Newport Folk Festival, Festival Field, Newport, RI, 7-25-1968 to 7-28-1968, Part 8 - Kaleidoscope (US) & Taj Mahal

Next up at the 1968 Newport Folk Festival were Kaleidoscope (U.S.) and Taj Mahal. 

I say "Kaleidoscope (U.S.)" and not just "Kaleidoscope," because in the late 1960s, there were two fairly well known bands with the name Kaleidoscope, one in Britain and one in the U.S. I've already posted a few albums by the British Kaleidoscope. I like them a lot, and in my biased mind they are THE Kaleidoscope, so that's why I clarify that this is the U.S. band by putting "U.S." in their name. That said, Kaleidoscope (U.S.) had a lot going for them. They had a very unique sound that has been described as "psychedelic folk." Retrospectively, they're probably best known for the fact that their guitarist was David Lindley, who would go on to have a long and successful music career after the band broke up before the end of the 1960s.

In fact, I would say the Kaleidoscope set was the big deal here, much more so than Taj Mahal's. That's not to knock Taj Mahal at all, but instead it's a matter of scarcity. There are lots of Taj Mahal concert recordings, both bootleg and official, but I only know of one Kaleidoscope official live album and no bootlegs. So this is a key addition to their pretty small recorded legacy.

Also, their set was quite interesting and even provocative. They started out with a short and simple cover of the country song "Hello Trouble." Then they took a cover of another cover, "Oh Death" - made famous by Ralph Stanley, who had played earlier in the festival - and totally transformed it. Normally a short song, they stretched it to twelve minutes, mostly by adding a spoken word section in the middle with very harsh words about the Vietnam War, a hot, controversial topic at the time. They followed that with "Taxim," a long instrumental with strong "world music" elements.

Taj Mahal had already performed a set earlier in the festival. I included that in the first album in this series. The set he did here wasn't terribly different. It included two of the same songs: "She Caught the Katy (And Left Me a Mule to Ride)" and "EZ Rider." But only this one ended with "Ain't That a Lot of Love," which is one of my favorite songs from him, and one of his most upbeat ones.

This album is 54 minutes long. The Kaleidoscope set is 32 minutes long, and the Taj Mahal set is 21 minutes long.

101 talk by Pete Seeger (Kaleidoscope (US))
102 Hello Trouble (Kaleidoscope (US))
103 talk (Kaleidoscope (US))
104 Oh Death (Kaleidoscope (US))
105 talk (Kaleidoscope (US))
106 Taxim [Instrumental] (Kaleidoscope (US))
107 talk (Taj Mahal)
108 Dust My Broom (Taj Mahal)
109 talk (Taj Mahal)
110 She Caught the Katy [And Left Me a Mule to Ride] (Taj Mahal)
111 Diving Duck Blues (Taj Mahal)
112 talk (Taj Mahal)
113 EZ Rider (Taj Mahal)
114 talk (Taj Mahal)
115 Ain't That a Lot of Love (Taj Mahal)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16046883/NewprtFlkFestivl_1968_08Kleidoscpe_TajMhal.zip.html

For the cover, that's Kaleidoscope on the left and Taj Mahal on the right. Both photos are from this exact festival. However, I don't know if Taj Mahal's picture is from this set, or the one he played earlier in the festival. And the Kaleidoscope picture was originally in black and white, because that's all I could find of them from this show. But I colorized it with the help of the Palette computer problem. Also, unfortunately, I had to crop out the drummer to get it to fit. Since good photos of the band in concert are very few and far between, and it took some work to colorize it, here's the full picture.