Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 05/26/2009
Sad to say, not all of the footage that director
Murray Lerner shot of
the Moody Blues at the
1970 Isle of Wight Festival has survived -- with the result that
"Are You Sitting Comfortably" and
"Minstrel Song," two of the prettier songs in the group's repertory of this period, are only represented as fragments, as part of the opening 20-minute documentary segment of this concert film. So much time has elapsed between the shooting and recording of this material -- of which the bandmembers apparently had no knowledge, or had forgotten (it was the '60s, and a lot of stuff was forgotten) -- that the makers felt a framing documentary featuring the members of the band from 2008 was necessary. And it is sort of ironic that this disc appeared just as
the Moody Blues' 2009 U.S. tour got underway, which included a gig at
Radio City Music Hall in New York with a ticket price of $165.00 and up -- this DVD is a reminder that it has been a long, long time since
the Moody Blues have been able to deliver a show worth $165 to very many concertgoers. But back in 1970, with a ticket price of less than $25 for a three-day festival (that quickly got thrown open to hundreds of thousands of gate-crashers), they could deliver most of the goods. It's amazing to see
Mike Pinder's Mellotron struggling mostly successfully to orchestrate the group's work in concert in front of 600,000 people, working with woefully inadequate stacks of amplifiers and shaky power sources; and drummer
Graeme Edge is amazingly animated trying to fill in the group's sound, turning in a more frenzied performance than most people associate with his work on record. The real stars of the show are flautist/singer
Ray Thomas (the only member of the classic lineup who did not -- possibly for health reasons -- participate in the documentary; even the long-retired
Pinder made an extensive appearance), singer/guitarist
Justin Hayward, and bassist/singer
John Lodge, who turn in very good performances on their key repertory (
Pinder is also in good form, especially vocally, but he's sort of buried behind his Mellotron a lot of the time and, thus, doesn't work the audience much). They're animated enough and, amid their obvious amazement at the size of the crowd (which seems to go out to the horizon), put on a reasonably exciting show. Some of the footage of
Hayward singing seems to be cheating, in terms of substituting shots from other sections of given songs, or other songs entirely; but the group does acquit itself very well live, although one wishes that the missing songs were present, to fill out the set. The latter is well put together, with a good balance of the members' work represented, and they couldn't have stage-managed the presentation of
"The Sunset" any better, coming as it does just as night falls on the venue, and which allows
Hayward to present
"Nights in White Satin" in the proper setting as well. The latter is the one place here where it does seem as though the vocals have been doctored -- little of the singing elsewhere is perfect, and some of it is understandably ragged at times, but the voices there are too perfect for comfort, and is the film's one serious lapse, if they were, indeed, re-recorded.
"Tuesday Afternoon" also comes off better than expected, but there we can tell that it's really live because a word or two are lost through leakages and other flaws. In any case, this release is unique as the only truly live video performance of the band's classic lineup, and on that basis alone, whatever tampering may have been done, it is worth owning for longtime fans or the curious. And the documentary section in the opening even includes footage of the original, pre-psychedelic
Moody Blues doing a live version of
"Bo Diddley" from the
NME Poll Winners Concert at Wembley. The chaptering is generous and breaks the documentary section down more than adequately, and each song in the concert section gets a chapter marker as well.
~Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
;)
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