Iron Butterfly is an American psychedelic/heavy metal band that was formed in 1966 by keyboardist Doug Ingle and drummer Ron Bushy in San Diego, California. In 1967 they recorded their first album, Heavy, which stayed on the Billboard charts for almost a year as they toured with the likes of The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Traffic, The Who, and Cream.
But it was in 1968 that the band released the album that they are most associated with, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. The album not only broke the rules of song length with its 17:05 minute title track, but it broke records by selling more albums in the history of recorded music within the first year of its release (over eight million copies sold), and became the very first platinum album ever. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida stayed on the charts for 140 weeks, spent 81 weeks in the top 10, to date has sold over 30 million copies, and has been certified platinum.
While the original run of the band ended in 1971, they re-formed in 1974 to tour. They released additional albums in 1975, 1976, 1988, 1993, 1995, and they are intending to release another one with new material in 2009.
Iron Butterfly: Concert & Documentary features the band during their European tour in 1997. This lineup contains Doug Ingle on lead vocals and keyboards, Lee Dorman on bass, Ron Bushy on drums, Eric Barnett on guitar, and Derek Hilland on second keyboards. The first three made up three-quarters of the original In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida lineup with only Eric Brann missing.
The quality of the recording is, in general, pretty good. Some of the film is a bit grainy but overall very acceptable. The picture format is NTSC 4:3 with Dolby Digital AC3. The total time is around 102 minutes with about 65 minutes of music and the rest of the DVD contains a documentary featuring members of the band and others reminiscing.
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