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Rocky Mountain News reviews Denver download



Available on line at:
http://InsideDenver.com/drmn/entertainment_columnists/article/0,1299,DRMN_84
_530416,00.html
Thanks to Charles for pointing this out.

The Who
Live at the Pepsi Center 8/24/00
www.eelpie.com

The good news: The Who's entire spectacular Pepsi Center show from last year
is available from start to finish, and it's just a click away through
www.eelpie.com.

The bad news: Got a few hours, literally? Even with a high-speed Internet
connection and good equipment, it took several tries and more than eight
hours to download a clean, glitch-free version of the show, "conveniently"
divided into four parts. Once you download those 140 megs, you've got to
convert them to MP3s.

Then you're still dealing with four big chunks of songs that you can't put
in your CD player. If you want the music to be useful elsewhere, you'll have
to convert the MP3s to wav files, chop them up track-by-track and burn them
to two CDs.

And, of course, it's all MP3 quality, which means even though it's taken
from a stereo soundboard recording off of Pete Townshend's master tape, it
doesn't sound as good as any of the band's other live offerings.

To top it all off, it costs 16 British pounds -- at current exchange rates,
that's about $23 in U.S. dollars. For that price, you usually get a double
CD with artwork, graphics and perfect sound, not just MP3 files.

True, Who fanatics will pay $50 for two-disc bootlegs of lesser quality, but
there's simply no reason to pay this much money for so much hassle and so
little quality.

Except, of course, that it was a brilliant show.

Every moment is here, every high point, every mistake, every muttered
Townshend aside. Fans can listen and realize that yes, it wasn't just
heat-of-the-moment dementia; the show was every bit as hot as they remember
it.

The best part of the show was Townshend wailing on guitar like the days of
old, whether it's the ripping solo through 5:15 or the flurry of notes to
close out Who Are You. He's playing loud and long from the first song (I
Can't Explain) to the last (My Generation).

While you do have to applaud Townshend and the band for taking matters and
music into their own hands, they could take a cue from their pals in Pearl
Jam and do real hard-copy releases rather than Internet-only downloads. The
Who's setlist didn't change enough during the tour to warrant releasing
every show like Pearl Jam did. But this show deserves much better treatment
and much more respect. Grade: A for performance, C- for value.

        -Brian in Atlanta
         The Who This Month!
        http://members.home.net/cadyb/who.htm