Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

Hello all,

I just got hold of the DVD of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival in
England. I had always heard about this concert, but had never seen any of
the footage. The DVD was only two hours long, so they must have left out a
lot, but there were some interesting performances.

There's a good version of the Moodies playing "Nights" (the whole song)
with Pinder at the MKII. This is probably the best concert footage I've seen
of them from that period, when there was just the five of them and the
Mellotron. There were some fine shots of the MKII with its top on backwards,
and Pinder playing both keyboards. There was also some mysterious little box
with three knobs that I noticed sitting on top.

This DVD is worth seeing for some other reasons too, including
performances by Free, Jethro Tull, The Doors, the first concert (so they
said) by Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and the last performances by Jimi Hendrix
and Jim Morrison.

Did anyone on the list go to this concert? It seems that there was a
lot of trouble with people trying to get in for free and the promoters trying
to keep them out with huge metal fences and dogs. Looked like there were a
lot of angry hippies there. Joni Mitchell reduced to tears in the middle of
her set, Kris Kristoferson booed off stage during one of his songs. I'm
surprised that I've never seen any of this video before.

Ken M.