Review: 'Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967'

Two months to the day after The Jimi Hendrix Experience became an overnight stateside phenomenon at the Monterey Pop Festival, the group freaked out California a little further south at the Hollywood Bowl. The band was simply white hot at this point, still flying from rearranging brains en masse at the beginning of the summer and still so fresh that they hadn't even put out a sophomore LP yet. This material must have still been new enough that Jimi hadn't quite gotten it all down yet, as he kept forgetting to sing lines in "The Wind Cries Mary". But such gaffs are part of the charm of hearing a vintage, unadulterated performance, as you can on the new live disc, Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967. The power of the band at this stage in their career is what makes it electrifying. 

Review: 'The Who Live at the Fillmore East 1968'

The Who were essentially an unknown quantity in America until they distinguished themselves in 1967 with stateside performances at Murray the K’s concert series on the East Coast and the Monterey Pop Festival on the West Coast. When word of their autodestructive act got out, The Who rapidly developed a reputation as the ultimate Rock & Roll circus act. To capitalize on that deserved status, the planned follow up to The Who Sell Out would be a devastating live album recorded at New York’s Fillmore East in April 1968.

Review: 'The Complete Monterey Pop Festival' Blu-ray

Capturing Rock & Roll at a more experimental phase than The T.A.M.I. Show did, but not as self-indulgent and drab as Woodstock, or as depressing as Gimme Shelter, D.A. Pennebaker’s Monterey Pop is the greatest multi-artist concert film. With a wide selection of some of the era’s most thrilling artists to include in his feature, Pennebaker created a nice sampler of all that made 1967 Rock’s most dazzling year. There’s a whole lot of soul (Otis), raga (17 minutes of Ravi Shankar flooring the crowd), jazz (Hugh Masekela), blues (Janis, Canned Heat), pacific pop (Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas & The Papas) proto-punk (The Who), and of course, psychedelic Rock (The Animals, Country Joe, the Airplane, Hendrix and his Experience). The performances are as electric as they are eclectic, and Pennbaker’s shadowy cinematography creates nearly as much mood as the vibrant music.

In 2002, The Criterion Collection put together a triple-disc package called The Complete Monterey Pop Festival that built an already monumental film to skyscraper proportions. The set included the original film, as well as complete performances from Otis Redding and The Jimi Hendrix Experience and the feature-length Outtakes Performances. This is just as essential as Pennebaker’s 1968 film, recovering additional performances from The Who, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & The Holding Company, The Mamas & The Papas, and Country Joe & The Fish, as well as footage of some major artists who didn’t make the cut of the original picture, such as The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Laura Nyro (whose spellbinding rendition of “Poverty Train” dispels rumors that she fumbled the gig), The Association (who provide a charmingly mainstream moment amidst all the heavy underground activity), and others. In addition to the three major supplements were a plethora of commentaries, interviews, trailers, and booklet essays.

In 2009, Criterion upgraded the 2002 DVD for Blu-ray without offering anything beyond the 2002 supplements. For the festival’s 50^th Anniversary, Criterion has given the video a 4K buffing and added several extra features, such as new onscreen interviews with Pennebaker (who discusses the filming and the acts) and festival producer Lou Adler (who discusses a 50^th Anniversary festival staged on the site of the 1967 one, the original film’s lack of explicit politics, and other matters) and a general new essay about the film by Michael Chaiken (however, text by Pennebaker and Jann Wenner from the 2002 edition have been lost in translation). Much more historically significant are some extra outtake performances from The Steve Miller Band, Moby Grape, and The Grateful Dead. 

Criterion’s new 4K restoration of Monterey Pop delivers splendid colors and appropriately crunchy grain. Some shots are a bit soft, but that is likely a consequence of the lo-fi conditions under which Pennebaker and his crew made the movie (we often see them working the focus in the middle of a shot). Jimi Plays Monterey, Shake! Otis at Monterey, and The Outtakes Performances are presented in the same 1080p transfers used for the 2009 Blu-ray release, but the Hendrix and Otis mini-movies have been newly restored according to the back-cover copy. 

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 262

The Date: June 18

The Movie: Jimi Plays Monterey (1986)

What Is It?: Short film spotlighting Jimi Hendrix’s complete set at Monterey. He steals The Who’s act (or “does” it, as Pete Townshend prefers to say) and arguably upstages those heathens. Needless to say, Hendrix plays guitar like no one else on Earth. He plays the hippie crowd just as masterfully.

Why Today?: This day in 1967 is the second day of the three-day Monterey Pop Festival, and it’s the one on which Jimi abused his guitar.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 261

The Date: June 17

The Movie: Shake! Otis at Monterey (1987)

What Is It?: Short film spotlighting Otis Redding’s complete set at Monterey. He charms the beads off the “love crowd” with a set built on unfashionable professionalism and timeless emotional honesty.

Why Today?: This day in 1967 is the second day of the three-day Monterey Pop Festival, and it’s the one Otis shook.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 260

The Date: June 16

The Movie: Monterey Pop (1968)

What Is It?: Perhaps the best multi-artist concert film, capturing rock at a more progressive phase than  The T.A.M.I. Show does but not as self-indulgent and dreary as Woodstock. The Who, Jimi, Otis, Janis, Jefferson Airplane, and Ravi all give transcendent performances. Don’t fast forward through Ravi! His raga rocks.

Why Today?: This day in 1967 is the first day of the three-day Monterey Pop Festival.

Review: 'Monterey International Pop Festival' Box Set

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.