One of the most amazing things about rock spectacles is that no matter how many play St. Louis there is always something new in the way of lighting and effects to make the next concert seem a little more special than the last. That was the impression the British rock quartet, The Who, made in its long-awaited return to the Checkerdome on Monday night.

It wasn't that the band relied on effects to make the concert. It was simply that those effects were placed so carefully that when they came, they had the same impact as the opening sequence in the chariot race of "Ben Hur." As in the race, the crowd could expect substance.

The band, which features the always active Roger Daltrey on lead vocals, Peter Townshend on lead guitar and giant leaps, the stoic John Entwistle on bass and the hard-pounding Kenney Jones on drums, opened with "Substitute." It then moved immediately to "I Can't Explain," the song that started the group on its way in 1964.

Daltrey held forth on the first two, then it was Entwistle's turn at the microphone with one of his own compositions, "Dangerous," from The

Peter Townshend of The Who

Who's latest album, "It's Hard."

It was after that — with Daltrey on lead vocals for "Sister Disco" — that the concert featured one of its grandest spectacles. Four banks of three minispots on the overhead lighting system began to move to the music, changing colors as they momentarily spotlighted the audience. Then just as the dancing lights were into their finale, banks of white spotlights at the four corners of the great stage flooded the building like a movie scene of the London blitzkrieg.

Entwistle was then back to sing "The Quiet One." Daltrey followed with "It's Hard" and Townshend then sang "Eminence Front," both from the latest album.

Everything up to that point had been filled with energy. They interrupted the pattern when Daltrey sang a ballad from '71 called "Behind Blue Eyes."

With "Baba O'Riley," Daltrey marched in place as Townshend flew in great leaps and then gave his guitar several bolo slaps.

It was about then that Entwistle came forward to sing "Boris the Spider," one of the cutest numbers the group has ever done. As he sang lead, it was the job of Daltrey and Townshends to sing the choruses, which went "creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly." They did it with such conviction that when Townshend leaped to slap a foot down on the floor, everyone suspected that it was goodbye Boris and no remorse.

Townshend followed with "Drowned," and a bit later the three up front were harmonizing on "Who Are You?"

Before the concert ended, there were several other songs, most notably "Pinball Wizard" and "See Me, Feel Me" from Townshend's rock opera, "Tommy," which was made into a successful motion picture.

At the end of those numbers the special moving lights went into their act once again and then as Jones lifted his drumsticks high into the air and brought them crashing down, there was an explosion that brought the audience out of their seats. A moment later, the giant bank of lights on the overhead at the rear of the stage dropped 10 feet on one side. It was enough for Daltrey to take notice, but the show went on.

A quintet from Detroit called the Rockets opened. The band had a good 30-minute set, but the crowd didn't give the group a chance. It impatiently Who-Who-Who'd after each number, which was stupid because there was an hour wait between the sets. They could have been entertained instead.