MEATY, BEATY, BIG AND BOUNCY

This was a much needed compilation for Who fans that hadn't been around in the 60's to buy all of these non-album singles and had no way of having these tracks (since 45RPM singles were rarely reprinted) at home, even if this compilation also contained the singles "taken from the albums" as well. Nevertheless this made an excellent "60's greatest hits of The Who" and one that many fans played it through until the disc became transparent.

As such, for progheads, this album has no real interest in terms or "progyness", but it still remained for a while a very important Who album containing a few pearls like Substitute, Can't Explain, Happy Jack , the excellent Diddley-derived Magic Bus (which was a concert favourite for years). Unfortunately, MCA chose to go cheap on this compilation, probably not remastering the original recordings to fit 33RPM vinyls and the sound quality is not extra, either. I can't remember for sure whether this compilation was approved by the group itself or whether this was a management and record company stunt, but I think the group only moderately appreciated MBB&B, but it was surely something that most fans worldwide needed so despite the botched-up job, this compilation was one point for the industry and the fans.

Although I've seen this compilation in Cd format, this compilation lost probably most of its interest to the many other more recent Cd compilations or boxsets of the group, so most likely the utility of this album (besides a solid dose of nostalgia and it's relatively cool gatefold artwork) has been next to zero of late,