Genre: Music [nf]
Release Date: 06/13/2006
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD5.1/DD2/DTS
Run Time: 79 min
Distributor/Studio: Criterion

The first concert film of the rock & roll era, Monterey Pop is an invaluable record of some of the major musical figures of the late 1960s. The organizers of the Monterey International Pop Festival, held June 16-18, 1967, wisely chose to record the proceedings on film for commercial distribution. Even if some of the festival's big acts -- The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, and Buffalo Springfield -- didn't make the final cut for various reasons, the roster of performers who did reads like a who's who of the era: Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin), Simon & Garfunkel, and The Mamas and the Papas (that group's leader, John Phillips, was one of the festival's principal organizers). The festival's "international" tag is well-earned by one performer in the film: Ravi Shankar, whose final-day performance was one of the festival's highlights and closes the movie on an exuberant note. Though the festival seemed to be anticipating nearby San Francisco's Summer of Love, the film chooses to concentrate on the musical performers, with only brief intimations of the burgeoning counterculture.

~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Any record of popular culture of the 1960s would be incomplete without at least a mention of Monterey Pop. Monterey Pop offers the rock version of two equally invaluable documentaries, Jazz on a Summer's Day and Festival, which respectively chronicled the jazz and folk festivals held every summer for many years in Newport, RI. Those films offered more coverage of their respective festivals' audience members, suggesting the almost tribal nature of outdoor music gatherings. Monterey Pop lets the music do the talking for a generation of increasingly disaffected young people. The festival provided coming-out parties for a number of influential performers: Jimi Hendrix, leaving audiences members slack-jawed after he sets fire to his guitar; Janis Joplin, having the same effect on fellow singer Cass Elliot; The Who, trying to one-up Hendrix by destroying a guitar and a drum kit; Otis Redding, an established star with the black community reaching out to what he calls "the love crowd" of white hippies; and Ravi Shankar, the Indian musician little-known to American audiences bringing down the house with a final-day display of furious virtuosity (Shankar almost left Monterey after seeing what Hendrix and The Who's Pete Townsend did to their instruments). Although Woodstock ultimately surpassed Monterey Pop for capturing a better sense of the entire experience of an outdoor music festival, Monterey's historical status is unassailable.

~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

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