The culture loves to shove Woodstock down our throats, but
for my money, there was no better sixties festival than the Monterey
International Pop Festival. The only truly great artists who would perform at
Woodstock but not make Monterey were Sly and the Family Stone, Creedence
Clearwater Revival, and The Band. In exchange we got The Byrds and Otis
Redding, whose performance cemented his legend as assuredly as The Who’s, Janis
Joplin’s, and Jimi Hendrix’s cemented theirs. Staged at a time before endlessly
wanking jams became compulsory, the best performances were pithier, punchier,
and more genuinely exciting, reaching a crazed climax with The Who vs. Hendrix
smash-off. We often forget that some boring crap from The Grateful Dead
actually went down between those two literally incendiary sets because history
has been kind enough to leave those hippies out of the documentation that is
D.A. Pennebaker’s concert film Monterey
Pop and an equally essential four-disc box set released in 1992. Sadly,
Rhino Records’ Monterey International Pop
Festival has been out of print for quite a while. Gladly, Salvo Records is
getting it back in print, and for a nice price as a domestic release in the UK
and as an import in the US.
The big difference is that the set has been shrunk down from
LP-size to a CD-size, flip-top box. The discs are enclosed in mini-LP jackets,
which I personally prefer to ugly old jewel cases. The booklet, with its
fascinating oral history with contributions from numerous organizers and
artists, is also included. I cannot confirm that the music has been remastered
or upgraded in anyway. Considering the era’s primitive live-recording technology, it sounds pretty
good, though some artists (The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Otis Redding) sound
better than others (everyone who wasn’t The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Otis
Redding).
As the booklet states, not every group who was recorded
agreed to have his or her music included on the 1992 box. Such refusers must
include Laura Nyro, Simon & Garfunkel, and Buffalo Springfield, who all had
performances that were captured on film. The same remains true of this reissue,
which is unfortunate since all of the aforementioned artists made some good
noise at the festival (and don’t listen to the much-repeated rap that Nyro
embarrassed herself. One listen to her breath-stopping performance of “Poverty
Train” on the Monterey Pop bonus DVD
puts paid to that myth). As for what’s here, here’s a little breakdown of each
disc:
Disc One: This
disc has the most variety, with The Association comporting themselves very well
for the token light-weight pop act, Lou Rawls proving that Otis wasn’t soul’s
only break-out performer at the fest, and Big Brother and the Holding Company
ripping the ceiling down for the disc’s best set. Performing the funky “Not So
Sweet Martha Lorraine,” Country Joe and the Fish are better represented here
than they are in the film, which featured the atmospheric drivel “Section 43” instead.
Eric Burdon and the Animals don’t fare as well, with their good, fiddle-driven cover
of “Paint It Black” being passed over in favor of the embarrassing “San
Franciscan Nights.” Canned Heat play some so-so white-guy blues, which brings
us to the weakest disc in the set.
Disc Two: An
overabundance of white-guy blues makes the first half of disc two kind of a
drag. The worst offenders are The Butterfield Blues Band, who are represented
by five boring tracks and followed by a few cuts by The Steve Miller Band and
The Electric Flag that are only marginally more interesting. The disc gets
legitimately interesting with Hugh Masekela’s “Bajabula Bonke (Healing Song),”
which careens from discordant screams to a meditative jazz sigh. Then we get a
full set from The Byrds, whose playing and singing is unbelievably sloppy but
bring a bit of much-needed garage band chutzpah to the disc. Plus, David
Crosby’s between-songs hippie rants are fucking hilarious. Finally there’s a
Ravi Shankar raga edited down to a mere six minutes and a loooong but
relatively lively jam from The Blues Project that veers closer to Motown soul
than the dull, white blues that began the disc. Diagnosis: needs less
Butterfield, more Shankar.
Disc Three: So
much for the hit-and-miss quality of the first two discs. This is the
unadulterated gem in the bunch with monumental sets from Jefferson Airplane,
Booker T. & The MG’s, Otis Redding, and The Who. No complaints here, just
committed performances from three of the era’s greatest stage acts. Getting to
hear The Who perform a rare live performance of “Pictures of Lily” is a
particular treat, and hearing a tech trying to get the mic working after they
smash the place to pieces at the end of their set is the uproarious icing on
the cake.
Disc Four: This
is the most schizo-disc in the set, split between just two groups, and The Jimi
Hendrix Experience and The Mamas & The Papas couldn’t be more different.
Hendrix’s set needs no talking up from me. He transformed “Like a Rolling
Stone” and “Wild Thing” into aural Star Destroyers. He fucked his amp and set
his guitar on fire. He dressed like Clarabell the Clown and spewed a stream
of psychedelic nonsense between songs. Awesome. After him, the pleasant pop of
The Mamas & The Papas could only be anticlimactic, and the group is further
hindered by a bass player who apparently never heard any of their songs before.
But despite a lack of rehearsal, they still put on a good show, bringing three
nights of electric lunacy to a pleasingly mellow conclusion.
