Livemogging Monterey Pop (40-year-delay)
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Artist:
Hey moggers! I missed you! Still tough to find time to mog, but tonight the wife and kids are away, and I'm doing what any married man would do in that situation--staying home alone with the dog and watching TV!
Earlier I caught an old episode of MTV Cribs featuring "rock Gods" (most weren't even demigods, but what can you do). Then I watched Cloverfield, which completely kicked my ass, and now back to VH1 Classic, where Monterey Pop is on. I've never seen it, which I think is probably a hole in my music knowledge so I'm going to share my first impressions of this seminal film with you, the mogging public
Music playing over the credits is horrible. Don't know what it is. Too lazy to find out, but it sounds like Janis Joplin's inexplicably popular caterwauling.
Some obviously high dipshit: "you've never been to a love-in?"
Scott Mackenzie's "San Francisco" plays while we seee scenes of poeple in really stupid clothes and one really cute girl who looks kind of like Parker Posey blowing bubbles. Oh, look, here's a man in boots dancing with his muu-muu clad girlfriend! I pride myself on being a tolerant guy, but looking at the multicolored schoolbus and the ersatz Indian headgear and the headbands and Jesus sandals, I just feeel like somebody should have opened a gigantic can of whupass on the entire place.
"Oh, groovy," opines a shockingly thin David Crosby.
John Phillips trying to get Dionne Warwick on the phone. Michelle Phillips is a stone fox. Why is John Phillips wearing a stupid fur cap?
The fuzz! What are you gonna feed these people, he asks. Oh, quick cut by D.A. Pannebaker to answer the question! Some guy with stringy hair and a yellow headband will hand you two saltines!
More shots of people milling around. so many bad fashions. "Creeque Alley" plays. Okay, the knee-high boots on the ladies were an okay fashion--kind of a hippie dominatrix look.
Our first performance, and it's the Mamas the Papas withe a cool "California Dreamin'" John still in dorky fur hat. Michelle still smokin' hot. Cass large. Denny wearing what appears to be a dress.
Some band I don't know doing a decent little blues number. Decidedly non-hippie, except for the neck beard on the guitar player. I dig it. The other guitarist looks about 16. This band cooks. Is this Canned Heat? If so, where's the guy with the weird voice?
Simon and Garfunkel feelin' groovy. Pretty insipid, but not their worst song. "The Dangling Conversation" is their worst song. Actually, that's the worst song ever.
I kind of suspect that Art Garfunkel got a raw deal. Great voice, and appears to be way less of a dick than Paul Simon.
Hugh Masekela? Dissonant horns, and Hugh kind of scats and yowls over the music. This is horrible. I scream "Grazin' in the Grass!" at the TV, to no avail. Psychedelic graphics don't make the song suck any less. Maybe it's tolerable if you're high. The Grateful Dead built a career on that pheonomenon.
It's the Jefferson Airplane, tormenting the crowd with sludgy crap! Maybe it's tolerable if you're high. Fast-forwarding, which means I may have to watch commercials later, but it'll be so worth it. I never thought I'd say this, but "We built this city is preferable to this." Okay, maybe not "We Built This City." But definitely "Jane."
Out of the frying pan, into the fire--here's Janis Joplin, whom I've never gotten even for five minutes. Ahh, stop yelling at me, lady! What'd I ever do to you? I mean, I guess she's passionate about the music, but , you know, passion doesn't always translate to quality. At least it doesn't in this case. There's Mama Cass, who could actually sing and who didn't choke on a ham sandwich, in the audience with this kind of frozen grin on her face.
Ah, okay, more fast forwarding. Make the yelling stop!
Some guy fiddling--it's a psychedelic hoedown! There's Eric Burdon! Whoa! He's covering "Paint it Black!" It's kinda cool.
And here's my DVR telling me that the roast of Bob Saget is about to begin. Probably just as well--this entry's getting long, and though I'd like to see the Who, I'll really be okay if I miss Ravi Shankar.
Oh, hey, here's the Who! Under the Saget wire! But why "My Generation?" Well, it cuts off in the middle, and I'm not exactly brokenhearted. Don't like that song.
I'll conclude by saying I don't really get why this is some kind of landmark rock and roll movie. Well, maybe it's better if you're high....
Locating MOG account...
Comments (8)
i will tell you PRECISELY why this is a landmark movie, although i do have to issue a disclaimer. in 1997, together with DA Pennebaker, i produced te 30 year anniversary follow up movie of this (Monterey Pop: The Lost Performances. it was for VH1 and was initially broadcast on the exact 30th anniversary - june 16 at 1 pm)... so i am more versed in what happened, and etc. related to the original film.
first of all DA Pennebaker INVENTED the genre that everyone now knows as the rock n roll documentary. he did that with DONT LOOK BACK, where he was on tour with Bob Dylan, like a fly on the wall. he followed it up with MONTEREY POP and from the MONTEREY POP footage, a concert film of just Otis Redding's performance was released. Pennebaker went on to do concert films of David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust tour) and was nominated for an Oscar for his documentary THE WAR ROOM where he was on the campaign trail with Bill Clinton during the 1992 election. it is Pennebaker's craft and vision that makes cinema verite what it is today.
NOW to the original movie of MONTEREY POP --- the Monterey Pop Festival was the FIRST concert in the USA like that ever --- a FESTIVAL outdoors over several days. that makes it historic. it was also pretty much organized by a band - the Mamas and Papas, which never happened before --- and it wasn't until Lollapalooza, when Perry Farrell and his people organized that Festival, did you have such a thing get organized in that way. it wasn't until 2 years and 2 months later that Woodstock happened. MONTEREY POP was the blueprint for Woodstock.
MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL was, together with the Beatles album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, considered one of the high points and defining moments of the so-called SUMMER OF LOVE.
the MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL featured the first American performances of:
Jimi Hendrix (Festival Board Member Paul McCartney INSISTED that he be booked)
The Who
it was the first major public performance of JANIS JOPLIN as well as OTIS REDDING, who would die not long after the Festival.
It was the first time that DAVID CROSBY performed with Stephen Stills and Neil Young (who were Buffalo Springfield at the time), showing the crowd a harbinger of the group to follow in coming years --- CROSBY, STILLS, NASH & YOUNG
i could go on.... but you get the idea. it was a landmark in many ways - and the movie is a document of the landmark
See it the way it was made to be seen: in a cinema, in loud stereo. It's a very different experience from TV.
Its rep also rests on the fact that none of these bands ever appeared on TV and if they did it was lip synching. It was the first time most people had ever seen (or heard of) Otis, The Who, Hendrix, Big Brother, or any of the other bands you mention.
The blues band was possibly the Butterfield Blues Band. (If you don't know them, get 'East West'.) If the singer was wearing overalls and had a big beard, then it was Canned Heat.
There is a possibility, of course, that you just don't ike this period of popular music.
I can relate. I like this movie, and the Woodstock movie, and The Last Waltz, etc., but the wife and kid have to be out of the house before I can watch any of these old concert films . . . or any concert DVDs at all for that matter.
In the hottest 60s pop icon category, Michelle Phillips does have it going on in the movie. You can see why she caused a such a sensation and why guys made complete fools of themselves over her. Grace Slick was hot too. Sure wish I could have seen them in their glory.
Finally, a voice of reason about Janis Joplin. What WAS up with that? I tried to get into her (not literally, thank god) but could never, ever do it.
Very amusing little review. Sounds like you missed the Hendrix segment. Home. With Dog. Wife gone for a little while. A little slice o' heaven. Don't tell her I said that...
Well, I was kind of exaggerating my natural dickishness here. Not that, in the cold light of day, I regret any of the opinions expressed herein, but I do feel...eh, I amuse myself when I'm a dick, and clearly not everybody shares my amusement. Fair enough, but I never meant to provoke the caps lock.
I actually like quite a bit of the music from this era. I love The Who (up to and including Tommy--I prefer the two-and-a-half-minute witty rock songs to the eight minute anthems), I like the Animals, I like Hendrix okay, I love Otis Redding, and I love a lot of bands from this era who aren't in this movie.
What I don't like is the mythologizing of the "Summer of Love". (And Sgt. Peppers', for that matter, which, songwriting-wise, is a tremendous letdown from the genius of Rubber Soul and Revolver and which ushers in an era of insufferable studio wankery.) (There I am being a dick again. It's a difficult habit to break.)
I grew up in the 80's, when the baby boomers were about the age I am now, and because they resented us for being young while they were getting old, they refused to relinquish control of rock radio, and spent a lot of time mythologizing their own youth as somehow of great national and world importance. Many of my peers bought into this junk and mooned about how if they'd only been born earlier, there's no good music now, blah blah. (You could see how they'd reach that conclusion when the radio played lots of Loverboy and wouldn't play The Replacements.) So I tend to view all these proceedings with a somewhat jaundiced eye.
Okay, actually, an eye that's yellow as a freakin' egg yolk.
But just to prove I'm not a total asshole, I've got two complimentary posts about sixties bands on tap. Stay tuned!
of course, while everyone is entitled to their opinions and to express them in any manner they choose - whether thoughtful or thoughtfully "dick-ish," it is always but always a mistake to assume one knows the inner thoughts of another person, or an entire generation...
I grew up in the 80's, when the baby boomers were about the age I am now, and because they resented us for being young while they were getting old, they refused to relinquish control of rock radio, and spent a lot of time mythologizing their own youth as somehow of great national and world importance. Many of my peers bought into this junk and mooned about how if they'd only been born earlier, there's no good music now, blah blah. (You could see how they'd reach that conclusion when the radio played lots of Loverboy and wouldn't play The Replacements.) So I tend to view all these proceedings with a somewhat jaundiced eye.
I am a Baby Boomer, therefore - one of the generation of which you speak and diss.... in fact, I was born during the peak years of births of that generation (those peak years were 1956 - 1958)---- like it or not, there are more of us, in pure numbers, than any other population group! And yeah - I often wish I had been born 10 years earlier so that I could have seen the Beatles and Yardbirds, etc. but every generation will have that kind of momentary melancholic projection about the good stuff of the previous generation.
First of all - while some individuals (of any generation) may resent any younger generation for being young - that is not the case of me nor of anyone in my generation whom I personally know. I don't like Sting, but his song "Born in the 50s" is actually a fair representation of what we believed about ourselves. Guess what? Substitute the epochal markers (Kennedy assassination; Beatles debut; Cold War) for ones that represent the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc., and ANY GENERATION could sing that song. Sorry - EVERY generation gets to mythologize and romanticize their own importance. That's reality.
The truth about radio (and television and any other medium that is supported by advertising) is that those who control the stations and their playlists are not the tastemakers but the bean counters. IF you wanted to look at a good example of the life story of a radio station - look at Boston's WGBH, which was broadcasting Christian music until the FM boom of the 70s and then through management changes and ownership changes, became the rock n roll station that its reputation rests on. The programmers are only in power so long as the management keeps them and the management is only in power so long as they are delivering the kind of ad revenue and ratings/listenership (which dictate the prices they can charge for ads) that satisfy the owners bottom line. Sorry to burst your romantic bubble that MERIT has anything to do with radio. it just ain't so. That "Classic Rock" format monetized itself into hegemony; talk radio does that continually to many of my favorite stations around the country. YOu have so many more radio choices today - with internet and satellite and podcasting.
I think the point you missed - the point that I made and that John Ingham made was that Monterey Pop, the festival and the movie was A FIRST in many areas and that in and of itself, completely devoid of content, makes it historic.
You can like what you like, dislike anything I love and I don't care - but if you were not around in the 60s or had lived through the 50s (and 40s for many), the whole concept of the Summer of Love would be meaningless to you. Do you understand the concept of the punk rock Summer of Hate (1977)? Its the Doppelganger, and the Spike Lee / Michael Imperioli vehicle, Summer of Sam, while they musically got a lot of things wrong from my perspective, actually does tie up in a bow the dissatisfaction, ennui and the hatred of the 70s - which exploded as a cumulative result of other phenomena --- much in the same way the Love generation exploded as a cumulative result of other phenomena.
It seems as though the cultural products at your disposal, your own peer group and the music, art, movies, etc that you seek for entertainment or other value have failed to give you the appropriate context for the Summer of Love, and I'm sorry that your experience with it was like being a fish out of water seeing a different breed of fish out of water....
"Born In the 50s" is one of the worst songs ever.
Brendan, you were kind of a dismissive dick, at least about Jefferson Airplane, who were pretty awesome. But in your defense, Anna Log seems to be talking down to you a bit. Don't you have a book coming out about songwriters in 1972? I'm sure you've done your research and know a thing or two about boomers and cultural history of the 60s. You're an almost successful novelist, demand some respect! Just kidding, I know you're too modest for a dick-waving contest.
research ABOUT boomers and being a boomer are two different things.
first-hand experience trumps simulacra.... all the nuance disappears... as it does in "conversations" held in cyberspace.
i wasn't talking down to anyone however. i offer what i know. because i am over 50, i probably naturally sound like someone's mom (which i am not; unless you count dogs as children... or the bands whose careers i work on)
finally, whether "born in the 50s" is a good song or a bad song is not at issue. i believe it echoes the voice and sentiment of many of us who were indeed born in the 50s. its not a good vehicle, but it did drive the point from a to b while stating in the title - trumpeting, in fact, the songwriter's point of view. how often can you read a book by its cover?