I've previously discussed where this material comes from. Basically, this collection was put together by someone named Simon in 2022. There's a PDF included in the download that shows the source material Simon used for each song here. For this part, I've only added in a version of the set by the Byrds, which was released as a "record store day" album in 2024.
In my write-ups to the previous parts of the festival, I've mentioned there's a Wikipedia page listing all the known songs performed at the festival. Here's that link again:
Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia
Let's look at what's here compared to what's still missing. The first band up was Moby Grape. I have five of their songs here. They also played at least "Fall on You" and "Lazy Me." The Simon-made version actually had about seven seconds of "Lazy Me," but since it was so damn short, I didn't bother to include that.
Here's an interesting quote about the festival from Peter Lewis of Moby Grape: "I'm not sure I thought about the night we played as a chance to prove anything. But our old manager did and had an argument with [producer] Lou Adler about it. Adler decided not to put us in the film. The band didn't know about this until after the fact. When we did find out what our manager had done, we fired him. But the real damage was undoable, and in retaliation, instead of playing in a prime Saturday night slot, Adler had us open the show on Friday night. ... As I recall, we had a good set anyway and it went by real fast. The vibe at Monterey just got better all weekend, and by the time it was over I really felt like I was part of something bigger than the sum of its parts. This all had to get worked out. But to me it really seemed like when it was over, all the bands left with a sense of renewal. It was as if the days of trying to out play each other were over and in its place was a common cause."
There's just one song here performed by Hugh Masekela. The Wikipedia page lists two more, but says that other unknown songs were played as well.
The Byrds set is finally complete, I'm happy to say. The 2024 record store day release mentioned above included "I Know My Rider" (usually known as "I Know You Rider"), which previously was unreleased and even unbootlegged. So that's exciting, and it gives me hope that even after all these years (writing this in 2025), there's more in the vaults that can be released someday.
Next up was a set by Laura Nyro. At the time, she was an up and coming singer-songwriter, with her debut album "More than a New Discovery" released earlier in 1967. Unfortunately, the set was not well received. Music critic Michael Lydon wrote a review of the whole festival that appeared in Newsweek just a couple of days after the festival ended, and wrote that "the evening hit bottom with Laura Nyro," adding that her set was a disaster. In actual fact, if you listen to the performance, there's nothing wrong with it, and it doesn't sound like she was booed. But she probably didn't come off well mostly due to poor visuals. She wore a black evening gown dress and was backed by two female dancers, which would have fit in with a New York City supper club audience, but it didn't fit with the hippie vibe of the festival.
Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas helped console Nyro after her performance. "After she came off the stage, I could see that she was really, really upset and in tears. I just grabbed her by the hand, I put her in one of the limousines in the back, and said to the driver 'let's go for a ride' so I could calm her down. And I think we were smoking a joint and I was telling her that 'she was great,' and she said, 'No, they hated me and I looked like an idiot up there.' I was just trying to do the sisterly thing."
In any case, Nyro played at least four songs, but only one and a half are publicly available. By half, what I mean is only the second half of "Wedding Bell Blues" could be found. I didn't want just half of that song hanging there, so I found another version from that era. Unfortunately, there aren't many live recordings by her from then, and it seems she didn't play that song very often. The best thing I could find was a version from an audience bootleg of a concert in Berkeley in 1970, three years later. I used that to patch in the missing first half. But the sound quality difference is pretty great; it's easy to tell when the switch to the better sounding second half happens. Still, I figure that's better than only having part of the song.
Here's the link to the Newsweek review. Despite being too harsh about Nyro, in my opinion, there's a lot of interesting information and perspective in it.
Monterey Pop: The First Rock Festival | Current | The Criterion Collection
After Nyro was Jefferson Airplane. This is their full set. That was followed by a set that started out with a few instrumentals from Booker T. & the MG's. Then Booker T. & the MG's backed Otis Redding. This is the full set for that as well. By the way, three songs into his five-song set, representatives from a musician's union demanded the show be stopped due to a curfew time limit, but the producers of the festival managed to fend that off until Redding's set was finished. (Thank God!)
At the time, Redding was a big soul star for the Black community in the U.S., but was little known to the larger white public. His Monterey Pop set changed that, drastically. Steve Cropper, who played lead guitar in Booker T. & the MG's at the festival, said, "Otis had found his audience. Monterey helped him cross over to a wider white pop market."
Redding's performance got a ton of good press at the time. For instance, that Newsweek review mentioned above summed up his set with these words: "ecstasy, madness, loss, total, screaming, fantastic." In 1968, two songs from his performance would be one of the highlights of the hit "Monterey Pop" movie documentary. Still later, in 1970, the whole performance would be released on a hit album (split with some songs by Jimi Hendrix from the festival). Unfortunately though, Redding didn't get to live long enough to enjoy this popularity breakthrough, since he died in a plane crash at the end of 1967.
By the way, here's a fun quote from Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead about Redding's performance: "I was pretty sure that I'd seen God onstage. Otis looked to be 12 or 14 feet tall, stalking the lip of the stage like a caged tiger, just shooting lightning and sparks. He was amazing!" And here's a quote from Lou Adler, who was the producer of the Mamas and the Papas, Johnny Rivers, and many more: "Otis just transported the entire audience to church. They became the congregation, and he was the preacher."
And here's another fun quote from Roger McGuinn of the Byrds: "I remember watching Otis Redding and he really blew my mind. I had never seen anything like him before. I remember I was backstage listening to Otis and Paul Simon and I were talking. I said, 'Man, this guy is scary!' And Paul replied, 'He's not scary. He's great!' 'That was what I meant, Paul.'"
That brings up an interesting aspect of the festival. The Wikipedia article on the festival explains it well: "Monterey was also the first high-profile event to mix acts from major regional music centers in the U.S. – San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, Tennessee, and New York City – and it was the first time many of these bands had met each other in person." That also was true for British bands meeting American ones for the first time, and vice versa.
So that's part of the reason why Redding was such a revelation, because most people in the largely white audience, even the other musicians, had never seen any soul music performance like his before. By the time the Woodstock Festival happened in 1969 it was very different, with many of these musical acts crossing the paths of the other acts many times over, and often becoming friends.
The other performances here were all excellent too, even the Nyro one (now that the "hippie" vs. "square" dynamic no longer matters). For instance, here's what that Newsweek review had to say about Jefferson Airplane. "[They] were fantastically good. Backed with the light show put on by Headlights, who do the lights at the Fillmore, they created a special magic. Before they came on, the question hung: is the Airplane as good as its reputation? They thoroughly proved themselves."
As I mentioned in the write-ups for the previous two parts, the sound quality is excellent throughout, especially for a 1967 live recording. That said, the lead vocals were often low in the mix. I managed to fix that when it was needed, using the UVR5 audio editing program. I did that for about half the songs. For instance, Redding's booming voice didn't need any boosting, but the Moby Grape and Byrds sets benefited a lot from louder vocals relative to the instruments.
This album is an hour and 55 minutes long.
01 talk (Tommy Smothers)
02 Indifference (Moby Grape)
03 talk (Moby Grape)
04 Mr. Blues (Moby Grape)
05 Sitting by the Window (Moby Grape)
06 Omaha (Moby Grape)
07 Hey Grandma (Moby Grape)
08 Bajabula Bonke [Healing Song] (Hugh Masekela)
09 talk (Mike Bloomfield)
10 Renaissance Fair (Byrds)
11 talk (Byrds)
12 Have You Seen Her Face (Byrds)
13 talk (Byrds)
14 Hey Joe (Byrds)
15 talk (Byrds)
16 He Was a Friend of Mine (Byrds)
17 talk (Byrds)
18 Lady Friend (Byrds)
19 talk (Byrds)
20 Chimes of Freedom (Byrds)
21 I Know My Rider [I Know You Rider] (Byrds)
22 talk (Byrds)
23 So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star (Byrds with Hugh Masekela)
24 Wedding Bell Blues [Edit] (Laura Nyro)
25 Poverty Train (Laura Nyro)
26 talk (Jerry Garcia)
27 Somebody to Love (Jefferson Airplane)
28 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
29 The Other Side of This Life (Jefferson Airplane)
30 White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)
31 High Flying Bird (Jefferson Airplane)
32 Today (Jefferson Airplane)
33 She Has Funny Cars (Jefferson Airplane)
34 Young Girl Sunday Blues (Jefferson Airplane)
35 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
36 The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil (Jefferson Airplane)
37 Booker-Loo [Instrumental] (Booker T. & the MG's)
38 Hip Hug-Her [Instrumental] (Booker T. & the MG's)
39 Philly Dog [Instrumental] (Booker T. & the MG's & the Mar Keys)
40 Shake (Otis Redding)
41 talk (Otis Redding)
42 Respect (Otis Redding)
43 I've Been Loving You Too Long (Otis Redding)
44 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Otis Redding)
45 talk (Otis Redding)
46 Try a Little Tenderness (Otis Redding)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/Q28eTp32
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/0b13fTWg6oxVOK2/file
Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: Moby Grape, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Otis Redding, and Grace Slick and Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane.
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteFine evening of music, with two significant exceptions that I recall. One was Hugh Masakela, who seemed under the impression that a full club set would be just the ticket. He was on for an eternity, taking up time other artists would have loved to have. Not my cuppa at the time, and not that much has changed for me in terms of musical taste that I cut him any retrospective slack. The second exception was Laura Nyro, who played *way* more than four songs, to the increasing discontent of -- at minumum -- a great many people sitting around me. There was booing, don't let anyone tell you different.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your recollections. Lucky you, having been there. It's interesting that what you say match with some other negative criticisms I've heard of those two acts. I wonder what was so bad about Nyro though, since her albums of the time are very critically praised, and her later concerts went over very well too. Was it just a bad match between the singer and the audience?
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