Who, The - Live At Kilburn 1977 (DVD)
» The Who are coming! - November 20, 2008
2008 sees the release of a fantastic memorandum of the heydey of rock'n'roll, in The Who At Kilburn 1977. AC/ DC, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Rolling Stones all already have excellent live DVDs to their name(s), and The Who are, now, no exception. Sure, the The Kids Are Alright documentary has kept fans' appetites satiated, but this two-concert double-DVD effort is miles ahead in terms of pure, unadulterated live joy and power.
I'll start at the beginning; the packaging. It's a relatively slickly designed piece of blue-white-and-red, all Union Jack and the traditional The Who logo and no-nonsense. The case design features clean block colours and a simple look, with no tacky band photographs messing up the tidy front cover. Included is a 15-page full colour glossy booklet that contains a few photographs and a hell of a lot of words. More than I could handle, that's for sure. Now, to the main course of this mouth-watering meal; the concerts.
On the first disc is the eponymous gig, showcasing The Who at their powerful and creative height in 1977 at the Gaumont State Theatre in Kilburn. It's an excellent display of rock'n'roll, featuring everything Who fans could possibly hope for in a Who live DVD; Daltrey's amazing voice and hair, Townshend's excellent guitar playing, Entwistle's skillful bass and, of course, Keith Moon's insane drumming. Their musicianship is, collectively, as good as any other band's; now or then or before or whenever. This gig and this particular recording features my favourite performance of any Who song I've ever seen in Won't Get Fooled Again. It's just... electrifying. Roger Daltrey's scream makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Yeah! The concert features some loose improvisation, but like any good live band their improvisational skills only add to the songs, rather than detracting. Won't Get Fooled Again and My Wife are standouts.
The second disc features the second concert, recorded in 1969 at the London Coliseum. It's a more ragged and a younger Who, with Daltrey sporting a brown suede two-piece jumpsuit (if there can be such a thing) featuring some amazing fringing, but their set – which includes rock-opera Tommy from start to finish – betrays their maturity (at least as songwriters). Standouts from this concert would have to be Pinball Wizard and, of course, My Generation.
The structure of the DVDs is fairly straightforward. The menus are pretty dull, with the clean and classic style of the packaging unfortunately not carrying over into the DVD menu screens. On the first Disc you have few options: to play the concert as a whole, to choose your track, or to set up your Audio. The second Disc has one additional option; to view the extras. Weirdly, these extras mainly consist of footage taken out of the 1969 concert on the very same disc. Why not leave that footage in the concert and let it flow and play through as it was originally performed? This footage was the full performance of Tommy and also A Quick One While He's Away with a longer introduction. The one other special feature is the trailer for the DVD itself, which always strikes me as a little odd. If you're watching the trailer here on the DVD, then you already own the DVD and don't need to be convinced to buy the DVD because you already own it and oh I've gone cross-eyed.
All-up, I have to conclude that this is definitely a must-own for fans of The Who. It features two of their best recorded performances and some of their greatest songs (which are, in turn, some of the greatest songs in the history of pop music). The extras are either non-existent or completely redundant, but all you really want to see is a bare-chested Roger Daltrey belting out their hits with the aid of windmill wonder Pete Townshend, little drummer boy Keith Moon and one of the best bassists in rock'n'roll, John Entwistle. I recommend this DVD.
