LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL 1970

When I watched the DVD of Pain of Salvation BE live where I knew that the performance was made a year before the concept album BE was released, my memory reminded to ELP's "Live at The Isle of Wight Festival 1970". The two are not similar in style but the two have made similar thing: doing a concert without yet releasing the songs being played during the show. In this concert ELP performed what (in the next months) would be coming out in the next studio album of ELP. So, the crowd who attended the festival was not aware about ELP's music by the time they saw the show. The show itself was a quite theatrical in nature with the dynamic stage acts of Keith Emerson. The festival was held for icons of 70s music like Jim Morison and The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, The Who.

Knowing such background one should not expect good recording quality of this CD. But for me, that's okay. The recording technology at the time was quite primitive in a sense of providing the best for prog music like ELP.

As far as live concert concern, I would say that songs which were performed by the band during the show were really good especially with improvisations on Keith Emerson Hammond as well as Carl Palmer's dynamic drumming that really colored the show. At the end of the CD there is a discussion about the festival.

As this is a very important stepping stone for one of prog rock legendary bands on planet earth, I would suggest you to own the CD even though the CD sonic quality is not quite good. Well, you might consider it as a documentary album. Keep on proggin' ..!

Peace on earth and mercy mild - GW