The Who - Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970

Rating:
Summary: Is new version coming out on Aug 10, 2004?
Review: Buy.com has "Who Live at Isle Wight" dvd with a scheduled release date of August 10, 2004 that is available for pre-order. Have they re-done this dvd, or have the Who played a festival there in recent years that is being released?

Rating:
Summary: Raw WHO!!!
Review: Classic WHO---raw and rare---at their best during their prime back in 1970 featuring rock n roll's wildest drummer ever to live--Keith Moon!!!..WHO classics such as MAGIC BUS, YOUNG BOY BLUES & MY GENERATION are included and a collection of TOMMY tracks round out this firey concert...Next to KISS, the WHO really knew how to kick it on stage and be entertainng with Pete's arm swings and leaps, Roger's mic swinging and fringed outfit, Kieth's unbelievable drumming and John's crazy Skeleton outfit...I give it 4 stars only becuase there are no extras, the soundtack is in just 2 channel stereo and though the footage is awesome, would have perferred it to have been formatted to widescreen...but if your lookin' to fill your live concert collection with some classic rock n' roll, this dvd is definately worth purchasing!

Rating:
Summary: Good, but incomplete and out of sequence.
Review: I'm a huge Who fan, so it bothers me that I'm giving this DVD a rating of only three stars. Here's why: First, although the packaging claims that this is the Who's complete performance at the Isle of Wight, this is simply NOT the case. Look at the set list for the Who Live at the Isle of Wight CD (same performance as this DVD) that was released in 1996 and you can see the glaring and numerous omissions. For example, no "Naked Eye"?? Deleting "1921" from the performance of Tommy (the very song that explains why Tommy goes deaf, dumb and blind in the first place)?? Give me a break. Is the footage missing because it was somehow too damaged, or because the makers were just too lazy? Even worse, is there a plan afoot to "force" everyone to buy this DVD again by later releasing a "complete" or "expanded" edition? I don't know, but if the case is that all existing and salvagable footage was used, let the fans know in the liner notes so we can feel good about buying this DVD. Otherwise Mr. Lerner and Mr. Townshend, please add the rest of the footage and show the Who's performance in its entirety. The seemingly incomplete job evidenced on this DVD makes you appreciate Jeff Stein even more. He really went "all out" putting together the "The Kids Are Alright" DVD, including the addition of the "lost" portion of the "A Quick One" performance.

Second, some of the footage is presented out of sequence. Again, see the 1996 CD of this performance for the actual set list. I'm not sure why the makers of this DVD would want to present a chopped up version of this great Who performance. It's a total crime if the missing footage is available.

As for positive comments, hey, this is the Who being filmed at or near their peak as a live act. Saving for the reservations above, what more could a fan ask for? Also, the DTS and Dolby Digital sound is great. Finally, kudos to Mr. Lerner for conducting and including the Pete Townshend interview. Any Pete or Who fan will find it very interesting and revealing.

Anyway, know what you are getting (and not getting) with this DVD, and rock on.

In closing, the person who wrote the Amazon blurb on this and called the three "new" songs "awful" should really reconsider that view. One cannot fairly describe "Heaven and Hell", "I Don't Even Know Myself" or "Water" as awful unless they don't really like the Who in the first instance. This person is clearly a casual Who fan at best if he's a fan at all. I think, as I'm sure most Who fans would, that these rarities are gems and, more importantly, rock---there is much more to the Who's song catalog than the 12-15 "hits" that they always include on their far too numerous greatest hits compilations.

Rating:
Summary: Better than the best
Review: It's a shame that this long overdue reissue repeats the incomplete and scrambled setlist of earleir VHS and DVD versions, but that's the bad news. The good news is that this newly re-mastered DVD has significantly improved the video quality and vastly improved the audio quality, it's an enormous upgrade. If you already own the earlier version and are wondering if replacing it makes sense, absolutely, the improved sound alone is well worth it. If you don't have it yet, make sure you get the 2004 version, it is a two-hour lesson in why The Who were known as the most explosive live act in rock.

Rating:
Summary: O-v-e-r-a-t-e-d
Review: Let's get real. This film looks bad and sounds bad. The picture is murky and the sound is muddy. The Who would go on to do some interesting work in the 70's but at the time of this show they were still just an exceptionally talented garage band who(along with The Animals) would provide the roots for punk rock. What The Who had going for them was their energy and loudness and(along with Cream) they provided the bridge to take us from the Rock and Roll of The Beatles and the Stones to the hard Rock of Zeppelin, Sabbath and Deep Purple.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre production, invaluable live document of the Who
Review: LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT is a somehwat shoddy production, largely in the editing department. Many numbers are out of sequence and key songs are missing - what good is a concert touted for its full TOMMY if half the songs are absent and those that are present are out of order? The sound quality suffers at times as well as the audio seems to shift from a sort of stereo to mono and somewhere in between (1.25 surround sound?). Still, I attribute the latter to the equipment available when the concert was filmed and find it relatively easy to overlook when considering this film as a whole.

This is currently the best collection of live footage of the Who available on DVD and it captures the band at their peak. I find the film superior to many concert films as the cameras are pointed directly at the band and waste very little time on the audience. The viewer is treated to many quality shots of Moon's frenzied drumming, Townshend's leaps and windmills, and so on. Not being a Who scholar by any means, I have no idea what kind of live footage exists and what could possibly be released that would be superior (though THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT is one I'm looking forward to). In the meantime, I find this to be perfectly satisfying as I can watch a great band have a great time. Better yet when viewed as a companion to the superior double CD set of the same name which presents the concert in its entirety and proper sequence.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Sound and Picture BUT disappointing because...
Review: Of False advertising!!!!!!!!!! I remember seeing the preview of the movie at a Regal cinema and being extrememly excited because, as the commercial said, The Who would perform ALL of Tommy. Completely restored, yeah right! However, I did buy the DVD after seeing it at the theaters and I have to admit that I enjoyed the interview with Pete Townshend and the ability to play my favorite parts over and over. The DVD is worth buying at a discount price, as long as you know what you're getting. That way you can avoid that sinking feeling that I felt when I realized that the footage of the concert had been unmercifully cut up.

Rating:
Summary: A reminder of why they were a great live band
Review: One can easily say more negative things than positive about this concert DVD, but let me insist at the outset that the small number of positives unquestionably outweigh the many negatives. At the heart of the disc is a phenomenal live performance by the Who in 1970, when they were at their instrumental height, and before the excesses of the sixties and seventies began taking their toll on the playing and hearing of the quartet. Yes, there are many things to carp about, but in the end it all comes down to the fact that these guys were flat out superb that evening. Although much of the end of the concert consists of a performance of highlights from TOMMY, most of the concert on the DVD (more about the contents in a bit) contains a host of covers, all of them stunning. While all of the band members are outstanding, Pete Townshend (who was ironically of the three musicians the least virtuosic, both Moon and Entwistle having few peers) always seems able to steal the show with his helicopter power chords, brilliantly inept dancing, and congenial lunacy. I am not generally a fan of concert DVDs, but I had a whale of a time with this one.

There are, as I have said, some negatives. For me the most irritating is that the cameras had very limited angles to film the concert. Almost all of the concert seems to have been covered by two cameras, one onstage that seems to linger almost exclusively on stage left (the right side viewed from the audience or camera) and one that is in front of the stage. The result is a feeling of constriction, as if you aren't really getting a good view of what is going on. This is exacerbated by a tendency (primarily early in the performance) of the cameramen shaking the camera while filming the performers, as if an active, dynamic camera produces results preferable to a static one. As is always the case, they were wrong (one of the great benefits of Jonathan Demme's STOP MAKING SENSE is that since then almost all concert footage has been shot with rather static cameras). The problems aren't restricted to the visual. The sound, while not exactly muddy, isn't as crisp as one could hope.

The most controversial aspect of the DVD is the excision of a number of songs. I wonder about this. Perhaps another reviewer can expand upon this, but I wonder about whether there is actually footage for every song in the concert. Perhaps there is, but it is also quite possible that we lack footage (or usable footage) for a number of tracks for which we possess soundtracks. If so, this would not be the first concert film for which this would be true. Just because we possess a soundtrack, we mustn't assume that we possess film. Now, having said this, I will add that it is possible that such footage exists, and they merely decided not to include it, and if so, that is greatly to be lamented. Nonetheless, I do not regard this as a fatal flaw, and it certainly didn't lessen my enjoyment of the music that we have.

The Who were unquestionably one of the very greatest live bands in the history of rock, and this disc will go a long ways towards reminding their fans of this fact and of illustrating that fact for younger viewers who may have missed them at their peak. Either way, I am grateful this disc was released.

Rating:
Summary: A+++Rock and Roll
Review: One of the best film documents of rock'n'roll ever, "Listening to You: The Who Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970" captures a legend of rock at the absolute height of its powers.

If you're expecting a high-fidelity kind of Event Coverage that Sees All and does everything except an indepth study of John Entwistle's nose hair, you either were born too late or have gotten too spoiled by culture and technology. It's easy to forget that at the time this concert took place in 1970, Led Zeppelin didn't sell cars and the Rolling Stones didn't shill for Bill Gates. Rock was youth music, viewed with suspicion by Old People (i.e., over 30. Yes, if you're 34, old as you may feel, you were probably an embryo when this gig went off). You never heard real rock on TV, and had to hunt to find it on radio. The Square View was what prevailed in the national media: squeaky guitars, flashing discotheque lights and gyrating girls in plastic dresses and boots. Hippies figured in there somewhere. But the so-called general public, i.e., you, if you were over 30 at the time, didn't know what rock sounded like. The huge potential of the young as consumers was just being sniffed about by The Establishment.

Then there's the filming. Murray Lerner's crew was, well, about as big as your immediate family. There was no Sky Cam. You had a camera here, one there, one someplace else. They pivoted when the person holding them did. OK, not that home-movie primitive, but essentially a hand operation. Rock gigs weren't mass merchandise yet, and you couldn't buy plane, hotel and concert tix on the Internet (something that makes the enormous gatherings at places like Monterey, Woodstock and the Isle even more amazing in retrospect and attests to the pangenerational power of the infant Rock). So big technology wasn't being catered to, even to the extent it existed at the time, because the big money wasn't there yet to cater to it. (I once bought a Led Zeppelin ticket from a scalper. For twenty bucks. That kind of money is what we're talking about here.) Filming the Stones or the Who was like filming a Vietnam firefight, only without the ordnance.

So don't complain about how few camera angles there are, or how the same stuff keeps getting filmed. (As one who saw this lineup from the second row one night, I can tell you that Daltrey really did do the same stuff, over and over and over.) Focus instead on how everyone in this band plays lead - unlike the Stones, for example, who anchored firmly to a dynamic yet by comparison pedestrian rhythm section - yet everyone, somehow, stays right on time, even when somebody screws up! (Pay attention; it happens more than once.) Focus on the incredible energy and fluidity Townshend brings to the guitar, and the Olympic athleticism of his physical presence. Focus - and this disk does, further evidence that this crew knew its stuff - on John Entwistle's breathtaking finger runs up and down the fretboard, and on how much he holds down the sound and plays second guitar through Pete's flights of fancy and violence. Focus on Keith Moon! You can't help it; the camera loves him, and he loves it back, and he shows here why he probably didn't need to so much as lift a finger between shows to keep the weight off. Focus on Daltrey's stage presence; he was immobile compared to Mick Jagger, but knew how much to do of what when, and sang the roof off the joint. There is enough, no, wait, way more than enough, way more than an abundance, of every single thing that made The Who great to see and hear on this DVD. Yes, the modern monkeying with the picture and sound helped a lot. And what the heck is wrong with that, eh?

Focus on what you can see, and be happy that you can see it. Shot in 1970? Sometimes, it's hard to believe. If someone wants to erect a monument to The Who, this film, playing in perpetuity on a Pyramid-size screen, will do. Quite nicely, thank you.


Rating:
Summary: all the who
Review: The one good thing about this DVD is that all members are present. The sound quailty is good, but the camera work is of poor quality. All in all it has a good selection of songs,tempo
and raw energy. For Who fans it is a must, as the latest Who material has a great big void, no John, as he was the driving force of the band and he will be missed along with Keith.