The Who
Memorial Auditorium
Buffalo, New York
December 4, 1979

Source: Audience
Lineage: Master Cassette>Nakamichi 670 azimuth-adjusted playback deck>Nakamichi outboard Dolby B>Wavelab 96/24 1ch mono>FLAC front-end (24/96 format)
Taping Gear: Teac M-100>Sony 153SD (mono, Dobly B on)
Taped and transferred by JEMS

Disc one (66:42):
(1) Substitute (3:41)
(2) Can't Explain (3:12)
(3) Baba O'Riley (5:55)
(4) The Punk and the Godfather (5:28)
(5) Boris The Spider (3:21)
(6) Music Must Change (9:30)
(7) Drowned (10:37)
(8) Behind Blue Eyes (4:03)
(9) Sister Disco (5:14)
(10) Who Are You (7:15)
(11) 5:15 (8:22)

Disc two (57:08):
(1) Pinball Wizard (3:50) =>
(2) See Me Feel Me (5:45)
(3) Long Live Rock (4:15)
(4) My Generation (4:54)
Incl. Slip Kid => Bolero
(5) I Can See For Miles (4:28)
(6) Sparks (5:55)
(7) Dance It Away (1:41)
(8) Won't Get Fooled Again (10:31)
(9) Summertime Blues (3:50)
(10) Young Man Blues (5:29)
(11) How Can You Do It Alone (6:25)

Note: There are no fades applied, so disc splits are merely a suggestion.

Pete Townshend - Vocals, Guitar
Roger Daltrey - Harmonica, Vocals
John Entwistle - Vocals, Bass
Kenney Jones - Drums
John Bundrick - Piano, Keyboards
Howie Casey - saxophone
Reg Brooks - trombone
Dave Caswell - trumpet

This show took place the day following the tragic concert in Cincinnati; as noted in the prior torrent, it was unclear until near showtime whether this show would be canceled. The show went on as planned, and The Who put on a blistering, emotional performance. Roger opened the concert by making reference to the tragedy of the previous night, and dedicated the show to the "lost" audience members. The energy of this performance is evident even in the opening numbers ("Substitute" and "Can't Explain") that are typically warm-ups for the band -- this would clearly be a special night.

The performance is great throughout, with a powerful and improvisational encore. Recording quality is outstanding -- there are some minor glitches in the opening track and some close-mic audience interference (at one point you can hear "J" asking his companion to hold the microphone) but things settle down and there is very little crowd interference to take one's attention away from the music. Very enjoyable recording, and light-years better than most audience masters from the 1970s.

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Comments from "J":

Roger Daltrey began the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium show by saying "I'd just like to say that you all know what happened yesterday. There's nothing we can do. We feel totally shattered, but life goes on. We all lost a lot of family yesterday, and this show's for them!" That was how the 4th night of The Who's Winter '79 started.

We made the drive from Cincinnati to Buffalo that day not really knowing if the show that night would go on. There was plenty of speculation that the tour would be cancelled or postponed, and no real place to get an answer definitively other than to drive to the next show. The show ended up being a great one, building again on the energy of the previous three nights.

There was a change to the setlist order in Buffalo due to nerves more than anything else. But even in a different order, they managed to still get all the songs in. Roger surprised everyone by including lyrics to "Slip Kid" in My Generation as Pete was transitioning into his bolero riff. The encore featured 'Young Man Blues' and the show ended with a great, high energy version of 'How Can You Do It Alone?'

The versions of this and 'Dance It Away' varied throughout this tour and the following one in 1980, and were all more interesting than the studio versions that would eventually be released.

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Note that this is in the highest-fidelity 24/96 format, and cannot be burned to CD unless downsampled to 16/44.1 format (or you are using a program which does the downsampling automatically). There will be a 16/44.1 version posted separately for those who want the CD-friendly version.

Many thanks to the JEMS team for their efforts in digitizing and mastering these recordings. Cleveland is up next. Mp3 samples are attached.

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

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