyne' in Cockney

 

[Thin White Duke]

If we are talking NE England then I should mention Lindisfarne played at the Oval concert. We were big fans and used to do a fine rendition of 'Fog on the Tyne' in cockney accents

Yeah I saw that.
A mate of mine was a big fan and used to go to their Christmas concerts every year. They would usually sell out Newcastle City Hall for a week every December.
Ray Jackson from Lindisfarne played on Rod’s Maggie May (and possibly Mandolin Wind).

 

[Man-of-Mystery]

If we are talking NE England then I should mention Lindisfarne played at the Oval concert. We were big fans and used to do a fine rendition of 'Fog on the Tyne' in cockney accents

I had entirely forgotten that they were there! #GettingOld