Monday,19th AUGUST 2002 PUT ANOTHER NICKEL IN!!!
featuring: MONTEREY POP (1969) THREE DAYS.....THIRTY-TWO ACTS.....A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES The 1967 International Pop Festival at Monterey, California, was a weekend of amazing sights, sounds, & experiences. Over 200,000 young people gathered in & around the County Fairgrounds for a 3 day celebration of MUSIC, PEACE, FLOWER-POWER & LOVE.Most performers appeared for free, only lodging & travel expenses being provided. It was a time of reunion & discovery for performers as well as the audience. Revenues from the festival & subsequent film & CD sales were donated to The Monterey Pop Foundation - still in existence today providing help to worthwhile causes such as the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic & the UCLA Children's Hospital. SCOTT McKENZIE's gentle ballad, (If You Are Going To) SAN FRANCISCO opens the film. OTIS REDDING's rendition of TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS, HENDRIX's electric WILD THING, the blue-eyed blues of JANICE JOPLIN's BALL & CHAIN & Shankar's finale may be the highlights of the film. Also featuring: THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS, THE ASSOCIATION, CANNED HEAT, BIG BROTHER & THE HOLDING COMPANY with JANIS JOPLIN, THE JEFFERSON AIRPLANE, THE WHO, THE BYRDS, COUNTRY JOE (McDONALD) & THE FISH, LOU RAWLS, BOOKER T & the MGs with THE MAR-KEYS, THE GRATEFUL DEAD, THE STEVE MILLER BAND, BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD, QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE, ERIC BURDON & THE ANIMALS, MOBY GRAPE, Garfunkel SIMON & GARFUNKEL, The Group With No Name, The Paupers, Beverly, Al Kooper, The Blues Project. Pop music retrospectives give short shrift to the ‘67 Monterey Festival in favor of Woodstock- the bigger, higher-profile, more decadent rock festival held two summers later. But Monterey Pop was a seminal event: the first real rock festival, featuring debut performances of bands that would shape the history of rock & affect popular culture from that day forward. The County Fairgrounds in Monterey- all ocean breezes, morning fog, 24 acres of lawns & spreading oaks- had been home to folk, jazz & blues festivals for years. But the weekend of June 16-18, 1967 was the first time it was used to showcase rock music - notably launching JANIS JOPLIN, THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE & THE WHO- and featuring OTIS REDDING in one of his last important performances before his death six months later in a plane crash.
The Festival was a crazy quilt of more than 30 bands, performing over three idyllic June afternoons & evenings. Never before in rock history had so many musicians performed together, combining genres of soul, folk, rock & psychedelic rock. The British invasion had swept radio in the early ‘60s, and England was where the really hip music was supposed to be happening. Yet in 1967, San Franciscans enjoyed dozens of talented local bands,and The Beat poets & their fans continued to exert influence, espousing eastern religion, spirituality & mind expansion through marijuana & LSD. In 1967, music producer Lou Adler & JOHN PHILIPS of THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS teamed up with Alan Pariser & music publicist Derek Taylor to produce a rock festival bringing together important musicians from all parts of the U.S., Britain & India for a weekend of peace, love & flowers; the embodiment of the hippie & flower-child movement. The festival program instructed attendees to "Be happy, be free; wear flowers, bring bells." For a moment in time, the country's problems of war & racial strife were seemingly put aside. 100,000 orchids were flown in from Hawaii, strewn by airplane over the crowd. Attendance peaked at 50,000, with more than 200,000 peacefully attending over three days. The festival was not without critics who questioned the organizers’ motives. The inaugural issue of Rolling Stone, published in November 1967, lambasted the event as extravagant claiming it was simply a vehicle for Phillips' & Adler's self-glorification. In "San Francisco Nights," Gene Sculatti & Davin Seay commented on the commercial aspects of Monterey, stating that it was "a combination trade show & shopping spree where [record company executives] might browse 'till they saw something they liked, then enquire about the price." In a review that was probably balled up & eaten later, Billboard magazine panned Jimi Hendrix's debut, reporting that "his chicken choke handling of the guitar doesn't indicate strong talent." Just a few years later, some of the most memorable Monterey musicians would be gone forever from drug overdoses or accidents: OTIS REDDING, JIMI HENDRIX, JANIS JOPLIN, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, KEITH MOON, (MAMA) CASS ELLIOTT and audience-member BRIAN JONES of the ROLLING STONES. -Rusty DeSoto. Prod Co: Leacock Pennebaker Inc. Ed: Nina Schulman. Dir: D. A. PENNEBAKER, ALBERT MAYSLES, James Desmond, Roger Murphy, Richard Leacock & Nick Proferes. 79 mins. NFVLS.
SAN FRANCISCO (1968) Hey, better put some flour in your hair for this one! A kaleidoscopic vision of life in San Francisco - home of alternative culture - circa 1968(!) over a 24 hour period, showing the characteristics of late 'Sixties American society through the city's contrasts. Using a startling rapid montage flash & freeze-frame technique, the film's rapid and closely-cut sequences form a colourful montage of bizarre images, creating a portrait of SF in all its photogenic glamour & kooky excess. 'Interstellar Overdrive' by PINK FLOYD is the soundtrack. Prod, dir: Anthony Stern [A/D: TONIGHT LET'S ALL MAKE LOVE IN LONDON (1967)]. Mus: PINK FLOYD. 15 mins. NFVLS. . THREE DIRECTIONS IN AUSTRALIAN POPULAR MUSIC (1972) Meanstwhile, back at the farm... Snazzy snapshots of Australian pop music from the 1970s: the theatrical act of WENDY SADDINGTON & TEARDROP; the jug music of the CAPTAIN MATCHBOX WHOOPIE BAND; and the popular rock group, THE INDELIBLE MURTCEPS (SPECTRUM, spelt backwards). Prod Co: Commonwealth Film Unit. Prod: Malcolm Otton. Phot: Michael Edols. Ed: Jim Coffey. Dir: PETER WEIR. 11 mins. (AUSTRALIAN COLOUR DIARY, #43) ALC.
THE CONCERT (1974) Hilarious musical fantasy punctuated by cartoonish sight-gags. A self-styled soloist discovers that his feet make music as he steps across a pedestrian crossing's black & white stripes as if they were piano keys outside The Royal Albert Hall in London. Others are drawn in: tuning, et c., a constable & a group of more traditional musicians, and even the birds make the telephone lines into musical staffs. 47th ACADEMY AWARDtm nominee: Best Live Action Short Film, 1974. Prod. Co: The Black & White Colour Film Company, Ltd. Producer: Mark O'Connor. Dir: Claude Chagrin. Wr: Julian & Claude Chagrin. 12 mins. NFVLS. MUSIQUIZ (1952) O--ow, its a PETE SMITH SPECIALTY! Using a quiz format, and Pete Smith's distinctive narrational style, this intallment from a now legendary series conveys some esoteric information about music and introduces some unusual musical instruments. Prod Co: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Prod: Pete Smith. Dir: David Barclay. Cast: Narrator, Peter Smith. 9 mins. NFVLS. THE CHORD SHARP (1980?1989?) A busker suddenly rises to fame despite a lack of musical talent. His off-pitch style becomes his signature. Superbly animated look at the making of a rock superstar. Prod. Hand Made Films/Joachim Kreck film & television productions. MOO Movies, London. Foerd. Institute for film promotion. Dir: Joachim Kreck, Ian Moo-Young. With: Volker Kriegel, Alastair McIlwain. 9 mins. ALC. DISCS (1984) Thousands of vinyl LP covers fly by in this brief pixillated look at the lost art of record album sleeves. Prod/Dir: DIRK DE BRUYN. Cast: DIRK DE BRUYN, WARREN BURT (allegedly), and others. 2 mins. ALC.
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