Event
Monterey Pop
50th Anniversary Release! Looks and sounds better than ever.
On a beautiful June weekend in 1967, at the height of the Summer of Love, the first and only Monterey International Pop Festival roared forward, capturing a decade’s spirit and ushering in a new era of rock and roll.
Monterey would launch the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, but they were just a few among a wildly diverse cast that included Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas, the Who, the Byrds, Hugh Masekela, and the extraordinary Ravi Shankar.
With his characteristic vérité style, D. A. Pennebaker captured it all, immortalizing moments that have become legend: Pete Townshend destroying his guitar, Jimi Hendrix burning his.
The complete program of performers and songs:
1. The Mamas & the Papas – “California Dreamin'”
2. Canned Heat – “Rollin’ and Tumblin'”
3. Simon & Garfunkel – “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”
4. Hugh Masekela – “Bajabula Bonke (The Healing Song)”
5. Jefferson Airplane – “High Flyin’ Bird” and “Today”
6. Big Brother and the Holding Company – “Ball ‘n’ Chain”
7. Eric Burdon & The Animals – “Paint It Black”
8. The Who – “My Generation”
9. Country Joe and the Fish – “Section 43”
10. Otis Redding – “Shake” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”
11. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Wild Thing”
12. The Mamas & the Papas – “Got a Feelin'”
13. Ravi Shankar – “Dhun” (“Dadra and Fast Teental”)
"The effect is one of estranging intimacy, bringing us impossibly near to these sublime beings onstage and yet somehow ensuring that they remain forever mysterious, magical, and untouchable."
"…the nicest thing about the movie is not its musical or nostalgic qualities, but the way it captures the pop musical willingness to hurl yourself into things, without all the What If…self-consciousness of an earlier generation."
"Woodstock is more famous, Altamont more notorious, but the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival was the first great coming together of the tribes of the rock 'n' roll generation."
"...a beatific 79-minute document that set out to catch the look, the feel, and especially the sounds of a seminal moment in American popular culture."
