The Who shine in live classic

A good live rock and roll album is a wolf trekking through the forest, angry and violent, stalking its prey, fast and furious, unrelenting. But a great rock and roll album needs to eat that wolf, tearing through the soft flesh with razor-sharp incisors, spitting out all that is indigestible in a great arc of triumph, emitting a war cry meant as both a warning and a challenge. That first guitar riff must blow you backwards and send you reeling like an electro-shock victim, the rattle of drums should send any veterans caught in the backlash of the feedback ducking imagined mortar fire, the rumble of the bass should send crows scattering from trees, blocking out the sun in a moment of fluttering panic. When the sky turns black, you know you're listening to quality.

The Who's recording of a concert at an English college, "Live at Leeds," is such an album. Each member of the Who seems absolutely possessed in this recording, a quartet of demons, daring you to attempt an exorcism, prancing around the stage in a rambunctious, purely visceral dance of doom. Roger Daltry sings with a cathartic rebelliousness, Pete Townshend plays with the intensity of a rowdy, reckless, drunken heathen, John Entwistle plucks his bass with the combined tenderness and violence of a dominatrix, and Keith Moon pounds his drums with the primitive energy of a repulsive Neanderthal. They soar through Who staples like "Substitute," "Happy Jack," "I'm A Boy," "Amazing Journey," "My Generation" (including a proto-punk jam lasting almost fifteen full minutes), and the operatic "A Quick One While He's Away." The songs poetically soar through the horror of parenthood, the horror of adolescence, the horror of old age, the pros and cons of talking to strangers, wrath (both divine and human), pathology, voyeurism, fornication, pedophilia, gender roles, melancholy, fond remembrance and the questionable trustworthiness of engine drivers. While all of these songs are available in any Who greatest hits compilation, this release infuses them with the sweaty frenzy of a prison riot, mattresses burning and alarms crying like plaintive widows.

When The Who descended upon Leeds thirty years ago, they left in their aftermath a mutiny, a legion of fans who refused anything but the pure angelic heroin whiteness of musical extremism. From that point on, if you didn't stretch the boundaries (or break them altogether), you were railroaded out of town. Amateur bands take heed, the fans have awakened from hibernation, they've been awake for thirty years, they crave blood, the libation of the ancient mystical sacrifice, and if you don't meet their expectations, they will tear you apart.