The thing I want to draw attention though is a remarkable offer that comes with the deluxe version of the CD (worth it anyway for Waterloo Sunset, otherwise unavailable). You get a code with it that buys a three month trial of membership at the Bower & Wilkins Society of Sound site. The details are here:

The stunning super-high quality version of Peter Gabriel’s new album ‘Scratch My Back’ is available now from Society of Sound as a 24-bit FLAC download.

If you have bought an enhanced CD you will have a voucher code entitling you to download the album from us as well as giving you three months full membership. If you don’t own the album you can subscribe for six or twelve months to access it.

This means you get not only the high-res version of Scratch my Back (without Waterloo Sunset, unfortunately), but also “any past albums of the month” on Society of Sound, many of which are also in 24-bit FLAC. I counted 19 albums in all, with artists including David Rhodes, Ennio Morricone, Speed Caravan, Brett Anderson, Charlie Winston, Gwyneth Herbert, Tom Kerstens, Skip McDonald, and the Portico Quartet.

I’ve been working through them and enjoying what I hear.

This still begs the question, of course, of whether hi-res is audibly any different from standard CD quality. If this is a question that interests you, as it does me, then you get plenty of material to experiment with. In addition, the overall standard of the recording quality found here seems excellent.

Why distinctive? Well, most consumer hi-fi is based on passive speakers with an external amplifier. There are lots of active monitors on the market aimed at the professional audio engineer, but most of these lack the pre-amp, DAC and remote.

What is an active speaker? Read the review; but in a nutshell it is one where each speaker driver has a dedicated amplifier, so that the crossover, which divides the audio signal into frequencies suitable for each driver, works on a low-level signal rather than one that is already amplified. This is well-known to reduce distortion. It also means that the amplifiers can be tailored exactly to the characteristics of the speaker drivers, since they are the only ones they ever have to drive.

The ADM 9.1 is expensive, but less so than the very high-end active systems on the market from the likes of Naim and Bang and Olufsen.

It raises the question: why are there not more active systems in consumer hi-fi? The short answer is that they do not sell that well, because they are inherently more expensive – you need at least double the number of amplifiers, presuming a two-way loudspeaker.

The long answer, claimed by AVI, is that the hi-fi industry is wedded to the idea of an upgrade cycle that keeps customers buying more. Passive systems, with several separate boxes, are more amenable to that process.

For my money I get a tri-fold package with photos from the tour, and a 12-page booklet with more photos and credits.

The CDs between them have 33 tracks – not bad value.

Still, I could have downloaded from Apple iTunes for £9.99 – which is a little less, or a little more, than the CD price depending whether you compare with what I paid or the best current deal.

What is annoying though is that the iTunes download has two additional tracks:

• 5.15 the Angels Have Gone
• Days

They are probably nothing special; but it is irritating.

On the other hand, iTunes has its annoyances too. The tracks are lossy-compressed; and even if you don’t think the difference is audible, that is still a disadvantage if you want to convert to some other format, as generational loss creeps in. I miss out on the packaging (though there may be some digital booklet, I’m not sure). In addition, the rights I purchase are non-transferable, so if I decide I don’t like the album, I can’t stick it on eBay to reduce my loss.

The end result of each purchase is similar, as I rip the CD for streaming anyway.

On balance, I think the CD is a better buy; but I can see where this is going.

I like Abba. I did then and I didn’t admit it. The snobbery of the time wouldn’t allow it.

Quite. Which is why a couple of years ago I bought the 4CD set Thank you for the Music, and not only do I love it, I admire what they did, the technique, the melody and the emotion.

I may have been foolish to buy it. It sounds like Eno doubts we will have to for much longer:

I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn’t last, and now it’s running out. I don’t particularly care that it is and like the way things are going.

Kudos to Eno for portraying this not as some evil thing, but just something of our time. I love Spotify; millions of songs on demand and for free. I’m not sure how long Spotify itself will last, but clearly the era of the record shop is over and there are many reasons to be glad about that – even if one cannot help a little nostalgia for the fun of browsing the racks and the excitement of setting the needle onto a groove for the first time, or the CD equivalent.

Maybe I will write more about this when I have listened to it properly, but in the meantime a few observations.

This is completist heaven. There is always argument about whether reissues should feature the original mix (for authenticity) or a new mix (to benefit from modern noise-free mixing techniques). The makers of the recent Genesis boxes contentiously chose the latter. DGM by contrast offers both.

Not only that, you get several versions of both. You get a new 2009 mix in CD and several DVD versions – several DVD versions because only DVD audio players can cope with the highest resolution, and most people only have DVD video players – so we end up with a 2009 surround mix in two audio versions; a 2009 stereo mix in two audio versions; and the original mix as mastered in 2004 in two audio versions.

It doesn’t stop there. We also get a needledrop from the first pressing of the UK vinyl release on Island Records; and an alternate take version of the album with different performances, such as an instrumental-only 21st Century Schizoid Man.

Then there are the other extras: the full version of Moonchild; a live concert from 1969 (Hyde Park, July 5th combined with Filmore East, New York in November); a mono album mix issued for US radio.

If 5 CDs and a DVD aren’t enough for you, you can also enjoy the LP-size box, which enables the original artwork to be printed at its proper size, and inserts including a well-written 24 page booklet, two photographs from the era, and rattling aimlessly about inside, two little badges.

But I promised some observations, not just a description. I love the album; never be deceived by the opening clamour of 21st Century Schizoid Man, this is thoughtful music, not a mindless thrash. It was extraordinary hearing it for the first time; I’m not sure when that was for me – not 1969, but a couple of years later. It might have been on that wonderful Island Records sampler, Nice Enough to Eat, which I listened to in 1972 or thereabouts. If any album deserves this kind of treatment, this one does.

It was particularly thoughtful of the compilers to include the vinyl needledrop and the full-size artwork. Still … as it happens I have the record, not the first pressing, but an early ILPS, 4U matrix if you really want to know.

I played the record and then the CD needledrop. You know what? My record sounds better to my ears. Oddly, on the “declicked” needledrop you can easily hear pre-echo of the opening salvo of Schizoid, where it goes from very quiet to very loud. This is a vinyl flaw, where a quiet groove picks up a faint echo of the louder groove which follows it. My cut doesn’t have that, at least not audibly. It also sounds richer, more open, more dynamic.

Another thing I noticed: the artwork. Honestly, you have to see an early pressing of the original LP to appreciate this very striking image. The definition is much better, the colours more vibrant, those eyes – they stare manically out of the original, in the new print they are muted.

I’m guessing that they didn’t manage to get hold of the original artwork, and that what we have here is a print of a print.

Never mind. If you love this album, get the box; it is fantastic. You can get it from burning shed.

Despite the enduring popularity of the band, the Beatles music is not available on iTunes … yet. Naturally, the pundits foresaw a Beatlish announcement.

It seemed obvious; but doubts were raised when the official invitations went out. The invitations bore a lyric not from Lennon and/or McCartney, but rather from the Rolling Stones: It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.

As it turned out, Apple (computer) announced new iPods and an update to iTunes, but there was nothing about the Beatles.

What goes on? It’s now clear that the remastered Beatles were headed for iTunes – and probably still are – but whatever deal was in place fell through. The first evidence was a rapidly withdrawn comment from Yoko Ono shortly before the press event. Now we have confirmation from Bob Smeaton, who created mini-documentaries that are included with the new CDs:

Originally what happened was, the albums were going to be released on iTunes but that deal, you know, fell through for whatever reason. Some sort of political reason. So we actually set about creating a mini-documentary for each of the albums, so that when you bought the albums on iTunes, if you bought the whole album, because on iTunes you can pick like one song, right, if you bought the whole album, as an incentive to buy the whole album rather than just to cherry-pick songs, you would get this mini-documentary.

Indeed, this idea of bonus non-musical content that you get when purchasing an entire album from iTunes was announced yesterday. The concept is imaginatively called the iTunes LP – but only a few examples are available so far, just six according to Cult of Mac – Dylan’s Highway 61, The Doors 40th anniversary hits, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, and albums by the Dave Matthews Band, Tyrese Gibson and Norah Jones. Pretty unexciting, especially when compared to a might-have-been announcement of all the Beatles albums appearing on iTunes for the first time and in the snazzy new format.

Of course you can have the Beatles in iTunes if you want to. Just buy the CDs and import them; and I’ve heard tell of other methods that fall foul of copyright.

Still, it seems Apple (computer) vs Apple (corps) is not quite over yet. No wonder Steve Jobs chose a lyric from that other Sixties band to launch the iTunes LP.

The band has already released two singles, both excellent: the affecting, ethereal Chalk Stars, and the pulsating Tin Man, a love song for the electronic age. Both songs feature here, along with the new single Signs and Wonders which is not quite the equal of the first two, but still a catchy number.

What you get is Richard Sauberlich’s delicate, keening vocals; lyrics which are quirky and mystical, and music that is pacey and tuneful. The band cite a broad range of influences from Arcade Fire, to Dylan, to the Cure, to Massive Attack, all of which can be heard in snatches here and there.

As you might expect from an album called Signs and Wonders, there’s plenty of biblical imagery: Two by Two (think Noah’s Ark), Walls of Jericho, Mephistopheles, and more.

It all passes pleasantly enough, and that in a way is the problem. Could there be a tension between the band’s darker instincts and its pursuit of that elusive mass market? At times this CD is just a bit too pretty and poppy. By contrast, my favourite track is the swirling Mephistopheles, declaimed rather than sung, and featuring disturbing, evocative imagery against a pounding but delicate keyboard background.

Not perfect then; but Signs and Wonders is well worth it for its best moments, which are superb. Catch Animal Kingdom live if you can, and watch this space.

Animal Kingdom is Richard Sauberlich (vocals, guitar, piano), Wayne Yardley (guitar), Hamish Crombie (bass) and Geoff Lea (drums).

The album opens with some twanging guitar and the words “Last night I had the strangest dream”, setting a surreal atmosphere that persists throughout.

Favourite track: It was a sunny Summer day, a bland title disguising a cascade of melody, a touch of Carribean percussion, and bittersweet lyrics "it was a sunny summer day, when all my hope drifted away…"

"I know a place where you and I could go, if you’re up for trying something new" (from the second track) – give it a go. You don’t even need to buy it; try it on Spotify, which is where I discovered it, though I went on to buy the CD from the record label’s site:

http://www.sincerelyyours.se/boutique.php

proving that online music services really can result in a purchase.

Quadrophenia is one of my favourite albums, though I don’t know how much this is because of inherent artistic quality, and how much because it resonated with me when it first appeared 36 years ago. It is not really about multiple personalities, more about the multiple roles that all of us play, such as child, worker, lover, rebel, and the conflicting feelings that can engender. It is about dysfunctional families, drugs, sex, gangs, and the stress of trying to conform to conflicting norms, such as dutiful worker vs rebellious youth culture. It is quasi-religious, with the rain and the sea representing some higher power.

The show was disappointing. Why? Well, the first problem is the stage layout. The musicians are at the back of the stage, on an extraordinary two-storey platform, and it’s pretty hard to see what they are doing since during most of the show the lights are elsewhere. During the second half of the performance, it is even harder to see the band because of a big circle thing that appears in front. I suppose this was somewhat like having the orchestra in a pit at a classical opera; but I didn’t like it. A rock concert is about the dynamics between the band and the audience, and if you put all these barriers in the way, it makes it hard for the music to live.

The main part of the stage was where the action took place. Jimmy, the lead character in Quadrophenia, is played by four actors, the idea being that each one represents a different face of his internal personas. In an early scene we see Jimmy seated on a sofa between his parents; just as he gets comfortable, an alter ego Jimmy comes and turfs him out of his place, only to be displace in turn shortly after. I thought that was effective; but in general having four actors did not work well. The first problem was that they were not sufficiently distinct; frankly, I couldn’t tell you what kinds of characteristics each of the four was meant to represent. Second, the artifice of having four Jimmys on stage together when in a sense there was only one of them was largely unsuccessful. I would rather have had them mostly on stage one at a time.

There was no speech, just the music and singing Who songs. Not all the songs were from Quadrophenia – we also got some other early Who numbers like My Generation. However, the singers also did a poor job of engaging with the audience – in fact, at some points I wasn’t sure if they were singing or miming to a recording. There was a lot of jumping around and climbing up the big circular thing, which rotated.

The show is lacking in contrasts. Quadrophenia is a album of transitions: the claustrophobia of a small terraced house where Jimmy lives with his mum and dad; the scooter as the vehicle to the freedom of the open road; the “5.15” train which takes Jimmy to Brighton, place of conflict and redemption, and to the sea. The show does a poor job of representing these contrasting places and colours; each scene feels the same as the one before it.

The singers were competent but not strong enough for what they took on. Roger Daltrey is a hard act to follow, for sure. At times during choral sections Quadrophenia reminded me of Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat, a jolly musical originally intended for schools; I do not think Quadrophenia should ever sound like that.

My advice for the next tour: bring the band into view; lose half the actors; have one Jimmy at a time; sing at the audience not at one another, and sing your heart out. Quadrophenia deserves it.

PS for some alternate views see the official forum; lots of praise on there. At Nottingham the audience reaction was mixed; strong applause at the end, yet the seats in front of us were filled for the first half and empty for the second.

Quadrophenia is among my favourite albums – not for the daft story, but because the music and lyrics speak to me of the frustration and glory of being human, or something. But do I want to see it performed by musicians other than The Who? At one time I’d have said, no way. Why settle for an imitation when you can have the real thing?

The trouble is, you can’t any more. Keith Moon died in 1978; John Entwistle in 2002. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend still tour and no doubt put on a good show from time to time – I saw The Who in January 2002, at which time Entwistle was still around, and enjoyed it tremendously. Still, at best with these aging bands there is always an element of “it’s amazing how good they are considering”, and at worst it can be embarrassing. I saw Jethro Tull in Derby in 2007, and while the musicianship was generally impressive, my memory is dominated by the failings of Ian Anderson’s voice, which spoilt most of the songs through no fault of his.

It is also rather strange to see bands whose music is laden with the sexual tension of youth performing the same songs at a later stage of life. What is “Hope I die before I get old” meant to mean, sung by a 65-year old Daltrey?

The bottom line is that I have mixed feelings about seeing performances like these. I still go to see Bob Dylan, who is even older, but that’s partly because I see it as a pilgrimage to see one of the greats, and partly because Dylan is more able to be his age, thanks to the songs he writes and continues to write, and the fact the he’s been fixin’ to die since his very first album in 1962.

So when I saw that the Quadrophenia show is on locally, I thought twice about it. Is it possible that tribute show of younger performers could put more energy into it than the current Who? Well, yes, it is possible. And once old rockers like The Who and The Rolling Stones hang up their touring boots for the last time, it will be this or nothing.

I’m also encouraged by knowing that Pete Townshend is involved to some degree in the show. He talks about it – or actually writes, since it’s an email interview, in an illuminating piece in The Times. He includes a comment pertinent to this post:

Have you ever been to see a rock musical based on a back-catalogue?

I live inside one. Musicals based on back-catalogues are becoming a saturated market. How can rock musicals avoid being watered-down exercises in asset-stripping?

Let me ask another question. When all those nostalgic for the music of their youth have moved on, will today’s revered rock classics ever be performed live? In most cases, I’m guessing the answer is no. In a few cases though, maybe an evening out to hear a performance of Blonde on Blonde or The Dark Side of the Moon or Quadrophenia will be accepted in the same way as we treat other music from composers long gone, who knows?

I’m booking to see Quadrophenia.