Comments on: Emerson, Lake and Palmer at the Oval September 30th 1972

By: Andy Iveson

Andy Iveson — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:55:29 +0000

I was reminiscing with my barber today (really!) and he had been to the other Oval gig with The Who. I went to the Ash/ELP/Genesis one and thought I would dig out the programme, which I still have. Then thought I would Google the gig and found this site (amongst others). Can’t remember too much about the day. I was 15 at the time. I do remember (like the VdGG fan above – so am I) that Fudd kicked off, whom I had never heard of. My biggest regret is that I actually fell asleep during the Genesis set (my favourite band at the time). It would be great to go back to those prog days and see ELP and Genesis in their prime. I’m still going to gigs (at 54) and watch a lot of Indie rock bands around Manchester, but still listening to ‘Selling England by the Pound’, ‘Foxtrot’, etc. That will never change!

By: Cliff Jacobs

Cliff Jacobs — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:25:20 +0000

Just stumbled onto this site and it brought back great memories from a truly memorable day.
The line up in order of appearance if my memory serves me right was
FUDD they came from Ireland?
FOCUS
GENESIS – Absolutely fantastic I was a big fan, my favourites but only when they had P. Gabriel
ARGENT
JACK BRUCE & JAN AKKERMAN JAM
ELP – Headlining as they cleaned up in the MM polls that year
WISHBONE ASH – Finished a great evening with an even greater set. How good are their two guitars. I still love Argus today.
The whole place was on it’s feet and dancing their socks off to Blowin Free. Ash was the ideal band to finish.
And all this for the princely sum for my ticket of £1-50, even then this was peanuts.

By: VdGGfan

VdGGfan — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:34:46 +0000

Hello, I’m new to this site.

Well, I certainly remember Fudd were first on the bill. Had never heard of them before, nor have since.
Drove down from Glasgow with two student friends.
It was a glorious day – hard to believe it was late September. My first (and only) open-air festival. Had gone mainly to catch ELP (cool pic of Emerson ta!), who had gone mega (there’s a note on the gig in the Trilogy sleevenotes.)
The band that blew me away, though, were Genesis (thank you Terence for confirming my hazy recollection that PG _ did _ wear that red dress and fox’s head (a la Foxtrot sleeve)).
In fact I recently obtained a (very low quality audio) recording of their set (with the omission of Supper’s Ready, which according to yopur blog, they played).
Fantastic memories of a great day.
Wishbone Ash came on late indeed iirc, by which time I had developed severe stomach cramp following the consumption of a large proportion of the contents of a warm Party Seven container of Watney’s Red Barrel and a packet of Fruit Clubs – ah, those wild days!

(Incidentally, I discovered this blog on returning to another website which I found some time ago by googling “Oval Melody Maker Poll-winners Concert”.)

Cheers,

Douglas

By: lee holloway

lee holloway — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 21:04:53 +0000

Does anyone remember the Irish band Fudd that played the Oval that day?