Thirty Years of Maximum R&B This exemplary four-disc box takes the high road, attempting nothing less than an honest reconstruction of the Who’s stormy, adventurous, uneven pilgrimage. While offering an evenhanded cross-section of single hits and classic album tracks, 30 Years garnishes the expected high points with B-sides, alternate and live versions of familiar tracks, and the quartet’s earliest singles as the High Numbers. Reinforcing the package’s documentary agenda are interview and stage-patter sound bites. What emerges is a fascinating chronicle of how the Shepherd’s Bush mods journeyed from the giddy, explosive concision of their January 1965 debut single, “I Can’t Explain,” to the discursive, knotty sweep of creative architect Pete Townshend’s “rock operas,” Tommy, Quadrophenia, and the uncompleted, unreleased Lifehouse. The Who’s swift evolution into rock visionaries is traced chronologically, meaning the band’s original immersion in “maximum R&B,” which forged their earliest club dates, doesn’t surface on record until midway through the sequence, on key tracks from their thundering Live at Leeds album. Fans may quibble over the relative weight given specific albums, but the shape of the Who’s career and their passionate identification with their audience are rendered faithfully. So, too, is Townshend’s skill at mingling issues of faith and identity with generational manifestoes and sly broadsides. And there’s ample evidence of the quartet’s outsize musical power; the sheer volume and violence that earned them notoriety early on is matched by a lyricism that deepens by mid career. Given the candor of the presentation, it’s not surprising that 30 Years reaches its zenith midway through the set or that the last song (a reunion of the surviving trio covering Elton John) can’t help seeming anticlimactic. –Sam Sutherland
Customer Review: Mostly good, but some questionable choices of material…
This is one of the better box sets out there, and it’s a pretty good summation of The Who’s amazing journey of a career. It starts out with some songs when members of The Who were The High Numbers, and it contains almost all of their major hits, and some awesome, hard to find gems. It’s not just hard to find songs we have here, but snippets of dialogue from concerts, commercial jingles, and comedy jingles as well. The “Abbie Hoffman incident” dialogue is kind of cool, when Hoffman interrupted The Who’s performance to complain about the show, and Townshend chased him off with his guitar and swore at him. There are two great comic bits called “University Challenge” and “Poetry Cornered”. There is a great live version of My Wife recorded at Swansea in 1976, where the band seems rejuvinated and totally kills on the song. The songs Join Together, Let’s See Action, and Relay (which were all released as solo singles and never officially appeared on any albums) are included here, and they’re awesome (especially Join Together, one of my favorite Who tracks). They also wisely include only two tracks from the post-Moon era, You Better You Bet (from Face Dances, their best album post-Moon), and Eminence Front, the only great song off the It’s Hard album. The booklet that is included is excellent as well, giving an excellent overview of the history of The Who.
However, with all box sets, there are questionable choices. The version of A Quick One (While He’s Away) is a mix of the studio and the live version (from The Rock and Roll Circus), and it doesn’t segue well. Another decision (which is kind of infuriating) is that they only included 4 songs from Quadrophenia, which is The Who’s best. And to top that off, the version of The Real Me isn’t the original, but a version recorded while Kenney Jones was auditioning to be in the band. It’s not bad, but it’s nowhere near the intensity of the original. And the version of 5:15 is the shorter, single version. They also included the single version of Who Are You (a mistake), and they shortened the song Guitar and Pen (which has great music but lousy lyrics). The songs all segue as well, and sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t.
If you’re a Who fan, buy this set. The positives outweigh the negatives.
Customer Review: Not happy at all.
I ordered the Who’s 30 Years Of Maximum R&B 4-cd set.
I received only one disc of the four, and it was damaged - looked like the surface of the disc had been dropped on sand. It had pock-marks in the plastic and the information layer had been penetrated.
I wrote the seller requesting some resolution, never received a reply.
I will not do business there again.
Buyer BEWARE!!!