Face Dances [Original recording remastered, Extra tracks]

The Who | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 3, 1997)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered, Extra tracks
• Label: Mca
• ASIN: B000002P6R
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (92 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,777 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Face Dances went platinum and became the #2 album of 1981. This 14-track reissue includes five previously unreleased bonus tracks.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars No, the Five Star Rating is not a Typo October 17, 2001

By Eric

Format:Audio CD

Some of the people below can complain all they want and slag the band for carrying on without Keith. They can also tell you how dreadful they think this album is because everyone has an opinion, but the truth is they are wrong. If Face Dances doesn't agree with your musical taste, then fine, but the problem doesn't lie in the quality of the songs or musicianship.

As along time Who fan, I'm not going to try and convince anyone that this album is as good or better than Tommy or Who's Next,but it is as good or better than some of their work. Despite what other's may say, all the songs here, both Pete and John's, are great songs. You Better You Bet, Cache Cache, Don't Let Go The Coat, and Another Tricky Day are as catchey and well contructed as anything Pete has done and the Quiet One and You are definitely two of the best songs Entwistle has ever written. The Quiet One and You are also as abrasive and raw as any studio tracks the Who ever did. Those songs come as close to the claasic Who live sound as anything.

I would also like to say that I was as sad as any other true fan when Keith Moon died,but I don't feel the rest of the band betrayed his memmory by carrying on. I also think that trashing Kenny Jones is pretty childish as well. I don't know if any of the other critics below are musicians or not, but I am and I thought Kenny's playing on both Face Dances and It's Hard was very impressive. He may not have had the frenzied , almost out of control style that made Keith so great, but his inventive use of varied rhythms and beats had alot of impact on the songs here.

The bottom line here is, Face Dances may not be the best Who album, but it is a very good one.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Unfairly Maligned July 1, 2008

By Paul Phipps

Format:Audio CD

I love this album. That may have something to do with the fact that it was the first Who album I ever bought (I was 14). But I also think the songs are great. They remind me a bit of the mid-sixties "Pop Who" as they bounce, snip and snipe. Kenney Jones does a fine job, and it's unfortunate that he's gotten so much flack for accepting the bands offer to join. Of course he's not Keith Moon! No one is.
The only issue I have with this album is in the production. If they'd taken off even just a bit of the gloss it would have made a vast improvement I think. There's something a bit flat about the production. Though Bill Symczek (or however you spell his name) shouldn't necessarily take the blame either. The Who must have been familiar with his work - and for California rock such as The Eagles his production worked - but for The Who not so much. The band chose him though, so it's on their shoulders. Still though, I consider this a very underrated album. Songs like Don't Let Go The Coat, Another Tricky Day, You Better You Bet, and Entwistle's The Quiet One. There's a lot of humor to much of the material as well. It's the Who getting back to the more Pop approach they'd had early in their career. If the production hadn't taken the balls away from the sound then I think fans would have been more forgiving. Anyway, great album cover too! Enjoy!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars CD remaster makes the best of a patchy affair February 4, 2000

By Jules

Format:Audio CD

I don't have this at the moment - the first copies of this remaster had a faulty track which had been wrongly mastered (It's In You) and although MCA in the US fixed it, Polydar UK don't seem to have bothered! So British Who fans, buy yourself an American copy from Amazon! "Face Dances" was always a hit and miss affair - but it's not half as lousy as "Who Are You" (Moon or no Moon!). Best tracks are Another Tricky Day, You Better You Bet, Daily Records, You and one of the contemporary bonus cuts Somebody Saved Me (which Pete later did as a solo effort) - this CD is well worth it for these songs, but only if you've bought the more essential Who albums already ("Sell Out", "Tommy", "Who's Next", "Quadrophenia", "Odds & Sods", "Who By Numbers" and either the box set or a good singles/best of package like "Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy").

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars No Ones Getting Fooled Again June 6, 2010

By Andre S. Grindle TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Audio CD

It's kind of hard to realize sometimes this album came along a decade after one of The Who's classic albums Who's Next. The interesting thing about this album to me is I've often used it as an example of an album that's been issued a lot when a lot of other albums that are truly lost classics remain just that-lost. Now that doesn't exactly change my opinion of this album within it's place in The Who's catalog. It's hard not to hear this album and realize that the last time they hit the studio and the record racks with Who Are You Keith Moon was still alive and still with the band. Well by now he was gone and Kenney Jones,who'd been working with the band live for the past three years or so finally joined them on their first studio outing since Moon's passing. More than a member of the band had passed;an era had too. In the early 80's any pop music form perceived as extravagent in any way,from disco to progressive rock were more or less being frozen out of the mainstream in favor of new wave and other,more sussinct styles of music. Weather or not one chooses to look at The Who as a prog rock or hard rock band is beside the point;this just wasn't really the time for any of that. One thing in their favor was both Pete Townsand and John Enstwistle's abilities at crafting great pop songs and coming up with musical ideas that rocked with a sense of genuine emotion,intelligence and creativity. What's interesting here is that while their are some harder edged guitar rockers here such as "The Quiet One","Don't Let Go The Coat","How Can You Do It Alone" and "You" (Pete has to have something to smash guitars to,right?...) actually have just the amount of emotion to make their link to their 70's sound a little easier to take for more "keep it real" 80's underground rockers who were looking to laugh The Who off the planet by this time as a dinasaur band. Pete Townsand provides two excellent pop/rock tunes in "You Better You Bet" and "Another Tricky Day" and other songs such as "Did You Steal My Money","Daily Records" and "Cache Cache",via musical references to people like Todd Rundgren and Hall & Oates such as tight vocal harmonies and stop/start rhythms actually owe something to a kind of modernized version of The Who's R&B roots. For a band that once proudly covered Motown hits in their early years the disco freeze out made anything that smacked of R&B dance music as "unhip",even if rock stars were doing it. Well at least The Who had the balls enough not to forget where they came from on those songs. The bonus tracks feature the likeminded "I Like Nightmares",the more dramatic "It's In You" and the strong,Stonesy rocker "Somebody Saved Me". All these songs were unreleased from these sessions and all written by Pete Townsand. The bonuses round off with hard rock live versions of "How Can You Do It Alone" and "The Quiet One",both edgier and more guitar solo oriented than the studio versions. This is definately not The Who's greatest album but it's certainly a very strong and actually pretty inventive album for something from a re-imagined group lineup making a comeback album in an entirely new decade. Read more ›