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Moody Blues, The: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 (DVD)

Here's the companion DVD to the recently released Live at the Isle of Wight 1970 CD, featuring the classic line-up of The Moody Blues in front of 600,00 fans in 1970 at the UK's answer to Woodstock. If you are a fan of the bands early material, you'll instantly fall in love with this archival footage of their set, complete with many of the songs that you'll want to hear, such as the Mellotron drenched "Tuesday Afternoon", "Melancholy Man", the staple "Nights in White Satin", and the dramatic "Never Comes the Day". Though the band's nerves seem to have gotten the best of them early on in the show (some of the lead and backing vocals are a little rough in a few spots) they eventually all settled in and really delivered a killer set. Mike Pinder's Mellotron, along with Justin Hayward's vocals & guitar work, and Ray Thomas' flute, are the real stars here, the 'tron really upfront in the mix and providing that orchestral element to these airy prog and psychedelic tunes. The colors of the video are quite crisp for footage this old, and the camera angles were well done by the production crew. As for the audio, that also is very strong, the one drawback is during the encore "Ride My See Saw" it appears that much of the film and audio must have been either lost or was damaged, as they edited in footage & audio from later shows in to complete the song. This is probably the reason that a few of the songs from their full set are missing here, though you do hear some audio snippets of them during the interview segments. Otherwise, this is a splendid watch, and as a bonus you get some scattered interviews with the band members who talk about the event, the songs, and even former Moody Pinder, who goes into detail about the Mellotron and how the famous prog instrument works. Fascinating stuff from one of rock's classic bands, and kudos to Eagle Rock for once again delivering the goods and bringing a legendary live show to the masses.


Track Listing

  1. Gypsy
  2. Tuesday Afternoon
  3. Never Comes the Day
  4. Tortoise and the Hare
  5. Question
  6. The Sunset
  7. Melancholy Man
  8. Nights in White Satin
  9. Legend of a Mind
  10. Ride My See Saw

Added: June 6th 2010
Reviewer: Pete Pardo
Score:
Related Link: Eagle Rock Entertainment
Hits: 2476
Language: english

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Moody Blues, The: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 (DVD)
Posted by Pete Pardo, SoT Staff Writer on 2010-06-06 08:21:02
My Score:

**********This is a review of the 2010 Blu-Ray release of Threshold of a Dream-Live at the Isle of Wight Festival*******************

Chances are, if you have the 2009 DVD release of The Moody Blues Live at the Isle of Wight concert film, and own a Blu-Ray player, you might want to upgrade to this new edition of the film. The original DVDs audio & video quality was quite good, however, the Blu-Ray release is a revelation in spots. Though this footage is 40 years old, given the hi-def treatment, the humongous Isle of Wight festival, complete with hundreds of thousands of rock fans in attendace, is given new life. The panoramic camera shots of the large crowd and various scenic views look absolutely spectacular here, almost to the point where you can pick up faces in the crowd and the clothes they are wearing. The audio portions of the show where the band is playing just sounds great, with Mike Pinder's Mellotron and Justin Hayward's guitar up front and center, and though the video quality of the band on stage is not quite as spectacular as the crowd & scenic footage, it still looks very good for something of this age.

I'm deducting a half point here for Eagle Rock not taking advantage of the Blu-Ray medium and neglecting to throw in some Special/Bonus features here. This would have been a perfect opportunity to give Moody Blues fans some more content other than the film itself and prompt additional reasons why another purchase of the film is necessary.

Still, for loyal Moody Blues fans who have access to Blu-Ray technology, this will be a mandatory purchase, seeing as how little classic footage of the band is available.



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