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The Who catalog on CD



If you have any complaints about the sound quality of the Who catalog CDs on
MCA (and let's not forget about the packaging, either!) please direct them to
Andy McKaie, who is in charge of reissues at MCA.  He's pretty good at
replying to my letters, but that's about the only good thing I can say about
him.  For years I've been complaining about the quality of the MCA Who
catalog (as well as missing artwork on Tom Petty and Lynyrd Skynyrd CDs), and
he's always admitted mistakes, but the guy hasn't done a f***ing thing about
it as far as I can tell.  I can't believe this guy hasn't been fired yet,
what with the Steely Dan disaster and all the other screw-ups.  Perhaps if he
gets enough mail he'll do something.  If not, maybe we should start sending
letters to his boss.

But now a little good news.  The sound quality on the new box set should be
markedly improved over the regular catalog CDs, and I would expect the
improvement to be particularly noticeable with the earlier material. 
Hopefully the catalog CDs will be upgraded as well.  A few years ago, when I
first wrote to Andy McKaie, only the Doors and Hendrix catalogs had been
upgraded.  Now that there's a lot more precedent (e.g. Aerosmith, Led
Zeppelin, Elton John, CSN, Yes, Bad Company, etc.), MCA really doesn't have
an excuse, other than lack of consumer interest, which is why we have to keep
writing.

In the meantime, anybody looking for good sounding Who CDs should consider
getting the albums available on Ultradisc (Tommy, Quadrophenia, and Who Are
You).  They sound great and I seriously doubt that any upgraded MCA CDs would
sound any better.  They also have all of the original artwork, and Who Are
You includes newly penned liner notes by Pete Townsend as well as a bonus
track (one of the album tracks at its original speed).  As for the other
albums, the European versions are generally better (particularly A Quick One,
which is in mono, but was probably taken from the original master tape) and
include more of the original artwork.  One possible exception is Who's Next. 
I remember reading in ICE several years ago that the MCA version was mastered
from a better tape, apparently the original master.  This, however, conflicts
with some information I received from Mobile Fidelity.  They told me that
they wanted Who's Next to be their first Who Ultradisc, but that they were
unable to locate the original master.  The most recent information I have
(again, from ICE) is that the master tapes exist for all the WHo albums
except for the first.  All of the Shel Talmy-produced tracks on the box sets
were reportedly mastered from the best available second generation tapes.