Review of Monterey Pop

In June 1967, record mogul Lou Adler and musician John Phillips organized and produced the first three-day outdoor rock music festival, a major, star-studded event held at the County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California and filmed by D.A. Pennebaker and his crew. Phillips is seen performing two numbers with his group, Mamas and the Papas, though their spotlight is definitely stolen by Janis Joplin leading Big Brother & The Holding Company on "Ball & Chain", as well as The Jimi Hendrix Experience performing a fuzzy, funky "Wild Thing" (with a touch of "Strangers in the Night" in Hendrix's guitar solo). Pennebaker is just as interested in the colorful (if curiously sedate) crowd of concert-goers as he is in the music acts, and often we see young men and women in raw, fresh reaction to music which is by-now largely familiar. Jefferson Airplane are intriguing, as is Ravi Shankar on an elongated sitar jam entitled "Raga Bhimpalasi", but Simon & Garfunkel's brief appearance (under a red spotlight) is disappointing. The camera-work is insecure, and the sound (although probably top-flight for 1967) is shaky, but this is a good glimpse at an era long passed by. A must for '60s pop and rock connoisseurs. **1/2 from ****