We are very excited to post two exceptional shows by The Who to the Concert Vault this week.  We'd like fans of The Who to read this post completely - we have a puzzle that we need your help to solve.

As many of you already know, we've had a show up on the Vault for a while now from The Who identified as the Philadelphia 12/4/73 show.  A few Vault regulars have stated in a separate forum thread that at least some tracks from this show are actually from The Who's 12/6/73 show at the Capital Center in Largo, MD, and they are correct.  What has been on the Vault was an amalgam that was created for a single King Biscuit Flower Hour radio broadcast.

We recently uncovered the original master tapes for both of these shows. We are missing a single track from the Philadelphia show, and the Capital Center show is complete. Both are high quality recordings of the band's original Quadrophenia tour.

Now to the puzzle. It is well documented that The Who played in Boston on 12/3, Philadelphia on 12/4, and Largo, MD on 12/5. It is also well documented that the latter two shows were recorded for the King Biscuit Flower Hour. In fact you can hear the band mention "Philadelphia" several times during the 12/4 show on the Concert Vault.

Imagine our surprise, when we found the reels for the Philadelphia show, that they are all marked 12/3, not 12/4.  They are marked consistently this way, and the studio engineer comments that are captured on tape also reference 12/3. We have included a few images of the tape boxes below.

Have these tapes been mis-dated in our collective understanding for years?

Or did the original engineers just get this wrong when they labeled the tapes? 

We at the Vault are split on this.  Our engineers believe that engineers would have never made a mistake like this :-)  Others among us are certain that this is the Philadelphia show, and equally certain that the Philadelphia show took place on 12/4

We would love to hear from you. Images of ticket stubs, other physical proof, anything that supports one of these conclusions is welcome. Let the debate begin.

Cheers!  Mr. PC

I can't help with the date question, but I do have a few questions regarding the tapes themselves:

- the tapes shown are 16-track, yet the recordings posted seem to be the same (somewhat odd) mixes that have been around for years. Were the posted shows in fact taken from old mixes originally made for the radio broadcast?

- some tracks (apparently from Largo) just showed up on The Who's "View From A Backstage Pass". Is it safe to assume there are multiple copies of multitracks? The reel numbers in the photos seem to suggest more than 4 reels were made originally (as they are numbered 2, 4, 10 and 8). Is reel 10 above perhaps a copy of some sort?

- what's the missing Philly track?

Great finding!

I don't know about the date issue, but I love hearing this recording. Love being able to hear all these songs, especially the Quad stuff live. Also the Naked Eye, but I wonder, if they played "The Rock" that night. Whenever I listen to that song its seems like Keith Moon was firing off cannons every time he did a run on his drums.

Hmmm... That's quite the Cunundrum. I'm not sure about the date.  Too bad about the missing track though.  Will this concert be available for Download?  Wholigans like myself have been dying to hear this for years.

The engineers just got the date wrong.  It seems that Philly is complete and Largo is missing I Am The Sea.

The version of Won't Get Folled Again on the Who's Backstage Pass CD is from Philly although it is listed incorrectly as Largo.

PLEASE release these shows!!

I can state with 99% certainty:

Philadelphia, PA - December 4, 1973 - The Spectrum

Landover, MD - December 6, 1973 - The Capital Centre

Please note it is Landover, not Largo.

Also in the concert summary for that show on your website, "Townsend" is spelled "Townshend."

I can state with 100% certainty that December 2, 1973 was the Forum in Montreal. I was there, still have my ticket stub.

Anyway, I'm very happy to be able to listen to these shows and hope high quality ones will be available for purchase.

Joe Giorgianni
TheWho.org

MrPaulCaruso:

Or did the original engineers just get this wrong when they labeled the tapes? 

We at the Vault are split on this.  Our engineers believe that engineers would have never made a mistake like this :-)  Others among us are certain that this is the Philadelphia show, and equally certain that the Philadelphia show took place on 12/4

The engineers got a lot of the song titles wrong. I'm sure they could get the date wrong as well.

I Won = I'm One
Inside Outside = 5:15
It All Looks Fine = Naked Eye

Joe Giorgianni
TheWho.org

djoseph56:

It seems that Philly is complete and Largo is missing I Am The Sea.

It would seem as if I Am The Sea simply wasn't played. Roger's dialogue ends cleanly and The Real Me starts cleanly, with no hint of either the start of I Am The Sea or "Can you see the real me, can ya?" from tape before The Real Me Starts (as in Philly).

This is a great question.  I remember this show as the very first concert to be had at the then brand new Capitol Center in Largo or Landover MD. Actually Largo is the name where the Cap Center was but is confusing becuase it's part of Landover and over the years, both town names were used when identifying the Capitol Center.  As for the date of the show, I am 99 1/2 % sure that this show was on 12/6/73 becuase it was such a big deal at the time being the first show.  It would have made since for the Boston show to be 12/3 and the Phili show to be 12/4  as that was a typical logistic tour pattern and lots of artitst tours did Phili and then came to Landover.

As for the tapes being mis marked, I find it very, very hard to believe that the boxes and sheets would have been miss dated.  Someone whould have caught that at the time I'm sure.  As for them getting the song titles wrong, that was and is commong among engineers who might not be familiar with an artists songs especially new ones so they pick out a title close to what they hear in the song or what the artist says, in this case a very thick accented englishman.

Thanks for giving us Who fans access to hear these shows - Both of them!! 

 

I'm 1000% positive Philadelphia was on December 4, 1973. The Who played in Montreal on Dec. 2nd, and just made the Boston Garden show on Dec. 3rd. I still have my ticket stub from that night, memories of an angry Townshend and photos taken during the concert. I lived very close to Logan Airport at the time, and walked over there to see if I could track them down before leaving Boston. I was able to snap some shots of them (individually) at Logan before they boarded their flight to Philadelphia. I'm still kicking myself that I never thought to get autographs, I was so focused on getting photos ...

Thanks so much for releasing these tapes!

The ad from the Washington Post.  The review from the Dec 7 Washington Post does refer to it as "Largo's Capital Centre."  To add more confusion this Alice Cooper ticket says "Landover" http://www.sickthingsuk.co.uk/tickets/19731219.jpg.

Also, The Who were not the first band to play there.  The above ad is from a full page ad of several concerts scheduled at the Cap Centre. For one thing the Allman Brothers played there Dec 4. 

TheOx

 

 I have a friend who's birthday is coming up soon and who is a big Who fan. Would love to be able to buy this show for them for a present!!

This is best Who Concert I've heard..Seriously!!

Will this concert be available for download soon? It looks like people are really digging it.