Mar Y Sol Pop Festival, Manati, Puerto Rico, 4-3-1972, Part 1: Cactus, Faces & More

Here is the first part of the third, and last, day of the 1972 Mar Y Sol Pop Festival. Unfortunately, for this last day of the festival, I wasn't able to find as much music as I found for the first two days. So I just have portions of sets. This has music from Cactus, the Faces, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Potliquor.

The four Cactus songs all come from official sources. The first three are from a live album called "'Ot 'n' Sweaty," released in 1972. The fourth song, "Bedroom Marurka," is from the official live album of the festival, "Mar y Sol: The First International Puerto Rico Pop Festival."

Cactus broke up a couple of months after this festival. Two band members, bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, joined with Jeff Beck to form the band Beck, Bogert and Appice, releasing an album later in 1972. Here's the Wikipedia entry about Cactus:

Cactus (American band) - Wikipedia 

The Faces, starring Rod Stewart, were one of the main headliners of the festival. However, they didn't perform last on the last day, as one might expect of a headliner. Apparently, the organizers realized that the audience size steadily declined towards the ends of festivals like this, so it was better to have the headliners on earlier. (Interesting fact: when Jimi Hendrix performed at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, most of the audience had left already. Only about 30,000 to 100,000 of the peak 600,000 people remained.) Unfortunately, we only have three songs from the Faces. All three of those are unreleased.

There's just one song here from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the jazz fusion band led by guitarist John McLaughlin, "Noonward Race." But it's an impressive 13-minute-long instrumental. It comes from the official live album of the festival. Here the Wikipedia entry about this band:

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Wikipedia

Finally, that leaves the final song, from a band called Potliquor. This band played Southern rock with a Louisiana influence, since they were from Louisiana. They were together from 1969 to 1973 (plus a reunion in the late 1970s), and put out three albums in those years. Unfortunately, they were signed to a small record label and didn't get much promotion or distribution help. They were building some momentum, but that ended when the band broke up after only a few years. Their one song here is unreleased.

Here's their Wikipedia entry:

Potliquor - Wikipedia

This album is 59 minutes long. 

01 Swim (Cactus)
02 Bad Mother Boogie (Cactus)
03 Our Lil Rock 'n' Roll Thing (Cactus)
04 talk (Cactus)
05 Bedroom Mazurka (Cactus)
06 It's All Over Now (Faces)
07 Maggie May (Faces)
08 Miss Judy's Farm (Faces)
09 Noonward Race [Instrumental] (Mahavishnu Orchestra)
10 The Train (Potliquor)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/DHMVDrgp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/izVfQzS9XcCFAi3/file

The cover image of Rod Stewart is from this exact concert. The original picture was in black and white, but I converted it to color with the Kolorize program.

Isle of Wight Festival, Afton Down, Isle of Wight, Britain, 8-27-1970 to 8-30-1970 - 8-28-1970: Part 4: Family, Procol Harum & Cactus

This is the final album from August 28, 1970 of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Three bands are featured here, but most of the songs were performed by Procol Harum.

Given that most or all of the festival's music was professionally recorded, I don't know why some parts of it has been made public and other parts of it have not. Fourteen songs were released on the album "The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies" in 1971, including one by Procol Harum and two by Cactus. But somehow most of the Procol Harum set has come out on bootleg with excellent sound, and none of the Cactus set has.

Only three songs from the Family set have emerged, with varying levels of quality. "The Weaver's Answer" sounds particularly good because it was included in the documentary movie about the festival, "Message to Love." I have read that a couple more songs they played are out there with worthy sound quality, "Procession" and "Drowned in Wine," but I can't find them. If you have them, please let me know so I can add them in.

Unfortunately, even with Procol Harum, this is only a partial set. It is known these songs were also played: "Whisky Train," "Conquistador," a medley of 1950s hits "Go! Go! Go!," "High School Confidential," and "Lucille," and the finale, "Whaling Stories." It's a particular shame no recording of that 1950s medley has emerged, because the band almost never played cover versions, and there are no recordings of them performing that anywhere else.

Procol Harum's lead singer Gary Brooker later commented that the band generally enjoyed the festival, despite it being cold when they played: "Of course it was cold while we were waiting to go on, but once you are playing you soon get hot and sweaty. I really enjoyed playing there, it was not a bit like an American festival. Their festivals are into politics as much as the music and they tend to go on for a whole weekend without a break because it does not get cold at night. It was nice to play to an audience who had come solely for the music, in the most part."

Here's what Cactus drummer Carmine Appice had to say about the festival:

“The thing that I remember the most is the fact that we were hanging out a lot backstage with [Jimi] Hendrix. Everybody had little areas where they hung out. I remember a lot of jamming going on, with guitars and lots of banging on tabletops. At these festivals there was always a lot of drugs. We used to drink a sip of wine backstage, and you didn’t know – sometimes it would have mescaline in it or something weird. Everybody was smoking pot. ... It was cold, it was rainy. I think it was damp and foggy. I think the Isle of Wight was a bit of a disaster. That was the drag of being a headliner of those kind of festivals – by the time you go on it’s like the wee hours of the morning and your audience is going away. Look at Hendrix playing Woodstock – he had nobody there. Whereas Santana played when the place was packed."

This album is 48 minutes long. Just the Procol Harum portion is 30 minutes long.

51 Strange Band (Family)
52 Good News, Bad News (Family)
53 Weaver's Answer (Family)
54 Still There'll Be More (Procol Harum)
55 Wish Me Well (Procol Harum)
56 talk (Procol Harum)
57 The Devil Came from Kansas (Procol Harum)
58 Shine On Brightly (Procol Harum)
59 talk (Procol Harum)
60 Your Own Choice (Procol Harum)
61 talk (Procol Harum)
62 Juicy John Pink (Procol Harum)
63 A Salty Dog (Procol Harum)
64 No Need to Worry (Cactus)
65 Parchman Blues (Cactus)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15584811/IsleofWghtFestivlAftnDwnIsleofWghtBrtain__8-28-1970_Pt4ProclHarm.zip.html

The cover photo is of Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, from this exact concert. This was the only case for all the album covers I made for this festival where I couldn't find a good color photo. So I converted a black and white to color using the Palette computer program.