Monday March 26, 6:18 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
Monterey International Pop Festival to be Reprised
June 15-17 by Performers, Celebrities and Fans in a
Symposium At the Historic Site
biz.yahoo.com
MONTEREY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 26, 2001--The Monterey History &
Art Association is sponsoring a three day symposium celebrating the legendary
Monterey International Pop Festival of 1967. Included in the event is a tribute to recently deceased John Phillips of The
Mamas and The Papas, a leader in creating the original festival. A photo and graphic exhibit enhanced with artifacts
from the original event will debut at the Monterey History Center during the Symposium and Country Joe McDonald,
Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady will perform live.
Timed to occur on the calendar weekend of the original event, Monterey Pop Revisited seeks to capture recollections
and personal experiences of what is considered a seminal event in the social and musical history of the U.S. Performers
already committed to attend include Joe McDonald, Barry Melton and David Cohen of Country Joe and the Fish, Andy
Kulberg of The Blues Project, Mark Naftalin of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen
of The Jefferson Airplane. Documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker's acclaimed film of the festival, Monterey Pop
will be shown. Tom Wilkes, designer of the original Monterey Pop poster will participate, as will photographers of the
1967 event, Elaine Mays, Tom O'Neal and Lisa Law. Stage manager of the festival, Paul Viarrigi will also participate.
Bookings continue, but contributors already committed include Joel Selvin, Music Critic of the San Francisco
Chronicle and author of ``Monterey Pop'' and ``Summer of Love,'' John Morris, production director for Woodstock,
David Farber, author of ``The 60's From Memory To History'' and freelancer Matthew Greenwald, a contributor to
Rolling Stone On-Line and Crawdaddy. Information on the symposium may be found at www.popfestmonterey.com, by
calling 866/POP-FEST or e-mail at info@popfestmonterey.com.
Monterey Pop Revisited has 1,000 seats available for the symposium at The Monterey County Fairgrounds, site of the
original Festival. It is there where Pop Festival guitarist Jimi Hendrix's name remains carved by the artist backstage in
the Garden Arena. A large collection of seldom seen artifacts of the era, will be on view as part of a major exhibition
staged by the sponsors at The Monterey History Center. Concert promoter, Lou Adler has loaned items from his
personal collection to the exhibit. Elaine May, retiring chair of the photography department at Tisch School of the Arts,
New York University, was a young photographer working for Hullabaloo Magazine when assigned to cover the
Monterey Pop festival. Elaine's photos of the festival, some of them never published, are part of a large photo exhibit,
which will debut at the symposium.
Also contributing is Lisa Law, whose photographs are part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian. The work of
Monterey resident Tom O'Neal, who designed and photographed over 100 album covers beginning in the late 60's, is
included in the exhibit. O'Neal's subjects included John Phillips, Mama Cass, B.B. King and Neil Young. The Monterey
Pop Revisited Exhibition will remain on view in Monterey from June until December 2001 at the Monterey History
Center.
The Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 predated Woodstock by two years. It was the first large rock festival and the first
charity rock festival. The music of Monterey Pop reflected changes in the attitudes of the 200,000 estimated young
people who arrived to participate in the weekend, some 50,000 of them at the Fairgrounds. This was the fabled summer
of love, a bellwether of social consciousness, which would ultimately change the course of the Vietnam War. Concert
promoters scattered 100,000 Hawaiian orchids over the fairgrounds from a plane flying overhead. Peace and love
reigned. For the musicians, it was a place of convergence with an unprecedented program combining soul, folk, rock
and psychedelic genres.
In part this was the desire of Beatle Paul McCartney who was a volunteer consultant to the event. The result was a
diverse program with Lou Rawls and Eric Burden & The Animals sharing the same billing. Others performing
included: The Association, Scott McKenzie, Canned Heat, Simon and Garfunkle, Big Brother & The Holding Company
with Janis Joplin, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who, The Paupers, Al Kooper, Beverly, The Blues Project, The
Byrds, Laura Nyro, Otis Redding, Booker T. and The MG's, Ravi Shankar, The Grateful Dead, Steve Miller Blues Band,
The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Electric Flag, Hugh Masakela, Buffalo Springfield, Johnny Rivers, Quicksilver
Messenger Service, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Moby Grape, Country Joe and The Fish, The Mamas and The Papas
and The Band With No Name.
Of Monterey Pop performer Eric Burdon says, ``It was the only pop festival. Everybody else tried to copy Monterey,
copy the feeling. You can't copy feelings. ''It's like musicians jamming. You don't say, 'Ya wanna jam tonight?' If it's
planned, it's not a jam. But if you wait until there's a smile or a nod from the stage from a musician who has a space
open for you to move in and turn the people on, then that's jamming. And that's what happened at Monterey. Tommy
Smothers called the festival a 'tension of love' -- well, that's what jamming is. And that's what Monterey was.`` |
