As the Mods & Rockers Festival prepares to present its 40th anniversary celebration of the Monterey Festival - music writer and historian Harvey Kubernik - who has written extensively about Monterey for magazines such as Mojo and Goldmine - explains the importance of the 1967 festival and the film that documented it.
Without question, Monterey is 2007's rediscovered celluloid love child while Pennebaker's telegenic poptastic images of "Monterey Pop" remind us of the road subsequent documentary filmmakers followed, took and learned from.
Every time I look at this movie I see and feel different emotions. Watching "Monterey Pop" on the big silver screen at the Egyptian Theatre will steer your eyes inside the 1967 action unlike the wonderful, and very rewarding retail DVD where you happily follow the journey documented.
The 1967 Monterey Festival after 40 years provides a happy ending everyone has pretty much forgotten about. The music touches the politics of the narrative. The world of Monterey June '67 let people and show business know there was an audience for music groups and recording artists that no way fit the operative models for what bands should be like. These were not units that wore uniforms and tried to be entertainers. This change was not a local thing but throughout the western world, the English-speaking world.
The Monterey festival has a much longer, richer and more interesting history behind it than most people realize. There was this blend of trust, suspicion, warmth, hostility and the welcoming and the protectiveness between the Los Angeles and San Francisco music communities. This added to a drama that was inherent at the Monterey festival, which the music perhaps participated in some ways. The whole battle between art and commerce is represented.
Thirty-two acts from the U.S. and England, representing various musical genres of contemporary popular music at the time, performed day and night at the festival.
Yet the music broadcast collectively from the Monterey stage during that June '67 West Coast weekend was a kind of a grand announcement that the old order had passed, and a new order had arisen. That there was a fundamental change in the way that music was going to function for its audience. And, that function had to oppose simultaneous movements, one of them a movement, essentially musical and moving toward more complexity, and another movement towards the public to make more of a difference politically, socially, logistically and spiritually.
Some postcard-worthy memorable scenes happened down in Monterey.
THE "MODS & ROCKERS FESTIVAL" BLOGS
• GREGORY WEINKAUF - Picking Up Every Stitch...
• D.A. PENNEBAKER - Inside Pennebaker's Soul
• STEVE HOCHMAN -
Memo To Al Gore
• BRAD SCHREIBER - Monterey Pop Goes Pow!
• MICHELLE PHILLIPS - California Dreaming Becoming a Reality• JERRY MILLER - Grapeful for Monterey
• HARVEY KUBERNIK - UP In Monterey...
• GREGORY WEINKAUF - Skidoo Does Hollywood...
• STANLEY DORFMAN - Zeppelin Takes Flight
• BRAD SCHREIBER - Tripping Back to 1960s London...
• D.A. PENNEBAKER - Pennebaker on "Pop"
• MARTIN LEWIS - ROCK Like An Egyptian!
• DAVID HABER - Really With The Beatles
• PAUL WILLIAMS - Nilsson Is My Cup Of Tea
• BRAD SCHREIBER - Festival Opens & Explains "What's Happening!"
• PAUL KRASSNER - Skidoo
• MARTIN LEWIS - First Night Report!
• STEPHEN BISHOP - The Beatles Were My True Parents
• ANDREW LOOG OLDHAM - Mocking The Rockers
• BRUCE SPIZER -The Beatles Were Coming!
• MARTIN LEWIS - Movies For Nothing And Kicks For Free..
MORE "MODS & ROCKERS FESTIVAL" BLOGS COMING SOON FROM
• ERIC BURDON