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.