327. The Who, "Live at Leeds"

 


Just wow.  I haven't heard this album in what seems like forever and I had forgotten about its raw power, the sheer force of a band playing at their peak.  Widely regarded as the best live album of all time, it literally crackles with electricity.  Upon my (much overdue) relisten, and as an older and wiser Rock Music Fan, a couple of things stood out:

Roger Daltrey's voice still sounds raw and a little unpolished.  He doesn't have the high gloss that he'll have later in the Who's career.  I don't mean to suggest that his singing isn't great; it is!  It's just not as polished as it will become.  For this record, that's exactly the right sound.

This band is extremely tight.  They've obviously been playing and rehearsing together nonstop, and there's barely a note or a drum hit out of place.  At the same time, there's a wildness and an intensity to it, like it doesn't sound OVERrehearsed, and there's obviously a lot of freedom for Pete Townsend, and especially Keith Moon, to roam around.  It's that universal music paradox where the more you practice, the more free you are to improvise.

And speaking of Keith Moon, holy shit.  If you ever wonder why he's considered one of the greatest drummers in music history, just listen to this album.  He absolutely goes apeshit, but never, ever, loses his place or gets behind or off the beat.  I can't figure out how he does half of what he does on this album.  Just amazing.

It's hard to just pick a couple of songs as highlights, but I can't get the "Substitute" on this album out of my head.  I'll tell you how good this album is - "My Generation" leads into a lengthy jam and I even liked that.  Go on.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? It should be higher.

Comments

  1. StephenJuly 14, 2021 at 4:10 PM

    It is objectively great, and that is from a non-Who-fan. I feel weird about "best live album ever," though, since my second favorite record is a different live record - Live Rust - and Live at Leeds isn't my favorite record. YOU CAN SEE THE LOGIC PROBLEM.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TKJuly 15, 2021 at 9:41 AM

      [Always Sunny conspiracy wall JPG here]

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

Image
  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip hop"
Read more

3. Joni Mitchell, "Blue"

Image
  Do you want the good news or the meh news first?  The good news is that this album is better than the other Joni Mitchell albums we've seen , or at least better for me.  I hated one of them and barely tolerated the other, so I was not expecting to like this, and after three listens yesterday, it was not as bad as I'd feared it would be.  The meh news?  I still don't love Joni Mitchell and I don't particularly like this album. Obviously, since it's the number 3 out of the Top 500 albums ever made, a lot of people feel differently.  Pitchfork called it "possibly the most gutting break-up album ever made," which may be true, who knows, but if it is it's about breaking up with a whole series of dudes, from Graham Nash to James Taylor to some guy named Carey.  (In Pitchfork's estimation, this is the 86th best album of the 1970s, so not exactly in number 3 overall territory). One thing that bugs me is Joni Mitchell's voice, which I find kind of g
Read more

1. Marvin Gaye, "What’s Going On"

Image
  500 albums later and we're out of albums.  This album was number 6 on the last iteration of the Rolling Stone list and has now moved up to number 1 (displacing Sgt. Pepper , which was the last album to hold that spot).  I think it's a lovely album with maybe three absolutely incredible songs, a fair amount of average-to-good, and some not great songs.  I'm not a voter and will never be a voter but I just don't think this is the best album of all time. In fact, I would be perfectly fine with this list if they just sawed off the top 3 and left the rest as is: 1. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life 2. Beatles, Abbey Road 3. Nirvana, Nevermind 4. Fleetwood Mac, Rumours And so forth.  But let's take this album on its own merits. The first of the three absolute bangers is the title track, "What's Going On," the scene-setter for the rest of the album, a loose concept album that's told from the point of view of a Vietnam vet returning to a country th
Read more