8th August 1969. Plumpton Race Track. Streat.  East Sussex.

Soft Machine

Personnel
Hugh Hopper.
Mike Ratlidge.
Robert Wyatt

  The Softs were a bit unlucky , as they bore the brunt of the technical problems on the opening night . Power failures led to much of this set being dogged with problems. Just how long they performed for is debatable. However, an audience tape exists of 10 minutes of their set and If I can find it I'll review it .

Soft Machine were a fairly inpenetrable band, you either loved them or loathed them .Originally the Softs featured the well known 60s rock eccentrics Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers, but they left fairly early on in the piece . I used to like them quite a bit and I saw them once at the Top Rank in Swansea in either late 1969 or early 1970. Now I fnd their music a bit mechanical, but they had great chops and were masters of the extended prog rock number. Their third album, titled, strangely enough - Third , is a very good example of this and is generally considered the best of their efforts. After this they became progressively more jazz orientated, Wyatt left soon after and after a few years none of the orgiinal members were left in the line-up.This show would be in their middle period, where Wyatt took the vocals. Most of their set would have been instrumental with Wyatt ( who has a very strange, but somehow lovely voice)  occasionally chiming in with brief vocal interludes.

Soft Machine circa 1969

To view a huge number of top quality photos of almost all the bands at the 1969 festival ( including Soft Machine ), visit Repfoto( note : you shouldn't copy Roberts photos -support his efforts to give us a record of the festival by buying his prints)

• Pre Festival Marquee club hand out
• Festival program ( new Jan 2003 )
• Festival posters
• Festival Time line
• Press cuttings
• Photos of bands onstage
• Festival menu
• Payments to Bands

Known recordings of the 1969 Plumpton festival.
With set lists and recording details if available.
Fortunately , with the advent of smaller tape decks and batteries, dedicated tapers began to record the bands form the audience. This is the first Nat Jazz festival that I know of that has tapes in circulation that can be positively identified .
If you have any more details of tapes of the event then email me Contact email

• Pink Floyd.
• King Crimson
• The Who

The early festivals.

You can find out the complete line ups of the first festivals if you follow the links below, but otherwise information is fairly limited.
 

1961

1962

1963

1964

Festivals 65-83

Most of these have fairly complete documentation .

 

Richmond 1965	Windsor 1966	Windsor 1967	Sunbury 1968	Plumpton 1969
Plumpton 1970	Reading 1971	Reading 1972	Reading 1973	Reading 1974
Reading 1975.	Reading 1976	Reading 1977	Reading 1978	Reading 1979
Reading 1980	Reading 1981	Reading 1982	Reading 1983

Return to Archive