Live At the Isle of Wight 1970

Following the release of A Question of Balance the Moody Blues were a seemingly unstoppable force on the album charts in both the U.K. and the U.S. With four of their albums reaching the heights of the Top Ten in both countries, the Moodys were certainly hitting their zenith of popularity by the time the 1970 Isle of White Festival lineup was announced. Along with some of the biggest names in rock (Jimi Hendrix, the Who, ELP, Jethro Tull), the Moody Blues took the stage in front of what some historians estimate to be a crowd of over half a million -- and they recorded it. Here, probably for the first time in a legitimate sense, is the document of that in-their-prime performance, Eagle Records' Live at the Isle of Wight 1970. Songwriter/flutist Ray Thomas gets a bit shafted on this set-list (only his ...Lost Chord gem, "Legend of a Mind," appears), but he may have been merely the victim of an ambitious concert song selection that focused on highlighting the pastoral and psychedelic extremes of the band at the time. Ditching any references to their Merseybeat past, this set pulls exclusively from the prog-lite stuff (Days of Future Passed through Question of Balance) and highlights the exceptional Mellotron mastery of "orchestra in a box" keyboardist Michael Pinder. ~ J. Scott McClintock