WHO'S NEXT
Duffys 20th September 2025
/ Wake up promotions bringing Who's Next - Europe's #1 Tribute to The Who to the venue.
Back in the day the Who were probably the greatest rock'n'roll band around, though for me they never made an album that matched their live performances (Who's Next came close)
Tonight the band came on and with minimal fuss crashed into three solid gold Who classics - "Cant Explain", "Substitute" and "Pictures of Lily" which seriously turned up the temperature in the room and left me thinking this band are really on the money here... tremendous start...
From there a tour through more classics and a couple of deeper cuts but ending the half with a quartet of pieces from "Quadrophenia"... concluding with a climactic "Love Reign O'er Me"... you can see how good this was as i thought they'd been on for about 10 minutes rather than the 45/50 minutes in this half...
So a break to settle down a bit and anticipate another half of Who classics...
The second half started with that familiar synth riff heralding one of my 3 favourite Who tracks... "Baba O'Riley"... , with the audience singing out the "Teenage Wasteland" refrain. When a band covers one of you favourite tracks there is a risk of feeling disappointment as it isn't the original... mind you that applies to virtually the whole Who catalogue... no hint of that here though... the band delivered a storming superb version turning up the heat even more... a couple more songs and we are in to the "Tommy" medley which was short but magnificent... climaxing with "Pinball Wizard". During the instrumental passage the singer was attacking tambourines in a rather robust way (reminiscent of Family's Roger Chapman)... This was followed by a powerful "Young Man Blues" before turning the tempo and volume down for a lovely "Behind Blue Eyes"
From here the band announced the final sequence... and what a powerhouse it was... starting with "Join Together". After this the synth riff to another of my very favourites, no need to say really... "Wont Get Fooled Again"... where (political comment alert...) events of the last year or so proved the wisdom of Pete's words "Here come the new boss - Just like the old boss".. this was another superb performance, and segued into "My Generation" .. the band appeared to turn the energy and power up to 11 during these three numbers, and the singer was joyfully thrashing tambourines as the front row ducked flying bits of debris from them... they ended with a great version of "Naked Eye" and it was over... a good couple of hours of really high class singing and playing covering one of rock's greatest songbooks... an absolutely red hot exciting performance.. .authentic sounds of the Who in full flight... and totally exhilarating .
One very small quibble.. .i would have preferred "Naked Eye" to have come a couple of songs earlier as "Fooled" and "Generation" are a perfect and i think more appropriate climax.
That one point aside... this gig was an absolute triumph... an absolute joy... a really great band delivering a superb couple of hours of music
Keep music live... keep music real... support your local venues
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