The Who | Live at Leeds: 40th Anniversary Super-Deluxe Collector's Edition

Universal (2010)
By MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER  |  November 30, 2010
3.5 3.5 Stars

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Nearly three decades after launching a farewell tour, the Who continue to wring out dough from their fans both live and via recorded versions of their concerts — but hey, at least they're doing the latter with quality material. The justification for releasing Live at Leeds for the fourth time is the addition of the recently exhumed evening before Leeds, in the city of Hull, which Roger Daltrey has gone on record as saying was the better of the two. That's debatable, though both shows are equally ferocious displays with nearly identical track lists that include full versions of the rock opera Tommy. Keith Moon is a wrecking ball on the drums, threatening to go off the path fairly often, but always managing to pull it back together just in time — usually as Pete Townshend is defining guitar histrionics. The boisterous jams take the '60s pop sound and flex it with some turn-of-the-decade muscle. Is it overblown? Take a look at the title of this now four-disc opus — of course it is. Yet it's not entirely unnecessary, since it further consolidates the sheer power of a band who had recently reached their peak.
  Topics: CD Reviews , Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, The Who,  More more >
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