 "blown away" | 2010-02-06 |
| - Reviewed By jlev |
| i actually got this dvd as a present for my parents for xmas, they asked for it, but i wound up watching it the whole break. i couldn't take my eyes off of it. not only are each of the performances amazing, to see how they shot concerts back then on film was very interesting compared to the big multi-camera video of today. anyway, a must see!!!! |
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| "We Need A Summer of Love" | 2010-01-12 |
| - Reviewed By irsslex from Del Mar |
I got disc one from Netflix to play BluRay. This is pure genius on every level. If you read the Criterion Collections essays [...], you'll see that the bulk of the performers were merely experimenting with the new form -- rock and roll -- because most of the performers (Mamas and Papas, Janis Joplin and others) came directly out of, and were influenced heavily by the folk movement, blues and, of course, Jazz. What resulted was just magic on every level. Check the setlist. Check the performers. To see Hendrix perform The Troggs "Wild Thing" and then to light his guitar on fire after making love to it was unbelievable. To understand that before this concert that Hendrix was an unknown who had been riding the chitlin' circuit for years, to get transformed into a guitar God is hard to imagine in light of the reputation that he built for himself in the next three years of his life before it was cut short by addictions to herion. The same was true with Janis Joplin. To see The Who bash apart their instruments was their way of performing destructive art, a concept that I understand intellectually but not emotionally, not that it matters -- this was the world 40 years ago, a world whose relative innocence we could somehow all relate and the time when 50s social mores were out the window and, as of 1967 and this first rock festival, the death of JFK was ever-present on the minds of young people and artists as was the US' growing involvement in Vietnam, and despite President Nixon's attempts to control it all starting in 1968, society was in fact just up for grabs and music, relevant then like never before or since, drove the movement. Maybe it's why Woodstock, in 1969, was such a raging success. Had it not been for Monterey, there would have been no Woodstock. Music was power.
The Blu-Ray transfers are, in a word, magnificent. The video is as clear as full of life as you could possibly imagine and the audio, remastered into DTS HD Master Audio is a revelation, and makes the whole experience that much more present, which is to say that you feel like you are there, albeit through the 16mm lenses of the Pennebaker camera crew, who did a wonderful job of filming not only the artists on stage, but those same artists sitting in the audience enjoying the music themselves. There is a shot of Mama Cass after Janis Joplin sings "Ball and Chain" that is just priceless. As always, it's the cameraman's eye for detail like this that make small moments in a film that much more special. I was, however, dismayed to learn that the Grateful Dead's performance was, in fact one of their best performances with everybody dancing and grooving in the aisles. But no video. No audio. I'm going to get the second disc and when finances allow, this will become a treasured piece of my video collection. I was only 6 for the bulk of 1967, but for some reason feel a deep connection to this music. Perhaps it's because the crop of artists that were here in America then, dominating popular music, were so many. What passes for pop music these days is just a travesty of all that these very excellent musicians put into their music, body and soul, those things that are sadly lacking today, when pop music is too often all about celebrity and not art. This is art. Five stars. And if I could give it six, I would do that. All I have to say is: enjoy it. |
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| "$34.99 at Barnes and Noble" | 2009-11-12 |
| - Reviewed By Outrageous from CT |
| This is $34.99 at Barnes and Noble. Why Amazon doesn't price match I do not know. However, Amazon has matched a few of the Barnes and Noble Criterion Blu-Rays. Wings Of Desire for example. |
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| "wish I could have been at the Monterey Pop festival" | 2009-09-26 |
| - Reviewed By Kavic |
| The CD was excellent and the book that came with it was extremely enlightening and educating. I'm sorry more footage could not have been recorded for this historical event. |
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| "The Original Mind Blower" | 2009-08-23 |
| - Reviewed By Edward Z. Rosenthal from Collingswood, NJ, USA |
Some of the commentors here seem to be saying that this film doesn't quite present an accurate picture of the unprecedented 3 day phenomenon that was the Monterey Pop Festival. Well, WHAT would present an accurate picture of that amazing event? I suppose, maybe, hearing someone who was ACTUALLY there tell us his or her story of those wild days. Someone like, I dunno... D.A. Pennebaker? Hey, right, he WAS there, and this film is HIS story (history). At only 78 or so minutes it's more so his impression, his simple reaction, in condensed user friendly form, like a good story is supposed to be.
It's a powerful moment in pop culture - something of an evolutionary turning point. Monterey Pop was very soon understood to be the coming-of-age party for the next generation of cultural leaders. As I watched it the first time some 25 years ago I remember feeling like I was witnessing a natural birth. The birth of a new social order that cherished and honored peace and love above all else. Like all births it wasn't all pretty. Often it's messy and painful and even scary.
Pennebaker opens his story with the splendid Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company's up tempo "Combination of the Two" playing over pre concert footage. The hippy dippy love and peace vibe was so thick and fun and appropriately Scott McKenzie is then heard over more concert prep footage singing "San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)", which festival co-founder John Phillips wrote to promote the event. The first stage act we see are The Mamas and The Papas doing "California Dreaming" - a fine expression of the spirit of the day. Sensational rock acts including Canned Heat, Simon & Garfunkle, and Jefferson Airplane follow. Big Brother & The Holding Company really get things deep with Janis wailing a remarkable "Ball and Chain." The romance sours as Eric Burden and The Animals perform a sinister "Paint It Black." It then gets rough when the Who really beat up the crowd with what sounds like early Punk, their ultra loud hooligan posture in stark contrast to the relatively mild preceding sets - ominous signs of a possibly troubled pregnancy. Destroying their instruments at the end of their set in a fit of hyper adolescent rage seems to be a not-to-be-topped show-ender. This may be a stillbirth.
And it would have been if they hadn't been later followed by the yet not well known Jimi Hendrix who then assumes total control of The Delivery. The water's broken, The Baby is coming and Doctor Jimi is Chief Physician. But he's not your typical Md with an axe. He is transforming before our eyes, mutating, expanding into enormous dimensions and capacities like a monumental Shaman. A molten force of prehistorical depths erupting and reforming endlessly, now being recreated himself. He writhes and coils as if caught in the throws of powerful contractions. An electric sonic fetus has instantly developed on stage into a gargantuan cosmic sound. His symphonic offspring, fully formed, complete, gorgeous, pure like Apollo, the god of healing who taught man medicine. The god of light. The god of truth, who can not speak a lie. Jimi then sets fire to his guitar - a ritual sacrifice, appeasing the greater gods that this new, better infant world he has just ushered in might live and prosper.
Pretty heady stuff, aye? And then the truly amazing, wonderful bit that still thrills me is that Ravi Shankar outdoes Jimi. Ravi had done it much earlier on that Sunday afternoon, but realizing the awesome achievement of Shankar's performance, Pennebaker closes his tale with it. In what starts like a modest and polite display of a bygone technique, Ravi's raga soon has summoned the attention of everyone and directed it to the Here And Now. The rhythmic syncopation building upon itself, repeating and quickening, everyone's awareness now finely focused on the increasingly heated, emphatic call and response between Ravi's Sitar and Alla Rakha's Tabla. The pace and intensity increase and hold the entire population helplessly captive. It's a formidable, inexorable current that has grasped everyone's consciousness as the pace continues to build and grow. Each pass seems to be the limit but the next surpasses. The intensity increases with ferocious spasms of rhythm. We are not just witnessing but actually experiencing the conception of our new life. A great cosmic mind f*** with the potent seed of eternity implanted in the open, pulsing minds of all.
Tho they didn't know it yet, on that Sunday afternoon of the final day of the Monterey Pop Festival, a roundish, dark skinned, simple cloth swaddled gnome had very thoroughly, graciously raped the collective mind of that naive bunch. And you can see it on the stunned gaping faces of anonymous spectators and fellow performers alike. They just didn't have words or emotions or ideas to grasp what was happening.
So it was in such a fertile, pregnant state that Janis, and Pete and Jimi took that evening's stage and completed the inevitable act that Ravi had so cunningly begun. This is what I felt when I first watched that edited, incomplete personal tale that is "Monterey Pop." That deformed near-abortion is, to me, perfect. As perfect as any life can be. |
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| "first hippie festival" | 2009-05-13 |
| - Reviewed By brit-biker from LouisvilleKY |
| Great collection of the Flower Power movement. The beginning of Janis, Jimi, almost the end of Otis. |
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