AUDIO: PACIFIC DRIFT LIVE 1970

FORTY FIVE YEARS have passed but this sounds as fresh as ever. Pacific Drift played a live set the Open Air Festival in Bodensee Stadion, Konstanz, West Germany on 9th August 1970.

LARRY: “What follows are my recollections and thoughts on that gig that come to mind. READ ON……………………….!“

“Looking back on these recordings with regard to the content and set list that was captured, I cannot remember why we didn’t promote the Album, ‘Feelin’ Free’ more in our live performances. I guess it must have been a collective decision to feature material that had more scope for improvisation rather than to present faithfully what we had put down on disc.

Now I think about it this was a mistake and probably the main reason why the sales of the resort failed to create any kind of buzz. If you have looked at the live Paris gig which is longer than these recordings, very little if any of the Album are featured, just like this set.

I guess we weren’t that involved in the commercial side of things but we did play live, extended versions of ‘Greta the Legend’, ‘Happy Days’, ‘Feelin’ Free’ and ‘Garden of Love’ although why we appear to have left these out on the TV and Bootleg recordings I still don’t know. Go Figure……..

Anyway, that day at Bodensee was amazing. We were on stage fairly early on in that day, about the 4th band and we did about 40mins all told and it’s a pity the unknown person who taped this didn’t finish the job, but despite that I think it shows how we were getting a really tight bond and understanding of each other more than ever and could deal with the improvisational attitude we sometimes had.

We got a great reaction at the end and overran our set, much to the chagrin of the promoters, but the crowd of about 20,000 liked us a lot. I really enjoyed myself on the drums that day and really thrashed the kit mainly because the amplification, lighting and PA were not up the standard of today’s sophisticated computerised electronics.

At the time I had a 6 piece Silver Sparkle Ludwig kit with High Hat with 12″ Paiste cymbals and a 22″ Zyldjian Ride and a Paiste 20” crash alongside. And I was really used to the tuning and overall sound the kit gave out. And on that stage, on that particular day, was one of the most enjoyable gigs we ever did. I felt I played much better, as were we all, at the end of our 1970 tour in France, Denmark and Germany but I never knew how much until We unearthed this bootleg.It’s been 45 years since I heard this and that was when we were playing…..

And as we began to get off stage the rain started to fall and put a bit of a damper on the rest of the day.But the wet conditions didn’t spoil the atmosphere and we hung around to catch some of the other acts that were there, including MC5, The Kinks, The Troggs and Galliard among them and a great time was had by all.

In this particular case, I would like to thank the bootlegger for this. A record of some of the hard work we put into our music despite it’s lack of mainstream success.”

CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW TO DOWNLOAD the MP3s