The Who – Live At The Royal Albert Hall (2003) [3x SACD]
PS3 Rip | 3x SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 & 5.1 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 149:10 minutes | Full Scans included | 10,32 GB
or FLAC 2.0 (carefully converted & encoded to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | 162:30 min | Scans included | 3,58 GB
Features Stereo and Multichannel Surround Sound

Live at the Royal Albert Hall is a three-disc live album set by The Who, released in 2003. Discs one and two were recorded on November 27, 2000 and consist of John Entwistle, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Zak Starkey, and John “Rabbit” Bundrick performing a concert at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer Trust. This concert featured several special guests: Bryan Adams, Noel Gallagher, Kelly Jones, Nigel Kennedy, Eddie Vedder, Paul Weller. Disc 3 features four songs from The Who’s last concert with John Entwistle, from February 8, 2002. Townshend dedicated “A Heart to Hang Onto” to the late Ronnie Lane.

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The Who – Who’s Next (1971) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2010 # UIGY-9020]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 43:27 minutes | No Scans | 1,74 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | No Scans | 835 MB

Much of Who’s Next derives from Lifehouse, an ambitious sci-fi rock opera Pete Townshend abandoned after suffering a nervous breakdown, caused in part from working on the sequel to Tommy. There’s no discernable theme behind these songs, yet this album is stronger than Tommy, falling just behind Who Sell Out as the finest record the Who ever cut. Townshend developed an infatuation with synthesizers during the recording of the album, and they’re all over this album, adding texture where needed and amplifying the force, which is already at a fever pitch. Apart from Live at Leeds, the Who have never sounded as LOUD and unhinged as they do here, yet that’s balanced by ballads, both lovely (“The Song Is Over”) and scathing (“Behind Blue Eyes”). That’s the key to Who’s Next — there’s anger and sorrow, humor and regret, passion and tumult, all wrapped up in a blistering package where the rage is as affecting as the heartbreak. This is a retreat from the ’60s, as Townshend declares the “Song Is Over,” scorns the teenage wasteland, and bitterly declares that we “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” For all the sorrow and heartbreak that runs beneath the surface, this is an invigorating record, not just because Keith Moon runs rampant or because Roger Daltrey has never sung better or because John Entwistle spins out manic basslines that are as captivating as his “My Wife” is funny. This is invigorating because it has all of that, plus Townshend laying his soul bare in ways that are funny, painful, and utterly life-affirming. That is what the Who was about, not the rock operas, and that’s why Who’s Next is truer than Tommy or the abandoned Lifehouse. Those were art — this, even with its pretensions, is rock & roll.

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The Who – The Who Sell Out (1967) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2012 # UIGY-9092]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 78:31 minutes | Scans included | 3,17 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,5 GB

Pete Townshend originally planned The Who Sell Out as a concept album of sorts that would simultaneously mock and pay tribute to pirate radio stations, complete with fake jingles and commercials linking the tracks. For reasons that remain somewhat ill defined, the concept wasn’t quite driven to completion, breaking down around the middle of side two (on the original vinyl configuration). Nonetheless, on strictly musical merits, it’s a terrific set of songs that ultimately stands as one of the group’s greatest achievements. “I Can See for Miles” (a Top Ten hit) is the Who at their most thunderous; tinges of psychedelia add a rush to “Armenia City in the Sky” and “Relax”; “I Can’t Reach You” finds Townshend beginning to stretch himself into quasi-spiritual territory; and “Tattoo” and the acoustic “Sunrise” show introspective, vulnerable sides to the singer/songwriter that had previously been hidden. “Rael” was another mini-opera, with musical motifs that reappeared in Tommy. The album is as perfect a balance between melodic mod pop and powerful instrumentation as the Who (or any other group) would achieve; psychedelic pop was never as jubilant, not to say funny (the fake commercials and jingles interspersed between the songs are a hoot). [Subsequent reissues added over half a dozen interesting outtakes from the time of the sessions, as well as unused commercials, the B-side “Someone’s Coming,” and an alternate version of “Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand.”

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The Who – The Singles (1984) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2011 # UIGY-9067]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 92:47 minutes | Scans included | 3,75 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,69 GB

One imagines that this collection was aimed at the total neophyte listener — taken in any other context, this is an odd collection of single sides by one of the premiere singles bands of the 1960s and early ’70s. Does it start at the beginning, with either “I’m the Face” or “I Can’t Explain”? No. Does it encompass many of the freestanding singles issued by this band through 1972? No. Does it even offer any of the less well-known single sides from that period? No — apart from the three-and-a-half-minute single edit of “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” which was hardly a sterling example of the format or the genre. Instead, listeners get all of the most familiar hits, albeit in their original mono mixes where relevant: “Substitute,” “I’m a Boy,” “Pictures of Lily,” “I Can See for Miles,” “Pinball Wizard,” “Squeeze Box,” etc. The best of it overlaps with Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, among other collections, so veteran collectors and listeners will find nothing unique here.

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The Who – Tommy (1969) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2012 # UIGY-9089]
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 78:59 minutes | Full Scans included | 3,01 GB
or FLAC 2.0 Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Scans included | 1,46 GB

Tommy is the fourth album by English rock band The Who, released by Track Records and Polydor Records in the United Kingdom and Decca Records/MCA in the United States. A double album telling a loose story about a “deaf, dumb and blind boy” who becomes the leader of a messianic movement, Tommy was the first musical work to be billed overtly as a rock opera. Released in 1969, the album was mostly composed by Pete Townshend. In 1998 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “historical, artistic and significant value”. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. This edition uses the 2012 DSD master based on UK original analog tape. Reissue features the high-fidelity SHM-SACD format (fully compatible with standard SACD player, but it does not play on standard CD players).

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The Who – Quadrophenia (1973) [Japanese Limited SHM-SACD 2012 # UIGY-9093]
PS3 Rip | ISO | SACD DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 82:22 minutes | Scans included | 3,31 GB
or FLAC (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,89 GB

Uses the 2012 DSD master based on UK original analog tape. Reissue features the high-fidelity SHM-SACD format (fully compatible with standard SACD player, but it does not play on standard CD players). DSD transferred by Jon Astley.

Pete Townshend revisited the rock opera concept with another double-album opus, this time built around the story of a young mod’s struggle to come of age in the mid-’60s. If anything, this was a more ambitious project than Tommy, given added weight by the fact that the Who weren’t devising some fantasy, but were re-examining the roots of their own birth in mod culture. In the end, there may have been too much weight, as Townshend tried to combine the story of a mixed-up mod named Jimmy with the examination of a four-way split personality (hence the title Quadrophenia), in turn meant to reflect the four conflicting personas at work within the Who themselves. The concept might have ultimately been too obscure and confusing for a mass audience. But there’s plenty of great music anyway, especially on “The Real Me,” “The Punk Meets the Godfather,” “I’m One,” “Bell Boy,” and “Love, Reign O’er Me.” Some of Townshend’s most direct, heartfelt writing is contained here, and production-wise it’s a tour de force, with some of the most imaginative use of synthesizers on a rock record. Various members of the band griped endlessly about flaws in the mix, but really these will bug very few listeners, who in general will find this to be one of the Who’s most powerful statements.

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