Soundboard recording
August 30, 1970 (early hours of Sunday morning)
East Afton Farm, Isle Of Wight, England
69: 27
1970 was the third and final festival on the island until thirty-two years later. It drew a larger crowd than Woodstock and the Doors took their place on the bill alongside such live heavyweights as the Who and Jimi Hendrix.
This is the complete show, an unmixed soundboard tape from a multi-track master recording. Some prefer the mix on the bootleg Palace Of Exile but it has a minute missing from The End and When The Music's Over is an edited version.
Scheduled for Saturday night, August 29th the Doors found themselves taking the stage in the early hours of Sunday morning due to the festival times over-running, a common occurrence in those days unlike modern festivals where everything is regimented and run like clockwork, witness the sight of Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie being manhandled offstage at Glastonbury when he decided that the band would play one more song
The set-list was dominated by tracks from the first two albums with only Ship Of Fools and Roadhouse Blues making an appearance mid-set from the current album Morrison Hotel.
Just over three months later the Doors final live shows with Jim took place on December 11th & 12th
TRACKS:
1. Introduction - 0:18
2. Back Door Man - 4:18
3. Break On Through - 4:53
4. When The Music's Over - 13:31
5. Ship Of Fools - 7:37
6. Roadhouse Blues - 6:07
7. Light My Fire - 14:21
8. The End - 18:18
BAND:
Jim Morrison: lead vocals
Robby Krieger: guitar, vocals
Ray Manzarek: keyboards, keyboard bass, vocals
John Densmore: drums, percussion
ORIGINAL NOTES:
The Doors, August 30, 1970 (Sunday)
East Afton Farm, "The Isle Of Wight Festival"
Isle Of Wight, England [Soundboard Recording]
Multi-Track Master > DAT > DAT > CDR > WAV >
Flac Frontend > FLAC (lvl 8, SBE aligned)
Dust out your Doors collection. Finally, from the vault of an anonymous Doors fan, comes a previously unsurfaced audio recording. Consider it a surprise present to Doors fans on Jim Morrison's birthday.
For years, The Doors' performance at the Isle Of Wight has only been available in an edited or incomplete form. The most popular release, "Palace Of Exile," is missing over a minute in the middle of "The End" and the intro to "When The Music's Over" is severly edited. Audience recordings of the show are missing "Roadhouse Blues." Previously on this site someone offered a matrix of the audience and soundboard sources in order to recreate the complete concert in the best quality available. Now for the first time, we have a master DAT source for the COMPLETE Isle Of Wight concert in perfect soundboard quality. At almost 70 minutes total, this is as good as it gets until an official release gets made -- if one is ever made.
This comes direct from the multi-track master recording. Quality is near perfect. The only downside is that the stereo separation isn't very good. It sounds like it's an unmixed copy of the multi-track master. So you'll hear Ray's organ more in the center than it should be and Ray's vocals are mixed way down so you don't hear them at all during "Break On Through" and other songs. (A good thing for some?) Still, I would place the overall quality as better than "Palace Of Exile." Little to no hiss. Bass level is much more reasonable. Sharper sound quality overall.
Now just what did I do to the original recording before posting it here? Thankfully, not much. There were a handful of clicks/pops throughout the recording that I removed individually using Adobe Audition. (The glitch during the announcer's introduction is on the original tape and couldn't be repaired without cutting it down.) I also swapped the channels so that Robby's guitar is in the right channel where it should be. The biggest change I made was balancing the channel levels and bringing everything up. This small change really punched up the sound compared to the original transfer. There was no EQ or other tricky business involved. Sounds pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. If anyone wants the original transfer, I'm open to trades.
One small note: About 4:29 into "The End," the music drops out for about 5 seconds and you only hear Jim's voice. Not sure why, but "Palace" doesn't have this mixing error. Also, regarding the date of this performance: The Doors were scheduled to play on August 29th, Saturday night, but didn't actually get on stage until 2:00am on Sunday morning, August 30th. Hence the date I have listed. (Date information taken from Greg Shaw's book, The Doors On The Road.)
A big thank you to the Doors fan who shared this rare tape. He/She wishes to remain anonymous on this one. I'm merely acting as middleman, and I'm happy to do so. -Porsche
