BBC Sessions

[Marc/Carolyn Hurwitz <hurwitz@ieee.org>]

Just to put my two cents in here...I thought that by and large this was
a marvelous release.  I'm not crazy about the packaging; it just looks
cheap to me, somehow (the typeface on the cover, the plain red label on
the CD, etc.).  The music, however, is quite good.  I've never heard
MAXIMUM BBC, so I can't compare, but the sound quality was what I'd
expect from 25-35-year-old recordings done in mono in a hurried
condition.  I was a little dubious at first about some of the covers
("Good Lovin'", "Dancing In The Street"), but have decided by now that I
like them.  "Just You And Me, Darling" should have been on MY
GENERATION; it beats the JB numbers on that album by a mile.  For those
who fussed about "Relay" and "Long Live Rock" being vocal overdubs onto
studio recordings, I'd like to point out first that the studio takes
were the instrumentals only, so it wasn't as if they were singing to the
finished record.  "Relay" was noticeably longer than the single, which
gives us the chance to hear Townshend and Moon jam over the synths for
at least two minutes.  And on LLR, Daltrey sings the middle verse, which
he did not on the studio take, and Townshend memorably flubs the final
verse.  There's also a difference in the middle eight ("Rock is
dead....") which enables the piano part to be heard much more clearly.
If that doesn't make those tracks worth having, I don't know what
would.  My fave tracks so far are "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere",
"Substitute" (version 1--don't know why they included the 1970 take),
"Run, Run, Run", "The Seeker" and probably just about everything else.
<g>

Now, as far as the Best Buy bonus disc goes, that *was* a
disappointment.  While it's somewhat interesting to have slightly
different mixes of "I Don't Even Know Myself" and "Heaven and Hell",
it's not worth the space that could've been used for something better.
"See Me, Feel Me" is supposedly "live", but it sounds just like the
studio take to me, except remixed to bring out the harmonies better.  "I
Can See For Miles" is an utter waste, the only difference between it and
the single being an overdubbed bass by Entwistle which sounds like a
twanging rubber band.  "The Seeker" (version 2--the album version is an
original and is quite good) enables us to hear Daltrey singing karoke
with a Who record--whoopee!  The Townshend interview is interesting the
first time or two you hear it.  That leaves "Pinball Wizard" and
"Summertime Blues", both of which are excellent, but there could've been
a lot more.  BTW, "Summertime Blues" is almost identical to the ODDS &
SODS take--to the extent that I had to play the two simultaneously to
ascertain that they were, in fact, different recordings.

Questions:  What, besides "So Sad About Us", was left off the official
release (not counting "Man With The Money" and "Spoonful")?  Did the Who
play "Spoonful" with "Shakin' All Over" at Leeds, or just the latter by
itself?  Does "Man With The Money" sound noticeably different at the
Beeb compared to the studio recording on A QUICK ONE (bonus track)?

Enjoy!

--Carolyn