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Back in Time with The Who at Kilburn 1977
by Reg Seeton
 The release of the long awaited The Who at Kilburn 1977 DVD reminded me that I've always had a love - hate relationship with The Who. After years of going through phases with their music, my on-again, off-again affinity for The Who is mainly due to the band's erratic lifespan. When I look back to the early '80s, I remember being glued to the TV for The Who's final concert on their "first" farewell tour. As I was just starting life, The Who was winding down.
Having grown up with their music as a kid, I felt ripped off that they were breaking up so soon in my life. But then they reunited for Live Aid in 1985 and later got back together for a 25th Anniversary tour in 1989 before several more reunions and gigs in the '90s and 2000s. How I feel about The Who's music has never been in question. For me it's more about the stops and starts, the "final" tours, and how during the 25 years since their much hyped farewell tour in the '80s, The Who might have been able to dominate the music world like they did in their first quarter century. Although The Who didn't make a lot of money from their studio albums in the early part of their career, it was their live stage presence and cohesiveness that solidified them as one of the best bands in music history. Now that The Who at Kilburn 1977 has finally found its way to DVD, the intended-but-unused concert for the 1979 The Kids Are Alright documentary makes up for a lot of lost time.
 What makes the 1977 North London Kilburn show so special is that the live gig fans see in The Kids Are Alright documentary is a completely new concert that was originally supposed to be this one. Surprisingly, once the Kilburn show was over and the band took a look at the footage, Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon made the decision to kill the gig from the documentary because it was too raw. Since raw live power and The Who go hand-in-hand, it's shocking to think the mates were looking for something more polished to fit into a documentary. As you'll learn in the booklet, some of the intensity that you see in Pete Townshend is due to the fact that he was pissed off 30 minutes into the show and thought the gig wasn't worth filming. And in this case, sometimes anger can bring out the best of people.
So, you can look at The Who at Kilburn 1977 in a couple of different ways: This is The Who in all of their live glory and at their best or it's "too" real and rough, which is hard to rationalize when watching the show. But since over 30 years have passed since the band first took a look at the show and we now live in a digital age, The Who at Kilburn and the additional concert footage is alive in a way that it couldn't be until now with Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS. In many ways, from a visual and acoustic standpoint, the recreated show that made it into The Kids Are Alright isn't as good as this one simply because of time and technology.
 As for the 15 song set list, The Who rolls through a cross-section of their now legendary hits while also working through a number of lesser-known songs to round out the show. Expect to find such songs as "I Can’t Explain", "Pinball Wizard", "My Generation", "Baba O'Riley", "Dreaming from the Waist", the amazing laserfest of "Won’t Get Fooled Again", "Substitute", "Tommy’s Holiday Camp", older greats like "Summertime Blues", and the only live appearance of drummer Keith Moon on "Who Are You". Aside from the Kilburn show, the 2-Disc set also includes The Who's first-ever recorded performance footage of Tommy at the London Coliseum back in 1969. And as great as the Tommy performance footage is as a bonus to simply have in your collection (and it's truly outstanding), the concert didn't have the right lighting for a recorded performance, which makes the 1969 gig much too raw and rough in the way that the band originally thought of the Kilburn show. What it lacks in visuals, the Coliseum show makes up for in theatrics and power.
Despite my on-again, off-again affinity for The Who over the years, The Who at Kilburn 1977 DVD kicked me into a new "live" phase of checking back into their music. The 2-Disc set gives fans two different eras in the band's explosive and operatic history, which also shows the unfortunate decline of Keith Moon. It's been a long time coming but The Who at Kilburn 1977 is amazing on all fronts and won’t disappoint even casual fans of The Who.
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