Briare
12-16-2010, 12:15 AM
The story goes that Brian Wilson heard Rubber Soul and in its honor, he composed Pet Sounds. In response, the Beatles would release Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1, 1967. The Summer of Love had begun. Two days later in Monterey, the Monterey International Pop Festival was underway, and the virtually the rest of the pop/rock scene of the sixties had its own coming out part.y Documentarian DA Pennebaker, fresh off the success of the Dylan documentary Don't Look Back came to Monterey to prepare a film of the festival and what spun from it became a cultural worldwind as well as introducing a legion of classic rock gods to a wider audience. A week after the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate and the hippie era quickly began to wind down, the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair commenced on August 15, 1969 to terrible weather, a shortage of food, little to no effective security and an estimated attendance of at least double the expected peak turn out and went down without nary a hitch.
The legend of these two festival giants partially comes from two places. One is importance to the history of music in general, and the other is importance in popular culture. Monterey is generally regarded as being the coming out party for 60's icons like Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin and Canned Heat as well as being the first American appearance by The Who. At Woodstock, everthing was bigger. From that unique stage all the way down to thousands of people simply sitting in the earth, getting back to basics. The Summer of Love kicked off with Monterey and it finished with Woodstock.
Watching Pennbaker's film sun soaked, soft focus shots of so many "children of god", serene, doe eyed and peaceful contrast sharply with the soaked, bedraggled hippies on their exodus which is arguably the last hurrah of a movement past. The performers too, now looking quite a bit older. Grace Slick, her hair neatly ironed and bathed in glowing blue light in California is seen awakening the crowd on Sunday at Woodstock, tanned with her hair wild and untamed and wearing little but a tank top and sweats, belting out the new songs of the California acid rock: Volunteers, Saturday Afternoon, The Other Side of this Life. Her fellow Monterey alumni Country Joe McDonald, at Monterey in face paint and playing a slow, acid drenched instrumental three years later stands before a crowd of close to half a million singing I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die, an anti-Vietnam comedy number with a piece of rope serving as a guitar strap, rallying the troops for what could be the last time.
The way the two festivals are entwined with one another is solidly rock history. Woodstock was born from Monterey and the Woodstock film can be seen as being directly attributable to Monterey as well. Monterey is a much more personal experience, as a film it is as small and intimate as the Monterey stage. Its performers and their performances are of a uniquely uniform quality- excellent. Janis Joplin's provacative performance of Ball and Chain, Pete Townshend smashing his guitar, and Jimi not only burning his but making sweet love to the amp before hand are the stuff rock legend is made of.
However, it never felt to me like more than a movie despite the point and shoot style of Pennbaker and his crew and their reluctance to fancily edit the musical numbers. When the Warner crew filmed Santana at Woodstock, three different angles of the band are incorporated and edited into the Soul Sacrifice sequence of the Woodstock film, such a technique perfectly suits Woodstock and the result of the entire film being so exciting visually and spliced with so many different angles of the festival besides just the performers, Michael Wadleigh's film is an experience, the greatest provocation of a time gone by as I have ever seen on film.
Woodstock is a masterpiece and Monterey Pop comes quite close, between the Scott McKenzie sung "San Francisco" and the ragged harmonies and hard rock riffs of CSNY's cover of "Woodstock" sprung a great movement of people cemented together by their love of music and to have these two rock monuments in their honor, of what they stood for and who they were. What they represented- freedom.
The legend of these two festival giants partially comes from two places. One is importance to the history of music in general, and the other is importance in popular culture. Monterey is generally regarded as being the coming out party for 60's icons like Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin and Canned Heat as well as being the first American appearance by The Who. At Woodstock, everthing was bigger. From that unique stage all the way down to thousands of people simply sitting in the earth, getting back to basics. The Summer of Love kicked off with Monterey and it finished with Woodstock.
Watching Pennbaker's film sun soaked, soft focus shots of so many "children of god", serene, doe eyed and peaceful contrast sharply with the soaked, bedraggled hippies on their exodus which is arguably the last hurrah of a movement past. The performers too, now looking quite a bit older. Grace Slick, her hair neatly ironed and bathed in glowing blue light in California is seen awakening the crowd on Sunday at Woodstock, tanned with her hair wild and untamed and wearing little but a tank top and sweats, belting out the new songs of the California acid rock: Volunteers, Saturday Afternoon, The Other Side of this Life. Her fellow Monterey alumni Country Joe McDonald, at Monterey in face paint and playing a slow, acid drenched instrumental three years later stands before a crowd of close to half a million singing I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die, an anti-Vietnam comedy number with a piece of rope serving as a guitar strap, rallying the troops for what could be the last time.
The way the two festivals are entwined with one another is solidly rock history. Woodstock was born from Monterey and the Woodstock film can be seen as being directly attributable to Monterey as well. Monterey is a much more personal experience, as a film it is as small and intimate as the Monterey stage. Its performers and their performances are of a uniquely uniform quality- excellent. Janis Joplin's provacative performance of Ball and Chain, Pete Townshend smashing his guitar, and Jimi not only burning his but making sweet love to the amp before hand are the stuff rock legend is made of.
However, it never felt to me like more than a movie despite the point and shoot style of Pennbaker and his crew and their reluctance to fancily edit the musical numbers. When the Warner crew filmed Santana at Woodstock, three different angles of the band are incorporated and edited into the Soul Sacrifice sequence of the Woodstock film, such a technique perfectly suits Woodstock and the result of the entire film being so exciting visually and spliced with so many different angles of the festival besides just the performers, Michael Wadleigh's film is an experience, the greatest provocation of a time gone by as I have ever seen on film.
Woodstock is a masterpiece and Monterey Pop comes quite close, between the Scott McKenzie sung "San Francisco" and the ragged harmonies and hard rock riffs of CSNY's cover of "Woodstock" sprung a great movement of people cemented together by their love of music and to have these two rock monuments in their honor, of what they stood for and who they were. What they represented- freedom.