Like 'Scoop,' I also found this record on the $2 vinyl wall at the vintage music store in my college town. It's a shame they're both out of print now. Most of the songs on the first installment are peppy and upbeat, the musical equivalent of soda pop, but the songs on here are by and large more mature, lush, orchestrated, polished, like fine wine. Though on here, the Who demos are closer together instead of being separated by more songs, as was the case on 'Scoop.' Again you can hear the difference between the demos and what they became under Roger's vocal interpretation. Thanks to the version on this album, I received a whole new appreciation of "Don't Let Go the Coat," a song I had formerly not thought highly of. The lyrics here are a bit different from the Who version on FD, but now, lyrical differences or not, I like both versions and no longer want to skip either. There are also three songs (more like musical pieces though) here that had originally been intended for the scrapped Who album 'Siege,' which would have been released in about 1983, after IH--"Cat Snatch," "Ask Yourself," and "Prelude: The Right to Write." It was based on the idea that each of us is a soul in siege.
Side four is my fave, but there are great songs all throughout. My faves are "Brooklyn Kids," "Football Fugue," "Never Ask Me" (it should have been included on WAY!), "Girl in a Suitcase," "Begin the Beguine" (which I only found out rather recently was originally done by Cole Porter), "Prelude #556," "Baroque Ippanese," "Praying the Game," "Prelude: The Right to Write," "The Ferryman" (done in a theatrical production of Hesse's novel 'Siddhartha'; Vasudeva is the name of the Ferryman), and "The Shout." There are a number of beautiful instrumental pieces on here, evoking such an unexplainable mood and feeling, the likes of which can't be conjured up by a song with words. Sometimes words just get in the way, and pure unadultered music does what can't be done by mere words.
