On October 29th, 1999, The Who headlined an extraordinary concert event at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, which featured several other huge acts including Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole, KISS, Faith Hill, and The Dixie Chicks. This now infamous event was the brainchild of a new Internet technology company, Pixelon, who reportedly paid 16-million dollars renting out the entire MGM Grand to promote their supposedly revolutionary new Internet technology. They claimed it would broadcast TV-like quality images of this concert to millions of computers worldwide.
The technology turned out to be bogus, and the only ones who ended up witnessing the concert were the lucky 15-thousand or so people in attendance that night. You may have already seen the terrible KISS Live In Las Vegas DVD memento of that event, which featured a whopping four songs from their performance. Now we have The Who's headlining performance captured in its entirety on DVD, which is being pitched as the first time in 20 years they have performed as a stripped down five piece band - just Daltry, Townshend, Entwistle, Zak Starkey on drums, and John Bundrick on keyboards instead of the usual horn section, backup singers and extra guitarist they had been performing with them. Although it is great to have a document of this historic concert, it is certainly not one of the better Who performances to be captured on film.
The show kicks off with a psychedelic video montage of old Who tour posters and band photos which is being played on the huge screen serving as the stage backdrop. The band takes the stage, looking as if they didn't particularly want to be there, and lead off with their 1965 single "I Can't Explain", and then follow it up with their 1966 single "Substitute". I was beginning to wonder if the setlist was going to feature all of their single releases in order. Neither of these performances elicited much energy and passion out of the boys, but thankfully, by the third song, "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", again going back to the 1965 singles vault, Townshend appears to be getting over his jetlag, and the song really rocks. After the song, Daltry greets the crowd for the first time with "It's been a bloody long time since we played that one... Good Evening!"
The light show was very intense and colorful, which often created serious problems for the cameras. At times, the picture would get completely washed out in bright, white light, as if the camera was pointed directly into a spotlight. I have never seen this happen quite as often as with this film, which is surprising considering how much money and effort was put into the whole event. When it was being filmed correctly, the light show looked phenomenal. "Pinball Wizard " proceeded to really heat things up, with Townshend strumming so hard he broke a string half way through the song, and had to grab a replacement Strat from his guitar tech.
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