the who

Just when you’ve finished paying for Live at Leeds, here comes the Quadrophenia super deluxe box

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Details are scant, but Amazon is now listing a new edition of The Who’s Quadrophenia, complete with book and (from the picture) five discs of some description.

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Quadrophenia is one album I still play regularly. I am not sure why, but it has some kind of hold on me. I guess it is an anthem for anyone who has felt misunderstood and who likes The Who.

I am therefore keen to hear things like the rumoured 5.1 mix of Quadrophenia as well as any demos, concerts from the period, and so on, that might be thrown in. I would also like a good copy of the photos from the original insert, because mine has fallen apart. Most of them did, since the stitching was not strong enough to hold the booklet to the LP cover.

That said, I do not need new vinyl, nor a book that I will browse through once and never again.

The snag with this type of box is that they are all or nothing; and usually carefully designed so that there is at least one exclusive thing that you don’t want to do without.

EMI did David Bowie’s Station to Station box, making it the only source for the new surround mix.

The other thing all these boxes have in common is an extravagant price. Live at Leeds Super Deluxe came out last year and is the only way to get the complete Hull performance on CD, though you can download from Apple’s iTunes. The box was always expensive; now it is out of print and optimistic resellers on Amazon are asking nearly £400.00 for it.

So I have mixed feelings about the new Quadrophenia, but will probably buy it anyway.

If you let them do it to you You’ve got yourself to blame.
It’s you who feels the pain

One thought on “Just when you’ve finished paying for Live at Leeds, here comes the Quadrophenia super deluxe box”

  1. The Japanese released the complete UK mono mix twice on CD, once as part of the expensive box set and once as a standalone CD with bonus tracks. The same mastering was used each time, by Jon Astley from Shel Talmy’s original mono tapes.There was also a third CD release mirroring the 1960s Japanese album (with the cover design of a girl ) which had the same edited setlist as the America release, but with an altered running order.The forthcoming new release is the first time the complete mono mix of My Generation has ever been available on CD outside of Japan. That’s a big deal.The question is how will it be mastered? A clone of the Japanese discs or something new? Surprisingly there seems to be virtually no information or discussion about that aspect anywhere.

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