Who - Live In Texas '75

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Rspaight
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Who - Live In Texas '75

Postby Rspaight » Fri Jan 18, 2013 10:25 am

Picked this up the other day on a whim. The video and audio quality are awful, which I expected. (This is sub-SD video apparently rescued from a copy of Jumbotron footage or something similar, never intended for actual release.)

But since post-Who's Next Moon footage is somewhat rare, it's worth seeing for fans. It's a pretty good performance. The common narrative for shows from this period is that the Quad tour was a bust and they had to return to Tommy, which was a huge disappointment for Pete in particular. This is evident in the wry introduction to "Drowned," the only Quad song here. Regardless, the Tommy material is well-played, with Sparks in particular threatening to bring down the roof of the brand-new Houston Summit. (This was the first concert there. It's a megachurch now.) "Acid Queen" is sung by Roger, which is novel. "Listening To You" is a huge climactic moment, so much so that most of the stuff that follows seems surplus to requirements. The Tommy problem is palpable.

Moon seems in good form here. He's overplaying even more than usual, but I suspect that's par for the course with this era.

I was struck by how weird the By Numbers material was. Roger tries desperately to sing "Dreaming From The Waist" as a huge rock anthem, but the relentlessly bleak lyrics keep foiling him.

Good stuff for obsessives.
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Re: Who - Live In Texas '75

Postby lukpac » Fri Jan 18, 2013 2:40 pm

This has been floating around for years...I've seen bits, but never had the whole thing. Supposedly this is a minor improvement over what's circulating, but I believe it is still taken from a copy of the original master. And...some missing audio is obviously spliced in from elsewhere?

I honestly find the live stuff less interesting once they became "stadium rock stars". It just feels like they're less connected with the audience. I think that was even true with the '73 Quad tour.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Re: Who - Live In Texas '75

Postby Rspaight » Wed Jan 23, 2013 10:42 am

lukpac wrote:I honestly find the live stuff less interesting once they became "stadium rock stars". It just feels like they're less connected with the audience. I think that was even true with the '73 Quad tour.


I can see that. It got all bloated and what was once fun became rote.
RQOTW: "I'll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA." -- Mitt Romney

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Jeff T.
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Re: Who - Live In Texas '75

Postby Jeff T. » Mon Feb 18, 2013 4:24 am

I haven't seen this yet. But I love 1975 era live Who, and should enjoy it somewhat.

Bummer about Tommy coming back so strongly into the set lists. It seems that the "Listening to You, I get the Story" bit is beyond burnout for me. It seems like they had some really good strong singles not from WN that could have been nightly features, Relay, Let's See Action, and Join Together for starters. I know Pete has said that the technology was not there at the time to do Join Together live properly until the 1989 tour with MIDI.

Anyway, about the stadium Superstar situation, yes, it does create distance between band and audience. I always like the way Pete's playing, and being the only guitarist in the band, leaves him in a very vulnerable position, and the band is required to pull off the impossible. It's a high-wire act where there is a lot of room to fail. So you add in the fact that they are playing really large places, and expectations are huge, you have this whole thing ridding on four chords, and how good they are or are not played. And to me that is what Rock & Roll is about. It's frightening and dangerous (that is not to even mention hard drinking to dull the fear/fright). I see it in pictures, I look at Pete's chord hand, and see that he is often playing some rather easy simple chords, yet he and band are rocking the world to the core as one of the very best bands to ever play the place before of since. Plus my favorite who period is 1971 to 1976 or 77. We just never get any good live footage that shows how great they were live then.

It's not how many chords, but how well they are played. And even in pictures I can tell they are played well by this guitarist. I hope the same goes for this video, that it shows a band without a net, doing their high risk take on it, even if they fail I want to see it.

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Re: Who - Live In Texas '75

Postby lukpac » Mon Feb 18, 2013 10:08 pm

Jeff T. wrote:I know Pete has said that the technology was not there at the time to do Join Together live properly until the 1989 tour with MIDI.


MIDI? It just would have been a backing track, no different from Baba, WGFA, much of Quad, etc. I would doubt that any MIDI was used in '89.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Re: Who - Live In Texas '75

Postby Rspaight » Tue Feb 19, 2013 9:14 am

I suspect Join Together was a bit too "tight" for Moon to play live at that point.
RQOTW: "I'll make sure that our future is defined not by the letters ACLU, but by the letters USA." -- Mitt Romney