The Doors
August 30, 1970
East Afton Farm
“The Isle Of Wight Festival”
Isle Of Wight, England
Track List:
01. Introduction - 0:18
02. Back Door Man - 4:18
03. Break On Through - 4:53
04. When The Music’s Over - 13:31
05. Ship Of Fools - 7:37
06. Roadhouse Blues - 6:07
06. Light My Fire - 14:21
07. The End - 18:18
Multi-Track Master Soundboard Recording
Dust out your Doors collection. From the vault of an anonymous Doors fan comes a previously unsurfaced audio recording.
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.
The Doors’ manager Jeff Jampol recently made the silly statement that the reason they haven’t released the Isle Of Wight recording officially is due to audio problems with the master recording. Well here it is, folks. Unmixed and raw. Please tell me if you find any noticeable problems that would prevent this show from being released. I’m dying to know just what errors he believes exist. Another reason why and another obvious lie from The Doors office.
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
I’m always on the look out for Doors recordings I don’t have or source upgrades.
Check out my complete list of shows here: http://www.eccentrix.com/members/thedoors/tradelist.html
