In their youth, before the operas and the arenas, the Who were an electric-soul band. Maximum R&B: That's what they called the music on that famous Marquee Club poster, and they meant it literally. On the original 1965 U.K. and '66 U.S. versions of My Generation, their debut album, the Who's savagings of Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" and James Brown's "I Don't Mind" and "Please, Please, Please" underscored the R&B roots of Pete Townshend's warrior-mod anthems ("Out in the Street," "A Legal Matter," the title blast). This two-CD reissue, with seventeen related singles and outtakes, adds more black lightning — torched-Motown covers; more JB ("Shout and Shimmy"); the brisk sass of "Daddy Rolling Stone," an Otis Blackwell bullet rescued from a '65 B side — and doubles as a thundering monument to the late John Entwistle, whose hard, deep bass attack brought new meaning to the word bottom.

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.