THE BIRTH OF A BAND - ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL 1970

Yet another DVD from the insane trio (almost forgot to add the "s" ;o), and after the Pictures At An Exhibition and the Masters From The Vaults, This is the third one to feature the very start of the band, and presents another facet of Isle Of Wight Festival, compared to Jethro Tull's DVD. Speaking of this, it's funny Greg Lake didn't see at all the ugliness of the scene, the way Tull did, apparently flying on his own cloud. Indeed, things were on a roll for the trio and superstardom awaited them after the festival, but it's hard to believe that they would've been oblivious of the near riots plaguing the festivities.

Apart from the opening interviews and a few features (notably on the Moog synth, which he still uses, but fails to show it from close), this is mostly a film of their second concert ever as a unit. Some of the tracks' on-stage footage are interrupted by some side issues and events of the festival, mostly naked girls in the sea, ferries assaulted by bikers and wild camping on neighbouring heights of the field. Outside a few glitches pointed by Clarke above, this DVD is not quite as bad as he makes it out to be.

As I spoke of the three above-mentioned choices of DVD, it is clear that there are overlaps between the three of them, not to mention the Beyond The Beginning extravaganza. Relatively difficult to discard one of them, but my choice would be the Master From the Vaults and the present one.