Everybody Just Cool Out: Monterey Pop vs. Woodstock vs. Gimme Shelter

Why I shouldn't post at work...all votes for "Shelter" will be counted as votes for Gimme Shelter.

Summer of Soul?

There's not really an extended Monterey, but there are separate short films covering the complete performances of Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix, plus the Criterion box set has a ton of bonus performances of varying lengths* from practically all of the acts on the bill.

*Everything from a literal minute of Laura Nyro to full sets from The Who and The Mamas & The Papas.

Pulling out of Tim Hortons, I immediately thought of Wattstax too...should I get some suggestions here and repost later?

There is a documentary about that Canadian “Woodstock” tour where the bands took a train to the shows.

It is a cool movie and probably was pretty fun on that train.

There is a documentary about that Canadian “Woodstock” tour where the bands took a train to the shows.

It is a cool movie and probably was pretty fun on that train.

Festival Express (I have a friend who saw some of the actual event). The only thing with that is, I recall that a lot of it actually takes place on the train--more about the between-shows dynamic than the performances.

I think there's a documentary about the Isle of Wight festival, which was a pretty legendary trainwreck - nobody got killed, but a bunch of hippie scumbags broke through the fences to get in for free, and made Joni Mitchell cry, and blah blah blah...

Everything mentioned so far is pretty great imo, but I think Monterey Pop is the BEST. Best musical performances, best cinematography, most immersive sense of the scene, the crowd, the vibe. (And when I say Monterey Pop, I guess I mean both the theatrical film and the Jimi and Otis full sets that were released later.)

I really love the train scenes in Festival Express.

Didn't realize Isle of Wight had a film, so that's another one I missed...There's also a Big Sur film from the late '70s that has a great "Sea of Madness" from CSNY.

Of the three, definitely Monterey Pop for me too. Janis, Hendrix, the Who, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, all legendary; personally, I love the Mamas & Papas doing "Got a Feelin'" and the JA's "Today" just as much. And Cass Elliot reacting to Joplin and Shankar. And just a great feeling of positivity from start to finish.

other ones I had never heard of or seen:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/rarely-seen-documentary-of-1970-new-york-pop-festival.1054646/

https://www.atlantamusicguide.com/film-review-hotlanta-the-great-lost-rock-festival/

The Grateful Dead movie and that Scorsese Dylan thing sorta fit here yeah?

Huge fan of that Big Sur film, CSNY are raging and at one point Stills jumps into the crowd and beats a guy up

I don't have the initiative to redo this; maybe someone else could round up everything else mentioned here and post a concurrent poll. If the two get enough voters, we could square off the two winners at the end. Another one I thought of: Festival from 1967, the Newport film.

(If someone takes on a second poll, I'd probably stop at '73 and Wattstax--I wouldn't go forward to The Last Waltz.)

Message To Love, the Isle of Wight Festival doc is great

not rock, but Jazz on a Summer’s Day is really great

I dunno, these three seem like a concise narrative of The Death Of The 60s Dream - from hope to despair via naked bongo solos in the mud. Voted Monterey as the performances are better and there's no Sha Na Na.

lol, otm

Although I did once read some take that Sha Na Na was actually good in the beginning

Voted Monterey because my parents were ushers, my aunt was dancing with her teenage friend, Kim, and my grandfather was on the local organizing committee.

Amazing! Hope they shared some stories with you.

I don't know if fish out of water does justice to Sha Na Na at Woodstock. It's more like cantaloupe out of lawnmower.

Always loved playing Hendrix at Woodstock for students on his birthday, but I always wanted to show them him setting fire to his guitar at Monterey. Never did--I figured the proximity of him having sex with said guitar would cost me my job.

Monterey Pop. Not just for the music either, it captures everything that seemed genuinely wonderful, idealistic and yet possible about the counter-culture before everything went to hell.

otm, some of my favorite parts are just watching the all the happy, beautiful people walking in.

Best illustration of that, I believe. (I've been in love with the woman at 1:15 for decades.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP7OKxjObNo

sadly perhaps too late, but would love a doc on where some of the crowd members went from that moment at the beginning of the summer of love.

yes, totally

One of the reasons I love that "Got a Feelin'" clip, beyond all the great faces and the song itself, is the disconnect between the images and the words: "the joke's on you," "got a feelin' that I'm wasting time on you." Greil Marcus has written about this fatalism that hangs over some early hippie music, songs that were recorded when everything else was idealistic and about the limitless future: Moby Grape's "Indifference" and Donovan's "Season of the Witch" are two he mentions, and to those I'd add the Airplane's "Blues from an Airplane" ("I can see my life is meant to fall apart some day"--what a way to start your debut album") and the Fugs' "Carpe Diem" ("You can't outfuck the angel of death"--and the were old guys already). I'm not talking about anti-hippies like the Velvet Underground or the Mothers, standing outside and ridiculing all the optimism, but a fatalism from the inside. (I guess the Fugs were more outside than inside.)

Needless quotation mark there after "debut album."

that's really interesting, see also Michael Hurley's "Open Up" and other Rounders related material, the real hippies had seen the void and were not afraid of it

HMR very much like the Fugs--they knew all those old Harry Smith murder ballads inside out (Dylan too, another guy who didn't seem to have much use for getting together and going to San Francisco and all that).

I love both ends of that spectrum, JA's "Saturday Afternoon" and "Blues from an Airplane" both.

Gimme Shelter is basically a doc about a murder and a naive English rock band.

It's easy to blame the headline act for the issues, but if Señor Wences had cut his opening act short, and the hippies had kept their hands off the Shriners' fezzes and little bikes, a lot of the violence could have been avoided.

(xp) ... and a stupid American one.

I know from interviews that Sammy Hagar was a spectator at Monterrey.

Another nugget like that I caught was that Al DiMeola was at the Fillmore in the audience when Allman Brothers cut Fillmore East.

George Lucas and Walter Murch were on the crew filming and recording at Altamount.

Martin Scorsese was on the crew at Woodstock, and was responsible during post for putting together the Sly Stone sequence and came up with the idea for bouncing ball sing-along with Country Joe bit.

Was curious if Woodstock tickets were selling on eBay, and of course they are: "Woodstock Genuine 3Day Ticket 1969 - MINT Condition. Todd Mueller Authenticated" goes for about $600 Canadian. (I guess Todd Meuller's name means something to some people.) Because of where I live, the second result if you google "Woodstock tickets" is this: https://www.cityofwoodstock.ca/en/residential-services/paying-a-parking-ticket.aspx.

My favorite part(s) of Monterey Pop is how you keep seeing Mickey Dolenz in the crowd wearing that native American head dress, and how he goes apeshit with joy after Ravi Shankar's set.

gimme shelter for truthiness

(xpost) I think I got Cass Elliot's reaction to Joplin confused with Dolenz/Shankar; both moments are great.

I've seen Gimme Shelter twice (maybe a third time) and not for at least 25 years. No desire to rewatch. To state the obvious, and not meaning to be glib, it's such a downer--starting with the murder, obviously, but also in all sorts of other ways.

the cover of the Woodstock VHS looked insanely frightening and dystopian to me as a kid. It did not look like the scene of a good time.

Gimme Shelter probably more significant but Monterey Pop gave us my favorite version of one of the greatest songs ever performed with Otis' "I've Been Loving You Too Long" so it wins because of its great service to humanity.

Monterey has maybe the best music? Woodstock has good music too but also stupid hippies, it's 1969 why are they acting like 1968 never happened? Gimme Shelter is a cold shower of reality after all that nonsense.

That does make me think of Greil Marcus on the Lovin' Spoonful (from Stranded): "That John Sebastian never learned to frown rather compromised his contemplation of the abyss, but in the glory days following the Beatles' arrival, who needed the abyss?" (or why I like Monterey Pop a thousand times more than Gimme Shelter).

it's 1969 why are they acting like 1968 never happened?

You have to watch The Leftovers immediately.

Monterey Pop did get a massively expanded anniversary DVD set featuring a load of music filmed for but not used in the film. I know it has a Quicksilver Messenger Service track when the band were still a 5 piece. I think it may have a Grateful Dead track too.

There is also Midsummer Rock the tv show filmed and I think transmitted live from Cincinatti Pop in 1970. The infamous Stooges clip cuts off to ads and misses Iggy going into the crowd a couple of times but does follow him going into the crowd beckoning them to lift him up whence he smears his chest with peanut butter possibly proffered by a young Stiv Gators.
Film also includes Mountain, Traffic, Alice Cooper (plus cake), Grand Funk Railroad among others.

Glastonbury Fayre directed by Nic Roeg. Including numbers by Terry Reid, Fairport Convention with prominent David Swarbrick, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come among others. Came out on DVD about 15 years ago after I'd chanced on it on late night tv including once on TG4 the Irish channel.

Superstore recorded in a defunct factory in Croydon or something. Features the one piece of footage of a line up of The Misunderstood during The 60s and not either of the well known lineups worth tracking down and reading the multipart history in Ugly Things. Also has Led Zeppelin, Colosseum, Buddy Guy, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Steven Stills among others and various shuffled lineups playing together as well as one big jam with loads of players on board.

I had hoped there might be a krautrock festival filmed after a couple of open air stage clips turned up in Krautrock Nacht which is worth finding itself.

I think there is a documentary of the closing of Winterland in 1971 including footage of a lot of bands. But I haven't seen it.

I think a number of bands were filmed at the Amouges Festival in Belgium in 1969. The year that Frank Zappa jammed with a number of other bands. But I'm not sure if anything was compiled together to make something comparable to what was requested.

I was thinking the Go Ride The Music special was several bands but appears to have been 3. Jefferson Airplane headlining.

Autocorrect at it again the 1969 film is called Supershow. It was filmed in a disused linoleum factory in Staines not Croydon.

There a also the Rolling Stones Rock'ñ'Roll Circus which was released decades after recording.

Autocorrect at it again the 1969 film is called Supershow. It was filmed in a disused linoleum factory in Staines not Croydon.

This was on Sky Arts (I think?) the other week.

Morbid curiosity god the better of me and I looked up how many performers in Monterey Pop are still around:

Michelle Phillips
Simon & Garfunkel
Two members of Jefferson Airplane
Two members of Big Brother and the Holding Company
Eric Burdon & one of the (New) Animals
Two members of The Who
Country Joe and two members of the Fish
Booker T. & one of the M.G.s (backing group)

Are all the guys from the '67 incarnation of Canned Heat dead?

If you expand to performers who were there but not in the film, you get: The Dead minus Jerry, Pigpen and Lesh; a couple Moby Grape guys; McGuinn & Hillman from the Byrds; Stephen Stills; Johnny Rivers; Al Kooper; Steve Miller; probably some guys from the Association...

Yes, the current drummer for Canned Heat only joined in December of 1967.

Don't forget Richie Furay from Buffalo Springfield.

Beverley Martyn, Steve Katz (Blues Project), Cyrus Faryar (The Group With No Name)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Cocksucker Blues (1972)

I think of the film of Woodstock as worse than it is due to too many hours of trying to appreciate the soundtrack album as a teen.
I only saw a bit of Monterey Pop on PBS about forty years ago, so I watched it in full tonight. It's a necessary tonic to the bad vibes of 1969, and it's interesting to see how both the hippie image and the conventions of the filmed rock show were both embryonic at that point. Still, I'm a bad vibes sort of person, so I'm voting Gimme Shelter.

Here's some suggestions for future polls:

Best song: "Monterey" by Eric Burdon and the Animals vs. "Woodstock" by Joni Mitchell vs. "New Speedway Boogie" by the Grateful Dead

Taking Sides: Cleaning Seats Girl vs. Naked Fat Guy

I just watched Laura Nyro doing "Poverty Train" from her supposedly terrible Monterey performance, and I'd take it over "Ball and Chain", "Wild Thing" and Otis Redding.

I think history has settled on the narrative that the louder voices in the Nyro audience were yelling “I love YOU” rather than “BOO”, but Laura misheard them and was thusly rattled.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.