Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-16-1967

The 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival was the first famous rock festival. In my opinion, it was one of the best, if not the very best, in terms of the quality of all the musical acts involved. 

Here's what the beginning of the Wikipedia entry about the festival has to say: "The festival embodied the theme of California as a focal point for the counterculture and generally is regarded as one of the beginnings of the 'Summer of Love' in 1967 and the public debut of the hippie, flower power, and flower children movements and era. Because Monterey was widely promoted and heavily attended, featured historic performances, and was the subject of a popular theatrical documentary film, it became an inspiration and a template for future music festivals, including the Woodstock Festival two years later. Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner said 'Monterey was the nexus: It sprang from what the Beatles began, and from it sprang what followed.'"

Here's the link to the full entry, if you're interested:

Monterey International Pop Festival - Wikipedia

I had no plans to post this festival at this blog, because there a four CD box set of festival highlights was released in 1992. I had that for ages, and added some other songs to it as I found them. But I changed my mind a few days ago. I happened to notice that the complete performances by Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds were released last year, but obscurely, as "record store day" limited releases. Each of those contained extra songs that I'd never heard before, at great sound quality. That inspired me to dig further, and I found a project someone named Simon put together in 2022, gathering everything he could find from the festival that was publicly available up until that time. This is basically what Simon did, plus a few more recent releases, especially the Buffalo Springfield and Byrds ones mentioned above. 

The 1992 box set contains five hours of music. But thanks mostly to Simon's work, I'm able to present eleven hours of music from the festival! That's more than double! And all of it is in fantastic sound quality, despite the fact that a big chunk of it is from unreleased sources. There's no audience bootleg sourcing here, except for half of one song later in the festival. So this is a must have, in my opinion, for anyone who enjoys music from this era. 

It is now accepted fact that something very special happened in the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of 1967, a time which is now widely known as "The Summer of Love." I don't want to go into it too much, but there's a very big Wikipedia article about that as well:

Summer of Love - Wikipedia

In short, young people from all over the U.S., and even the world, were drawn to the Bay Area to experience the rising counter-culture there. The Monterey Pop Festival was a big part of that. There was one rock festival that took place a week before that in my opinion sounds even MORE musically amazing, the Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival. You can read about that here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Fair_and_Magic_Mountain_Music_Festival 

Rolling Stone Magazine wrote a great article about it in 2014, which you can find here:

Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Music Fest: Story of 1st U.S. Rock Fest 

Unfortunately though, very little audio from that festival has survived (even though it seems there was an attempt to record it all). So it has pretty much been forgotten. But Monterey Pop was the opposite in that a popular documentary movie about it, "Monterey Pop," was released in 1968, and had a huge influence. Here's a quote from Wikipedia: "The screening of Monterey Pop in theaters helped raise the festival to mythic status, rapidly swelled the ranks of would-be festival-goers looking for the next festival, and inspired new entrepreneurs to stage more and more of them around the country." 

Another factor to consider is the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," written by John Phillips, the main songwriter for the Mamas and the Papas, and recorded by Scott McKenzie. According to an NPR report, "local authorities in Monterey were starting to get cold feet over the prospect of their town being overrun by hippies" attending the festival. Phillips specifically wrote it "to smooth things over." It succeeded beyond all expectations. The single "only" reached Number Four in the U.S. singles charts. But it had a long staying power, ultimately selling over seven million copies worldwide. It had a very real impact, like a pied piper call, drawing people to the Bay Area, and specifically to the Monterey Pop Festival. It's estimated 30,000 people attended the first night of the festival, but that grew to 60,000 by the third and last night. This was the very first big rock festival anywhere, with the exception of the somewhat smaller Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival the week previously.

Monterey, California, an hour or more drive from the Bay Area, was chosen as the location because there had been a popular Monterey Jazz Festival taking place there annually since the 1950s, as well as a similar Monterey Folk Festival. It was thought that by giving this festival a similar name in the same location, it would help give rock more credibility as an art form, like jazz or folk music, both of which were much more respected at the time. Even the same stage manager and sound company were hired. That resulted in the festival having truly exceptional sound quality for rock concerts at the time, which resulted in excellent sounding recordings as well.

I'll write more about the festival as a whole later. But for now, I want to explain how I split up the eleven hours of available music. The festival itself was split up into five separate tickets: one for June 16th, then another for the afternoon of June 17th, another for the evening of June 18th, then afternoon and evening tickets for June 18th as well. So I'm splitting this up in a similar way. This one, containing all the available music from June 16th, is the shortest by far. I'm guessing that each of those five time periods contained roughly the same amount of music, give or take. But this is the shortest because it's the one with the most missing music.

Here's yet another useful Wikipedia link. It shows all the songs known to be played by all the performers at the festival:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

Each act was allowed to play for 40 minutes, but is possible some of the lesser known acts got less than that. The Association performed first. But two songs are missing, and there were an unknown number of other songs missing as well. The second act was the Paupers. Their entire performance is missing. (Simon did find a couple of songs, but they were of such poor sound quality that I couldn't even include them as bonus tracks.) Next was Lou Rawls. We have three songs from him, but two more are missing, plus an unknown number additionally missing. Next up was British folk singer Beverly Martyn. She just played three songs, all missing. 

After that was Johnny Rivers. He was a big star at the time. Interestingly, his keyboard player at the festival was the great songwriter Jimmy Webb. He played eleven songs, which must have been right at the full allowed 40 minutes, but only one song from his set is publicly available. Here's an interesting quote from Rivers about the festival: "Driving north on Highway 101, I had never seen so many VW buses pained with paisley and flowers, cars, trucks, and lots of out of state license plates. People were from everywhere. The vibe was very mellow and kind of the theme of the whole thing. It was a gathering of tribes and hadn’t really gotten to the wild hippie stage yet. The 'Summer of Love' was [really more] the summer that came after that. It wasn't going to be frantic, out of control, but everyone digging on the music. Because there was such a variety of music."

It seems we only have the full performances of the two final acts, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and Simon and Garfunkel. The Animals played for 27 minutes. As an aside, lead singer Burdon was so moved by the festival that he wrote a song praising it, "Monterey." It became a Top Ten hit.

Simon and Garfunkel played for only 22 minutes, despite the fact that they had to be the most popular act of the evening, by far. It appears they wanted to play longer, but they couldn't due to some kind of curfew for the evening as a whole. We know this because you can hear Paul Simon talking about how he chose the last song played, an unusual (and at the time still unreleased) final choice of "Punky's Dilemma," because he'd just been told they only had two minutes left and that song was two minutes long.

Normally, I put all the source material details in the mp3 tags of each song. But for this festival instead, I'm just including a PDF made by Simon, since that contains a great chart showing the sources. Hopefully, more music from this day in particular will come out in recent years. It seems at least one set from the festival has been released each year as part of "record store day" releases for the past few years. So far, most of those have been big-name performers where all or most all of the set was already available. But if that keeps going, maybe they'll get to things like Johnny Rivers' set, where 90 percent of it is missing.

Note that although the sound quality was already excellent in general, one problem I've often noticed with concert recordings is the vocals being too low in the mix. I checked every song in this festival for that, and I'd estimate about half of them had that problem. So for all those songs, I remixed them using the UVR5 audio editing program. So this should now sound even better than before. 

Oh, one last thing. I had so many other things to write about that I didn't really get to discussing the quality of the music. I'd say it's excellent across the board. But in case you're curious, here's the link to an article written by music critic Michael Lydon, which came out in Newsweek just two days after the festival. (Disregard the 2009 date shown at the top.) He was overly critical sometimes, as critics usually are, but still it's interesting to see a fresh take from that time. Plus, he has a lot of interesting information about how the festival came to be, and what happened behind the scenes. For instance, there's mention of a private jam at the end of the festival that lasted four hours consisting of Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Jimi Hendrix. Wouldn't it have been amazing to have been a fly on the wall for that?

Monterey Pop: The First Rock Festival | Current | The Criterion Collection 

Here's a couple of relevant quotes about the festival. Art Garfunkel: "Monterey was the cherry on top of the sundae that was the 1960s. It was unprecedented, and the audience was unprecedented in their joy." And Tommy Smothers, who was one of the festival emcees: "There were no problems. The only problem was, just how happy could you get without hurting yourself?"

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long. Each section of the concert reportedly lasted about five hours. No doubt a lot of that was down time between acts. But still, I would imagine a full version of this part of the festival would consist of at least three hours of music. If more gets released in the future, I will try to add it in and revise this.

01 talk (John Phillips)
02 The Machine (Association)
03 Along Comes Mary (Association)
04 Windy (Association)
05 talk (Peter Tork)
06 Love Is a Hurtin' Thing (Lou Rawls)
07 Dead End Street (Lou Rawls)
08 talk (Lou Rawls)
09 Tobacco Road (Lou Rawls)
10 Memphis (Johnny Rivers)
11 talk (Chet Helms)
12 talk (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
13 San Franciscan Nights (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
14 talk (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
15 Gin House Blues (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
16 talk (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
17 Hey Gyp (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
18 talk (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
19 Paint It, Black (Eric Burdon & the Animals)
20 talk (John Phillips)
21 Homeward Bound (Simon & Garfunkel)
22 At the Zoo (Simon & Garfunkel)
23 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
24 Feelin' Groovy (Simon & Garfunkel)
25 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
26 For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (Simon & Garfunkel)
27 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
28 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
29 Benedictus (Simon & Garfunkel)
30 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
31 Punky's Dilemma (Simon & Garfunkel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/JdvDszNw

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/rCIzM8HEMC9QOil/file

It was too hard for me to pick just one picture for the cover, so I chose four, just like I did with the "Live Aid" albums I've posted. From top left clockwise, that's the Association, Lou Rawls, Simon and Garfunkel, and Eric Burdon of the Animals. All of them are from this exact concert. 

Various Artists - KHJ Second Annual Appreciation Concert, Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, CA, 4-29-1967

Here's a really special concert, in my opinion. It's a totally unreleased, and even rarely shared as a bootleg, concert from the magic year of 1967. Check out the acts: Buffalo Springfield, the Fifth Dimension, Brenda Holloway, the Seeds, Johnny Rivers, and the Supremes! Those are all acts who have little to no unreleased live recordings, and in some cases virtually no live recordings at all.

The reason this is unreleased and even rarely shared as a bootleg, has to do with sound quality. The concert was professionally recorded, probably by the radio station that promoted the show, KHJ. But there was one problem that was essentially a fatal flaw, making this nearly unlistenable. The concert took place at the famous Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood, California. In early 1967, this venue was updating their sound system. They introduced a new piece of equipment, the radio mic. Unfortunately, there were technical problems with this. A high-pitched squeal could be heard through the entire recording that apparently was heard by the audience there at the time.

Due to this problem, I had been aware of this recording for years, and intrigued by the list of acts, but I never added it to my music collection due to that fatal flaw. However, recently I remembered it, and realized that the technological advancements in audio editing could possibly get rid of that annoying squeal. So I gave it a try. The good news is, I got rid of the vast majority of the problem. The bad news is, I couldn't get rid of it entirely. But I believe this is now very listenable. Even when the squeal can be heard, it's much lower in the mix.

Actually, the squeal wasn't as bad as it sounds at first because it really was only a problem during times of relative quiet, usually between songs. When there was a full band playing, the squeal usually disappeared entirely. So my challenge was to get rid of the squeal whenever it showed up. Using the UVR5 program, I split the songs into different tracks (vocals, drums, bass, and other). I often found the squeal would only be on one track, which I could then reduce or eliminate entirely. For instance, during the banter between songs, much of the squeal would be on the "other" track, and all I needed was the "vocals" track. 

When that wasn't enough, I also used noise reduction with the Audacity program. People rightly object to the use of this technique because it degrades the music. But I've found it usually doesn't cause a problem when it's only used for talking between songs, so that's all I used it for here. Sometimes, even that wasn't enough, so I would manually drastically lower the volume of the squeal whenever it appeared during significant pauses in the banter.

I'd say I was about 90 percent successful overall. The squeal is still there in some places where I couldn't get to it without harming the music. One example is the song "Yesterday" by the Supremes. That one was quiet enough for the squeal to show up. But because it was a song and not just banter, I couldn't use noise reduction and other techniques. Luckily, there are only a couple other songs like that.

Otherwise, the recording is surprisingly good for a 1967 bootleg. At times, the vocals microphone would max out, especially when backing vocals were added. So some parts sound a bit rough. But overall, this is a good soundboard quality bootleg. Considering the acts involved, the recording is pretty amazing, in my opinion.

The only other significant problem I had was with the song "Do What You Gotta Do" by Johnny Rivers. The first half and then some was completely missing. As an experiment, I found his studio version from a 1967 album, and I tried filling in the missing section with that. I think it worked out okay, though not perfectly. The fact that it even comes close to matching is an indication of the overall quality of this boot. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in the title.

Now, let me discuss the musical content here. This concert was put on by the Los Angeles radio station KHJ, and they used it as a way to promote themselves and especially their DJ's. I must admit I cut out a lot of what I consider unnecessary DJ chatter between the acts, while keeping all the music. Some of the DJs went on and on way too long. For instance, the DJ who introduced the Seeds took six minutes for the introduction, repeating the fact that he was holding flowers to give the band over and over. I suspect the band wasn't ready, so he was stalling for time. Still, it's painful to hear. I cut those six minutes down to one. I did a lot of editing with the others, cutting things down to just the basic introductions of each act, and getting rid of a lot of the radio station promotion and hype. 

There also was a section in the middle of the Supremes set where Berry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, gave a speech and presented an award. I thought that was somewhat interesting, since Gordy is a famous figure, so I kept most of his speech. But I cut out a lot of that section too, including the entire speech by the person who received the award.

Let's consider the acts involved here. The sheer musical diversity is pretty amazing. Every single act in the concert is interesting to me. Note that the more popular acts came later, with each succeeding act getting more stage time. The first two acts only got 16 minutes each, but the final act, the Supremes, got 48 minutes.

These days, I think people would be most interested to hear Buffalo Springfield's set. Unfortunately, it was only four songs long. But on the plus side, it's historic, because it included the very first public performance of "Mr. Soul," which was on the verge of being released as a single at the time. Even though the Buffalo Springfield set is only 16 minutes long, it's still a gem due to the rarity of live recordings by them with this quality.

The Fifth Dimension were just starting to get popular when this concert happened, which is why they only had a short set at the start of the concert. Their debut album, "Up, Up and Away," wouldn't be released until a couple of months after this concert. They had released a few singles already, but their first really big hit, also "Up, Up and Away," hadn't been released yet either. But they did play it here. I'm not aware of ANY Fifth Dimension bootlegs, and their one live album, simple called "Live," is from 1971, with a very different set list.

Brenda Holloway was a Motown act. She was often ignored by Motown. Consider how she released tons of singles in the 1960s, but was only allowed to release one album, in 1964. At the time of this concert, she hadn't had a hit in two years. But she was promoting her latest single, "Just Look What You've Done," which would prove to be a minor hit (in the Top Twenty of the Soul chart), and should have been a bigger hit. She never released a live album in the 1960s and I'm not aware of any bootlegs by her either.

The Seeds were a garage rock band was a very simple and primitive sound. Their most famous song, "Pushin' Too Hard," only uses two chords, and most of their other songs are just like that, and sound similar to each other. Yet somehow there's charm in their simplicity. The Seeds only had two national hits, "Pushin' Too Hard" and "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," both of them scraping around the bottom of the Top Forty. But they were based in Los Angeles and much more popular there, which explains why they got a more prominent billing and longer set time than some other acts here. The Seeds never released a live album in the 1960s (although there is one studio album with fake crowd noise added, bizarrely). I could only find one bootleg from the 1960s, an Anaheim concert in 1968, but the sound quality of that is a lot poorer than this.

Johnny Rivers was a big star in 1967. He'd had a bunch of big hits, including the self-composed "Poor Side of Town," which was Number One in 1966. His version of the Motown classic "Baby I Need Your Lovin'" was a Number Three hit around the time of this concert, an even bigger hit than the original by the Four Tops. But he was possibly even better known for his series of live albums, which were all good sellers. Between 1964 and 1967, he released no fewer than five live albums! That said, this is probably a better set list than any of those albums, because it contains all of his biggest hits by that point in his career. 

One interesting side note is that Rivers played with an orchestra, and it was conducted in person by none other than Jimmy Webb. Webb would go on to become a famous songwriter, with many classic hits written by him but performed by others. But at the time of this concert he was just starting to find success with his songs. He wrote seven songs on Rivers most recent album at the time, but none of them were hits. However, "Up, Up and Away," played by the Fifth Dimension earlier in the concert, would be the first big hit for him a couple of months later, reaching the Top Ten.

That takes us to the closing act, the Supremes. They were the jewel in the crown for Motown, having hit after hit after hit all through the 1960s. At the time of this concert, the Supremes were promoting their latest single, "The Happening." It would hit Number One a few weeks after this concert. The Supremes did release a few live albums, including one in 1965 and another in 1968. But I'm not aware of any bootlegs by them, so this is an interesting addition.

I believe that at the time of this concert, band member Florence Ballard was having trouble due to alcoholism and depression. As a result, she was missing many concerts. This led to her being replaced by Cindy Birdsong, a member of the Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles. I believe that Birdsong was on stage here, not Ballard. Ballard returned to the Supremes in May, but performed badly. She was permanently replaced by Birdsong in July.

I'd be curious what people think of this concert, and especially if any of the lingering squeal sound is still bothersome.

By the way, I found a poster for the first KHJ appreciation concert, also at the Hollywood Bowl, on April 2, 1966. Here's the list of acts: Sonny and Cher (who were the main headliners), Donovan, Jan & Dean, Bob Lind, the Knickerbockers, the Mamas & the Papas, the Modern Folk Quartet, Otis Redding, and the Turtles. (Though I hear Jan & Dean didn't play.) That's quite a line-up! I hope a recording of that emerges someday.

This album is two hours and 24 minutes long.

01 talk by Gary Mack (Buffalo Springfield)
02 Pay the Price (Buffalo Springfield)
03 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
04 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
05 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
06 Mr. Soul (Buffalo Springfield)
07 talk by Gary Mack (Buffalo Springfield)
08 talk by Johnny Williams (Fifth Dimension)
09 It's Not Unusual (Fifth Dimension)
10 Go Where You Wanna Go (Fifth Dimension)
11 On Broadway (Fifth Dimension)
12 talk (Fifth Dimension)
13 Up, Up and Away (Fifth Dimension)
14 The Beat Goes On (Fifth Dimension)
15 talk by Bobby Tripp (Brenda Holloway)
16 Happy Together - Sunny (Brenda Holloway)
17 talk (Brenda Holloway)
18 Just Look What You've Done (Brenda Holloway)
19 Every Little Bit Hurts (Brenda Holloway)
20 talk by Humble Harve (Seeds)
21 talk (Seeds)
22 Tripmaker (Seeds)
23 talk (Seeds)
24 Pushin' Too Hard (Seeds)
25 talk (Seeds)
26 Mr. Farmer (Seeds)
27 talk (Seeds)
28 Up in Her Room (Seeds)
29 talk (Seeds)
30 Can't Seem to Make You Mine (Seeds)
31 talk by Humble Harve (Seeds)
32 talk by Johnny Mitchell (Johnny Rivers)
33 Seventh Son (Johnny Rivers)
34 California Dreamin' (Johnny Rivers)
35 Mountain of Love (Johnny Rivers)
36 Do What You Gotta Do (Johnny Rivers)
37 The Tracks of My Tears (Johnny Rivers)
38 talk (Johnny Rivers)
39 Baby, I Need Your Lovin' (Johnny Rivers)
40 Memphis, Tennessee (Johnny Rivers)
41 talk (Johnny Rivers)
42 Poor Side of Town (Johnny Rivers)
43 talk (Johnny Rivers)
44 Secret Agent Man (Johnny Rivers)
45 tallk by Don Steele (Supremes)
46 You Keep Me Hangin' On (Supremes)
47 Stop in the Name of Love - Come See about Me - My World Is Empty without You - Baby Love (Supremes)
48 Michelle (Supremes)
49 More [Theme from Mondo Cane] (Supremes)
50 talk (Supremes)
51 Back in My Arms Again (Supremes)
52 talk (Supremes)
53 Love Is Here and Now You're Gone (Supremes)
54 Yesterday (Supremes)
55 You Can't Hurry Love (Supremes)
56 talk (Supremes)
57 talk by Berry Gordy (Supremes)
58 talk (Supremes)
59 The Happening (Supremes)
60 Somewhere (Supremes)
61 I Hear a Symphony (Supremes)
62 talk (Supremes)
63 You Send Me - For Sentimental Reasons - Cupid - Chain Gang - Bring It on Home to Me - Shake (Supremes)
64 talk by Gary Mack (Supremes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/haPnF512

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/SYOuJD5qrEslLqN/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/bgXf3

I couldn't find any photos of the acts on stage at this concert. However, I did find a promotional poster for the concert, so I decided to use that as the basis of the cover. I made some edits to get everything to fit in the necessary square space and to look nice. I greatly enlarged the title in purple at the top, and I cut out some other text. But all the rest of the text is original and unchanged.