THE WHO SELL OUT

Opening with what must have been been one of the coolest beginnings to any album in 1967, a robotic voice naming the days of the week, this is the most consistent '60s Who album. I love all the fake radio segments and commercials in between the songs. If the Who weren't always progressive in a strictly musical sense, they certainly were in a conceptual one. This really must be listened to as album all the way through. I have the 1995 remaster and it is full of bonus tracks. In fact, I'm not even sure what the final song on the original LP was..."Sunrise" I guess. Which means there are 11 bonus songs here. Impressive considering the quality of this bonus stuff. Forget Tommy, they should have made this one into a double-album.

The only well-known song here is "I Can See For Miles" but it's not even the best song. The Who Sell Out contains, IMO, some of this band's all-time best songs like "Armenia City In The Sky", "Tattoo" and "Silas Stingy". In many ways you could say this album was the beginning of the band's 'golden era'(which ended with Quadrophenia). There is really not much more I can say about the original album, the bonus stuff deserves a seperate review of it's own!

So, let's go through the highlights of the bonus material shall we. "Rael 1" is a great example of 'proto-prog' from 1967. At the end of "Glittering Girl" there is a really rockin' song dedicated to Coco-Cola which goes: "Coke-after-coke-after-coke-after-Coco-Cola..." on and on. I could listen to this forever. "Melancholia" is one of the greatest things the Who recorded in the 1960s. "Someone's Coming" should have been a single. Love the horns here. "Jaguar" is another fine example of proto-prog. At the end of "Early Morning Taxi" we get another rockin' ode to Coca-Cola. The version of "Hall Of The Mountain King" here is excellent. Proof that the Nice were not the only British rock group at the time who could 'rock the classics'. The original album itself I would rate about 3.5, but with the bonus material it goes up to 4.5. So I'll give it this overall 4 stars.