This album contains all of Joni Mitchell's set. John Sebastian's set was the first one of the day, and that has been posted here as Part 1. Between his set and Mitchell's, there were sets by Shawn Phillips and Lighthouse. (Lighthouse had played a set the day before, but did a second one.) Unfortunately, I can find no audio for either set, at any level of sound quality.
Mtichell's entire set has been professionally released on DVD as "Both Sides Now: Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970." That means the sound quality is excellent overall. However, the vocals were a bit muffled for three of the songs. Perhaps something went wrong with her microphone. Whatever the case, I did my best to improve it using UVR5, but I could only do so much in this case.
When people say that the 1970 Isle of Wight was a disappointment, Exhibit A happened during Joni Mitchell's set. I'll quote Wikipedia to describe what happened:
"Following her performance of "Woodstock", a hippie named Yogi Joe interrupted her set to make a speech about the people at the festival in an encampment built of straw bales known as Desolation Row. When Joe was hauled off by Joni's manager, the audience began to boo until Mitchell interrupted her own set to chastise the audience and make an emotional appeal to "give us [the artists] some respect. ... After the crowd quieted down, Mitchell closed her set with "Both Sides Now" and returned to the stage for an encore singing two more songs for an appreciative crowd."
If you want to know more, here's a Guardian article about it:
Joni Mitchell, Isle of Wight 1970: the day the music nearly died | Joni Mitchell | The Guardian
Murray Lerner, who filmed the documentary "Message to Love" about the festival, later had this to say about the incident: "She decided to face-down the crowd, and was playing the piano, vamping, and almost crying. She said to the crowd: ‘We’ve put our lives into this stuff. ... You're acting like tourists.' That changed the whole tone of it. She called the crowd 'the beast' [afterwards, in private] and she decided to face them down. She had had problems with other places and had given in. But she decided in this case not to."
Neil Young was at the festival, and he'd planned to join Mitchell for a duet near the end of her set. But he cancelled that idea when he saw the friction with the audience. In fact, he was so upset that he left the festival entirely before Mitchell's set even finished.
Although Mitchell's admonishment of the crowd calmed things down some, the situation was still tense. Tiny Tim, who was kind of a musical throwback novelty act, happened to be the act to follow Mitchell. Luckily, he put the crowd in a good mood again, and that mood lasted for the rest of the day. Lerner later commented, "The audience went wild for Tiny Tim! Because it was like a campy reaction. You would have thought he was the biggest star in the world."
Anyway, you can listen instead of just reading about this, because the Yogi Joe interruption and all the rest is captured well in the audio recording. And I'm pretty sure that's him shirtless in the photo on the album cover.
The good news is, even though this set may have been an ordeal for Mitchell at the time, musically, she still sounded great. In my opinion, she was at the peak of her musical creativity around this time. Her most critically acclaimed album, "Blue," wouldn't be released until 1971, but she played three songs from it, "My Old Man," "California," and "A Case of You," plus "Hunter," which was an outtake that didn't get released until decades later.
This album is 54 minutes long.
UPDATE: On November 8, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file because I removed the three John Sebastian songs in the beginning. That's because I was finally able to post the full Sebastian set. That became Part 1, so this was renamed to Part 2.
033 talk (Joni Mitchell)
034 The Gallery (Joni Mitchell)
035 That Song about the Midway (Joni Mitchell)
036 Chelsea Morning (Joni Mitchell)
037 talk (Joni Mitchell)
038 [He Played Real Good] For Free (Joni Mitchell)
039 talk (Joni Mitchell)
040 Woodstock (Joni Mitchell)
041 talk (Joni Mitchell)
042 My Old Man (Joni Mitchell)
043 Willie (Joni Mitchell)
044 A Case of You (Joni Mitchell)
045 talk (Joni Mitchell)
046 California (Joni Mitchell)
047 Hunter [The Good Samaritan] (Joni Mitchell)
048 talk (Joni Mitchell)
049 Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)
050 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
The cover photo is from this exact concert.
Perhaps the mic problem stems from having one for the PA and another for the recording - you can see them taped together.Anyway really enjoying the series as it goes along,thanks.
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