5/5 wish I could have been at the Monterey Pop festival
  by Linda S. Sippel
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.

5/5 The Original Mind Blower
  by Edward Z. Rosenthal (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.

5/5 first hippie festival
  by Denver B. Cornett (LouisvilleKY)
Great collection of the Flower Power movement. The beginning of Janis, Jimi, almost the end of Otis.

4/5 A Fun Look Back At A Legendary Concert
  by Steve Stalzle (Colorado)
This is the ultimate version of the Monterey Pop festival concert. All usable film footage and sound are here on three DVDs. It's a very well done DVD set and the accompanying book is a great addition to the set. It has tons of info. and trivia. The films look and sound as good as they're ever going to and they have several extra bonus features on the DVDs.

My only complaint is that they didn't include any footage of the Grateful Dead except for a fleeting glance in a 'making of' documentary. The film maker, D.A. Pennebaker explains that 'the Dead' simply played too long for them to capture 1-2 songs. They are well known for playing 20-30+ minute tunes and the camera operators simply didn't have enough film in their cameras to capture a whole song, so they got left out. Each camera operator only had about 10 minutes of film per film cartridge to shoot with.

The filmmaker had a limited budget for film anyway, and we are lucky to see 2-3 tunes by some of the performers. The original plan was to get 1-2 'good tunes' from each band and have a 'good representation' of each group on film. That all basically went out the window when Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding played. The filmmaker and the festival producers had no idea that those 2 bands would be the highlight of the festival. Pennebaker and his crew 'blew their wad' film-wise on Hendrix and Otis Redding. That's why there is a bonus disc of the complete Hendrix and the Complete Otis Redding performances at Monterey Pop.

Like I said, the filmed footage looks and sounds as good as it's ever going to because they used the original 1967 film and sound sources that are available. It's in Dolby stereo, but not 5.1 or anything.

One goofy part of the DVD set is the inclusion of the footage of Tiny Tim performing at the back stage 'green room'. He is poorly lit, and the sound is sub-par. Pennebaker explains in the liner notes that Tiny Tim was in low light and they could only film him by the light of a Zippo lighter!

Over all, this set is worth owning.

I recommend it.



3/5 CAUTION! Be Sure this is the Disc you want
  by Robert Hensley (Knoxville, TN USA)
By the price it should be obvious that this is a single DVD edition of the Monterey Pop Festival at $27.99, and not the 3 disc $70.00 edition as reviewed previously. Nonetheless, it is well worth the price for a 78 minute cross section of what happened in that "summer of love". If you want all 280 minutes of the festival, be sure you get that 3 DVD set. Its well worth it!