Who 水橋孝

The set is built around the A and B sides of singles, with album cuts salted in between. This is effective in charting the band's progression from melodic popsters to hard rockers and back to the pop-inflected music that closed out their career. The highlights are scattered throughout – "American Woman," of course; "Rain Dance," with its unnerving echoes of American massacres, the funky, improvised live "Truckin' Off Across the Sky," even the goofy "Clap for the Wolfman," which came when the Guess Who were all but finished. The Ultimate Collection works well as an introduction to the Guess Who, but will not gratify anyone with more than a basic need to know. On a sonic level, the set sounds good, however.

True, it's impossible for any of these ten-track collections to be definitive, but they're nevertheless solid samplers that don't feature a bad song in the bunch. For example, take the Who's 20th Century volume. Yes, there are some great, great songs missing, but what's here (with the possible exception of "Squeeze Box") is terrific, including "My Generation," "Happy Jack," "I Can See for Miles," "Magic Bus," "Pinball Wizard," "Behind Blue Eyes," "Who Are You," "Join Together," and "Won't Get Fooled Again." Serious fans will want something more extensive, and neophytes would be best served by more well-chosen collections, but this disc is quite entertaining, considering its length and price. That doesn't erase the ridiculousness of the series title, but the silliness is excusable when the music and the collections are good.

One imagines that this collection was aimed at the total neophyte listener - taken in any other context, this is an odd collection of single sides by one of the premiere singles bands of the 1960s and early '70s. Does it start at the beginning, with either "I'm the Face" or "I Can't Explain"? No. Does it encompass many of the freestanding singles issued by this band through 1972? No. Does it even offer any of the less well-known single sides from that period? No - apart from the three-and-a-half-minute single edit of "Won't Get Fooled Again," which was hardly a sterling example of the format or the genre. Instead, listeners get all of the most familiar hits, albeit in their original mono mixes where relevant: "Substitute," "I'm a Boy," "Pictures of Lily," "I Can See for Miles," "Pinball Wizard," "Squeeze Box," etc.

The Who‘s 1967 album The Who Sell Out will be reissued as a seven-disc super deluxe edition box set in April. The album was originally planned by Pete Townshend and the band’s managers (Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp) as a loose concept album with jingles and commercials linking the songs. This approach was partly because the record label were demanding a new record and Townshend felt as if he didn’t have enough songs!

Rushed out in 1970 as a way to bide time as the Who toiled away on their follow-up to Tommy, Live at Leeds wasn't intended to be the definitive Who live album, and many collectors maintain that the band had better shows available on bootlegs. But those shows weren't easily available whereas Live at Leeds was, and even if this show may not have been the absolute best, it's so damn close to it that it would be impossible for anybody but aficionados to argue. Here, the Who sound vicious - as heavy as Led Zeppelin but twice as volatile - as they careen through early classics with the confidence of a band that had finally achieved acclaim but had yet to become preoccupied with making art. In that regard, this recording - in its many different forms - may have been perfectly timed in terms of capturing the band at a pivotal moment in its history…

A throwback to the era of 7" vinyl singles, the Who merge modern technology with a retro aesthetic with their First Singles Box. Featuring 12 CD singles in picture sleeves, the set contains classic tracks like "My Generation," "I Can See for Miles," and "Won't Get Fooled Again," along with their accompanying B-sides…