Tag: Live at Leeds

Jul 09 2011

Popular Culture (Music) 20110708: The Who Live at Leeds Part 2 of 2

Last week we examined the original vinyl record of Live at Leeds.  Due to the technological limitations of vinyl, it was only about 45 minutes, give or take a couple, long.  The album was rereleased in 1995 on CD, and because that medium is capable of much more time, around two hours, many more tracks were added that had been recorded at the time.

Tonight we shall listen to those tracks and discuss whether or not we think that they are good.  I think that they are all no worse than very, very good and that many of them are outstanding.  Please listen and tell me what you think.  For those of you who have not signed up for an account, please do so so that you can comment in future.

Let us get started.

Jul 02 2011

Popular Culture (Music) 20110701: The Who. Live at Leeds

Live at Leeds was the first live recorded record album by The Who that was legitimate.  There were plenty of rather crudely recorded, pirated versions of many of their live performances, but back in 1970 those analogue ones, mostly recorded by audience members under cover, rapidly were degraded by the very process of analogue to analogue copying, making even third generation copies almost unintelligible.   That is too bad, because some of those performances were great.

After the huge success of Tommy, and the concomitant success of the associated tour, Kit Lambert and The Who decided to record an actual live record that would capture their sound.  Live at Leeds did it well, but was too short because of the limitations of vinyl records at the time.  Remember, and I have covered this topic before, only 45 minutes, give or take a few, were possible with the vinyl technology at the time.

Let us examine what is really a wonderful record.  Note that there is very little video available, so that just the music is usually given here.  By the way, the album charted at #3 in the UK and at #4 in the US.