Down in Monterey

Dear Friend,
You'll never guess where I am right now...I'm at the Monterey Pop Festival at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in California! We are having such a groovy time - the weather has been pretty decent. My gosh are there a lot of people here!! Some say they expect nearly a hundred thousand! But it's been peaceful.
So many of my favorite bands are here. The only group that isn't (but I wish they were) are The Beatles. Well, there's always tomorrow. Maybe they'll surprise us and show! Wouldn't it be really groovy if they performed their new album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!!
Anyhow, yesterday I saw Simon and Garfunkel, the Animals, the Association, Lou Rawls, and Johnny Rivers.

If you think yesterday had some cool music, wait to you hear who I saw so far today: Country Joe & the Fish, Canned Heat, the Byrds, the Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and some new group with a chick singer called Big Brother and the Holding Company. The girl could scream! Wow! I can't wait to see if they have an album out!! They're supposed to perform again tomorrow - I can't wait!
Do you know who else will be playing on stage tomorrow? Buffalo Springfield, the Who, Jimi Hendrix (not sure who this guy is. he's black so I suppose he's a soul singer), Scott McKenzie, and the Mama's and Papa's! The Grateful Dead are also scheduled to perform but they're too way out for me.
Well, this weekend of June 16, 17, and 18 1967 will certainly go down in history as one of the grooviest ever!

If you would like, you can enjoy the festival, too!
Just click here for the DVD
and/or
click here for the CD.
To me, the Monterey Pop Festival was the beginning AND the end of the music festivals.

Here's my DVD review from Amazon.com:
If, through some miracle, I was given a choice of being able to attend Monterey or Woodstock, Monterey would win hands down. Musically, Monterey had so much more variety to offer without any of the overt "coolness" and the pretentious attitude the performers and announcers had at Woodstock. Where Woodstock musically purposely pushed the counter-culture, Monterey just "let it all hang out," (as was the term in '67). Pop artists freely and without care mingled with the new underground. Where else could you find Peter Tork of the Monkees introduce the Buffalo Springfield? Monterey was innocent - the musicians, the announcers, and the patrons - and there was no "smile for the camera" smugness that Woodstock seemed to convey.
Plenty of fresh new music abounded for an audience that responded with child-like glee (except for the wide-eyed young girl who witnessed Jimi Hendrix for the first time! Don't you just love her expression?).
There were no tye-dyed shirts or guys with hair down to the middle of their backs in the audience. That style was 1969 and into the 1970's. In fact, most guys wore their hair not much longer than the Beatles did in 1964 - collar length with the ears showing. And, for those who wore glasses, the horn-rimmed style was still the most common and not the John Lennon type from the Sgt. Pepper album. Still a few years to go before that caught on.
Monterey is truly a time capsule of 1967. This magnificent DVD box set has more social history of the times than any musical documentary I have seen. Do you want to know the way it really was in the Summer of Love? Watch the Monterey Pop Festival box set.
Because, that IS the way it really was.


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