STAMPING GROUND

In late June 1970 the Kralingen Pop Festival (named Stamping Ground, derived from the pioneers in the West who gathered to celebrate and do spirituals things) took place in Rotterdam as a Dutch answer to the Woodstock and Isle Of Wight festivals. The band list was impressive: Santana, Al Stewart, Canned Heat, T-Rex, Jefferson Airplane, It's A Beautiful Day, Family, Country Joe, Dr. John & The Night Trippers, Flock, The Byrds and Pink Floyd! The video is a very tasteful registration of a festival with lots of great bands and a crowd that looked so happy: many hippies with water pipes, hasj and coloured cloths, people who jumped naked into the water, made love or went asleep because of the drugs and accohol, wonderful and legendary scenes. You also see images from The Netherlands: flat and green landscapes with windmills and Amsterdam with their typical houses, canals and bridges (young tourist Brian Aydair will show you his pictures from that!).

But of course the focus is on the music and there was a lot to enjoy on that point: Al Stewart a few years before his breakthrough with Year Of The Cat, Marc Bolan with T-Rex a few years before his death, Family with an appreciated vocal performance by Roger Chapman (raw and so distinctive), Dr. John & The Night Trippers with flaming torches in the dark, The Byrds, always pleasant to hear and the brand new Prog Archives addition Jefferson Airplane with a compelling (sometimes bit unpitched) version of White Rabbit. The two highlights on this video are two famous bands that still make music. First Santana, they stunned the crowd with their latin-prog sound, based upon the powerful and emotional guitarwork by Carlos Santana, the propulsive percussion play (conga's and timbales) and the swirling Hammond B3 organ sound by Greg Rolie. And second the final act from this 3-day festival, Pink Floyd: although the images are a bit dark, the sheer psychedelic atmosphere is amazing with mindblowing, very inspired versions from Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun and A Saucerful Of Secrets. It seemed that Pink Floyd enjoyed themselves so much that they stretched the latter song to eternity, we can witness fine views on Rick Wright playing the Farfisa organ runs and David Gilmour delivering his emotional vocal contribution, goose bumps!

There is also a DVD version but in my opinion it is illegal (from Brasil) so I have added this video, a historical muscial document, loaded with progressive rock moments.