“Strange as it seems now, with the survivors of the Who still playing live nearly 60 years after the band’s formation, their tour of 1982 was announced as their last, their grand farewell.”
So begins the essay that accompanies a new two-CD recording of a Shea Stadium concert from that tour. In fact, the Who’s endurance after an ostensible retirement doesn’t seem strange at all, given the large number of rock bands that have since called it quits and then reformed. (One memorable example: the Eagles, who broke up with Don Henley proclaiming they wouldn’t play again “until hell freezes over,” only to wind up touring 13 years later in support of an album called Hell Freezes Over.)
At any rate, the Who’s 1982 concert series did mark the end of a couple of chapters: it featured the group’s last live performances for seven years as well as their last gigs with drummer Kenney Jones, the Faces and Small Faces veteran who replaced the late Keith Moon and appeared on two Who studio albums, 1981’s Face Dances and 1982’s It’s Hard.
Performances from several shows from this tour surfaced on 1984’s Who’s Last, and the second night of the group’s sold-out October 1982 two-night Shea Stadium stand – plus several bonus tracks from the first night – appeared on DVD and standard-definition Blu-ray in 2015. Now, nine years later, we finally have a CD edition of that final Shea concert, albeit without the bonus tracks.
Called Live at Shea Stadium 1982, the 25-song program taps all the stages of the group’s career up to that point. Naturally, there’s material from the then recently released It’s Hard: the title cut plus “Cry If You Want” “Eminence Front,” and “Dangerous,” though not the hit “Athena.” Also featured are John Entwistle’s “The Quiet One” from Face Dances; “Sister Disco” from Who Are You; “Drowned” and “Love Reign O’er Me” from Quadrophenia; “Pinball Wizard” and “See Me Feel Me” from Tommy; “Baba O’Riley,” “Behind Blue Eyes,” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” from Who’s Next; and “Naked Eye” from Odds & Sods. In addition, the group offers a few early non-album hit singles (1966’s “Substitute” and 1965’s “Can’t Explain”) and, from the great The Who Sell Out, the rarely performed “Tattoo.” The concert ends with a medley that sandwiches Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” between two songs that appear to pay homage to the Beatles’ historic 1965 gig at the same venue: “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist and Shout.”
Not all this material ranks with the Who’s best; the audio quality and mix aren’t quite on par with what you’ll hear on 1970’s Live at Leeds; and Kenney Jones is no Keith Moon. That said, the band plays consistently well and enthusiastically, and the two-hour program offers a generous and representative sample of its catalog up through 1982. This shouldn’t be anyone’s first Who album but if you’re a fan who already owns a variety of its releases, you’ll likely want to add this one to the pile.
Also Noteworthy
Various artists, That’ll Flat…Git It! Vol. 43: Rockabilly & Country Bop from the Vaults of Allstar and That’ll Flat…Git It! Vol. 45: Rockabilly & Rock ’n’ Roll from the Vaults of Imperial Records. Germany’sBear Family label is known for its gargantuan box sets, but there’s too much noteworthy rockabilly-rooted music to fit into even a Bear box, so the company has been issuing a long-running series of single discs that feature the genre. These are the two latest additions to the series (whose CDs, for some reason, are not coming out in strict numerical order, at least in the U.S.).
Volume 43 focuses on rockabilly and rock-tinged country that originally appeared between 1958 and 1964 on the Houston-based Allstar label. Many of the featured artists on the 35-track release aren’t exactly household names but the music is consistently excellent. Highlights include two songs from Johnny Bush, “My World All Alone,” a Hank Williams–style ballad, and the rock-oriented “Your Kind of Love”; Jerry Matthews’s rocking, self-penned “My Little Baby”; and Jerry Jericho’s country/pop number, “What Right Have I,” which he co-wrote with the then little-known Willie Nelson.
Volume 45, which also contains 35 selections, puts the spotlight on Los Angeles’s Imperial label, which enjoyed more commercial success than Allstar. This equally engaging set, which draws its material mostly from the late 1950s, includes at least a few acts whose names will be familiar to fans of this era’s music, among them teen idol Rick Nelson, whose three numbers here are redolent of Elvis Presley’s early Sun sessions and Carl Perkins’s hits; Johnny and Dorsey Burnette, who offer the self-penned “My Honey”; and rock progenitor Roy Brown, who belts out two tunes co-written by New Orleans’s great Dave Bartholomew.
Both albums feature expertly remastered audio and come with illustrated booklets that offer discographic and biographical information about all the artists and songs.
Johnny Adams, Release Me. The late Johnny Adams made some terrific country-influenced R&B and soul records, especially the ones where he unleashed his amazing falsetto. Witness, for example, 1969’s “Reconsider Me,” his sole Top 40 hit, which was written by producer Shelby Singleton, whose SSS International label released much of the singer’s work.
This 26-track CD, which comes with a 16-page booklet, is not the first Adams anthology, but it’s the most comprehensive and representative. In addition to “Reconsider Me,” it features all the artist’s other 1966–1973 recordings for the SSS and Pacemaker labels, including several numbers that have not previously appeared on CD and such essential tracks as “Release Me” and “Kiss the Hurt Away.” Adams qualifies as a one-hit wonder but after hearing this superlative material, what you’ll wonder is why he wasn’t a much bigger presence on the charts.
Tyrone Cotton, Man Like Me. Blues and roots-music singer, songwriter, and guitarist Tyrone Cotton has been part of the Louisville, Kentucky music scene for decades but has only now gotten around to releasing an album. That’s surprising given the excellence of this well-produced nine-song set. His disparate stated influences – which range from Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix to Mississippi John Hurt and Cotton’s Baptist preacher grandfather – come together on the album, which draws on rock, folk, blues, ragtime, and soul.
Cotton’s warm, quavering vocals exude vulnerability on the record, which appears to consist entirely of self-penned material though the bare-bones CD cover lists no credits. Highlights include “Dreams,” a sweet lullaby, and the very different title cut, whose foreboding lyric begins, “I understand you’re afraid and you don’t want to get mixed up with a man like me / Rumors follow me wherever I go / You better watch your step, you might learn something you don’t want to know.”
Jeff Burger’s website, byjeffburger.com, contains five decades’ worth of music reviews, interviews, and commentary. His books include Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters, and Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters.
