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The Who Concert File



Last night.  A knock on the door from the UPS man.  And sitting at my
feet is The Who Concert File (thanks Greg!)

Apparently, I only thought I knew something about the Who.

This new book by Joe McMichael and 'Irish' Jack Lyons is as much a
breathrough book for The Who as Lewisohn's "The Beatles' Recording
Sessions" was for the Beatles.  What I mean is that Lewisohn's book was
the first to strip from the Beatles the legends and the anecdotes and
present what really happened and when.  This book does the same for the
Who.

The level of detail is simply incredible.  Things which were hard to pin
down to months are now given dates and venues.  You can open the book and
follow the history exactly as it happened.  Needless to say, any future
"The Who In History" that I post is going to borrow a lot from this book.
 I hope Joe and Jack can find it in their hearts to forgive me.  I and
everyone else who love the Who owe them a huge debt.

So is there room for another book (thinking of the person who is working
on the same now)?  Undeniably.  Just like Lewisohn's "Sessions" book,
Concert File only covers a part of the story.  Now we need a complete
day-by-day that looks in detail at recording sessions, TV and radio
appearances (there are some in this book as well), and certainly more on
solo work.  But for the first of its kind for the Who, the Concert File
will be hard to top.

For the curious, the British edition measures 9 inches by 11 1/4 inches
and is 208 pages long.  The cover is white with a black-and-white 1968
picture of the Who surrounded with tickets and badges.  The illustrations
are many many many (there's even a picture of the ticket stub for the
first Who concert I went to!  If only i'd had the sense to save it!)


                                     -Brian in Atlanta