I'm a big Who fan, so I'll weigh in and split the Who catalog into 3 pieces:

1965  The Who Sings My Generation  MCA
1966  A Quick One (Happy Jack)  Reaction
1967  The Who Sell Out  MCA
1968  Magic Bus  MCA

1969  Tommy  MCA
1970   Live at Leeds  MCA
1971  Who's Next  MCA
1973  Quadrophenia  MCA

1975  The Who by Numbers  MCA
1978   Who Are You  MCA
1981   Face Dances  MCA
1982  It's Hard  MCA

That said, I love chapter 1 and 2 equally, although in different ways.  It's
almost like they are different bands.  Chapter 3 doesn't interest me for the
most part - I could probably make a comp of the highlights from the 4 final
LPS and it'd be fine with me if that's all I ever heard again from those
years.

Funny, 75 or 76 is the dividing line for most of my heroes who started in
the 60s or 70s - Elton John, Todd Rundgren, David Bowie, Paul McCartney,
Bruce Springsteen (actually, Bruce's dividing line  for me is about '81.)
Granted, they've all done stuff I like after the mid 70s, but they are
giants in my book for the stuff they did before that point in history.

By the way, is there a band that has more compilations that the Who?  They
must have released 24 comps of the material from 12 albums!