Monterey Festival

Stone Free : Jimi Hendrix, de Londres à Monterey, est le premier livre à s’intéresser exclusivement à la période la plus heureuse et la plus prolifique de la vie de l’artiste. À ses débuts, en 1966, il n’avait rien d’un musicien accompli, neuf mois plus tard, il est une icône du Swinging London ; puis l’une des stars les plus importanres à participer au festival international de Monterey. …

Before Woodstock and Monterey Pop, there was Festival. From 1963 through 1966, Murray Lerner visited the annual Newport Folk Festival to document a thriving, idealistic musical movement as it reached its peak as a popular phenomenon. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Howlin’ Wolf, Johnny Cash, the Staple Singers, Pete Seeger, Son House, and Peter, Paul and Mary were just a few of the legends who shared the stage at Newport, treating audiences to a range of folk music that encompassed the genre’s roots in blues, country, and gospel as well as its newer flirtations with rock and roll…

Festival Express is a rousing record of a little-known, but monumental, moment in rock n' roll history, starring such music legends as Janis Joplin, The Band, and the Grateful Dead. Set in 1970, Festival Express was a multi-band, multi-day extravaganza that captured the spirit and imagination of a generation and a nation. What made it unique was that it was portable; for five days, the bands and performers lived, slept, rehearsed and did countless unmentionable things aboard a customized train that traveled from Toronto, to Calgary, to Winnipeg, with each stop culminating in a mega-concert. The entire experience, both off-stage and on, was filmed but the extensive footage remained locked away – until now. A momentous achievement in rock film archeology, Festival Express combines this long-lost material with contemporary interviews nearly 35 years after it was first filmed.

Considered by many to be a substandard effort due to the circumstances of its release (producer Bob Krasnow, the owner of Blue Thumb, the label which debuted with this album, remixed the album while Don Van Vliet and crew were off on a European tour, adding extraneous sound effects like heartbeats and excessive use of psychedelic-era clichés like out-of-phase stereo panning and flanging), 1968's Strictly Personal is actually a terrific album, every bit the equal of Safe As Milk and Trout Mask Replica…