The Complete Monterey Pop Festival (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

If you love 60's music............you MUST have this!!First, you get the original Monterey Pop film, remastered. I am fairly certain everyone here has seen it..............it's only about an hour and ten minutes long, but just Janis doing Ball And Chain would be quite enough. But I'm just getting started. You get Hendrix and Otis Redding's entire performances in this package. I already had them both, but if you don't............where ya been?Then we come to the expanded Monterey Pop disc, two hours of never before released footage from the Festival. I'm spellbound by this, and have watched it once a week for the last several weeks. It opens with a great vocal group that I'd completely forgotten about, The Association, doing a stunning Along Comes Mary. Then a two song segment that absolutely melts me and brings tears to my eyes every time I see it: Simon and Garfunkel, so impossibly young and in their prime, do deliciously beautiful renditions of Homeward Bound and Sounds Of Silence. This is nothing short of classical music folks; it'll be played 100 years from now.As if that weren't quite enough: The Byrds do three tunes, including a most stunning Chimes Of Freedom (Dylan), He Was A Friend Of Mine (very political tune about President Kennedy), and a rockin' Hey Joe. This DVD would be worth the price just to hear Crosby and McGuinn's twin guitars and harmonies almost 50 years after the fact. Then you get Buffalo Springfield (For What It's Worth), Crosby subbing for a recently departed Neil Young. You get Electric Flag featuring Michael Bloomfield on guitar, some jumpin' upbeat blues, Drinkin' Wine. Then there's the great Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Elvin Bishop on guitar, without a doubt one of the most influential 60's blues outfits doing Driftin' Blues. Janis w/ Big Brother get another tune, this time Combination Of The Two, from Cheap Thrills, very fun R&B tune. The Mamas and The Papas get an entire set..............yeah, no less than six tunes! The Who get three tunes.............remember this is pre-Tommy. Powerful stuff, as anyone would expect. Throw in a Jefferson Airplane tune, Somebody To Love...........damn, talk about a righteous 60's feeling. If I were trapped on a desert island, had a DVD player and a TV and only two DVD's............I think it would have to be this one and Woodstock. But remember, Monterey Pop by D.A. Pennebaker is the one that started the whole rock Festival film thing..............it was the first. And with this expanded version, it's every bit right up there with Woodstock. Priceless just to have video documentation of this groundbreaking Festival from 1967. And what they've done with the sound is just phenomenal.

If you're not familiar with this concert and you're into rock and roll, shame on you! This is the one that started it all.This version has a couple changes from the previous Criterion issue. On the "Outtake" br there is an additional song from Moby Grape and one from Grateful Dead. Other than that it is the same top quality and the same songs. The "Outtake" disc is separate in this collection. Again it has a decent booklet that list everything but the songs!If you have the earlier blu-ray I wouldn't bother with this one unless you have to see the Moby Grape and Grateful Dead songs.

I was a week into Basic Training in South Carolina when the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival took place, otherwise I would have been there. This DVD set is the next best thing. A can't-miss is Janis doing 'Ball and Chain' and watching Mama Cass blown away by Janis' energy. And Ravi Shankar with Ali Raka (sp?) doing their call-and-response sitar-tabla duo: hypnotic!! And I. today's screwy world, a Hindu and a Muslim sending their peaceful musical vibes into an appreciative audience FIFTY YEARS AGO (!!!) could and SHOULD teach us an unforgettable lesson.

It’s a nice package, but aside from the separate Hendrix and Otis movies, it’s a bit of a hodgepodge. The included book doesn’t do a proper indexing of the performances. Also, they pair the original Monterey Pop film with another feature that includes outtakes and leftovers. Considering that this is a deluxe Blueray set, it was disappointingly disjointed to have band’s performances just randomly strewn between two films. Still, it’s the best document of this festival so far.I do, however, hope that the future will bring a film that puts the artist’s sets back together in context. I suppose time will tell.

The 50th Anniversary of this event happens in June of 2017. A remarkable capture on film by D.A. Pennebaker. This music festival paved the way for Woodstock. Even the Filmmaker audio commentary is captivating. See Janis Joplin and Others in rare form. Set includes Jimi Hendrix's and Otis Reddings performances on a separate disc.

This is an awesome movie and well worth buying if you love great music. The bonus videos in this release were ot inthe original movie and make it even better. Here we see more of our favorite groups including Jefferson Airplane and Simon and Garfunkle. One of the bonuses is a song by Quicksilver Messenger Service. I love this group. This is the only bit of vide of QMS from the era of their first album with John Chippolina I have been able to buy. These concert movies always seem like teasers to me. They leave me wanting for more. Of course we can buy Jimi Hendrix plays Monterey, which is the whole concert except for one song. I wish I could buy the complete QMS performance especially, and also the complete performances by many of the other groups. I am sure these will eventually be released. I only hope it is while I am still here to see it.

I have seen many of the clips from this music festival and recognize many as being used in other videos to represent the 60s pop/rock culture. The additional "outtakes" was a treat to see some of the other acts that performed in Monterrey. I was never a fan of Tiny Tim, but whatever else he was, he was representative of the "culture" of the 60s. Weird was cool.

I love this DVD. Long long time ago I had seen segments of this Music Festival and some of my favorite groups from the late 60's performed there. How time has changed me, but I still have fond memories from that era. I strongly recommend it.

The good news - well like others have said the surround sound is incredible. It's a 50 year + old show but it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. The bad news is that the film itself isn't too great- acts out of sequence - and seems dis-jointed when compared to say "Woodstock" .However the two extra films of Otis and Jimi's performances are gorgeous .. in both picture and sound quality. You can't help but to "shake" when Otis is on .. and Hendrix wow- you get a performance by him of "Sgt Pepper's .." (from an earlier London show ..) and then the show in all it's glory- though I don't know about "Purple Haze" which is played live over the end credits - was this from Monterey or not ??The only complaint I have is about the bonus disc of other recorded performances filmed but not included in the film .. this didn't play on my set-up .. and to my surprise I found that it was because the disc was covered in finger prints .. not guilty .. however after a thorough clean it played fine.. although these performance are not top quality and nor in surround sound .. shame ..But overall it's a must for the sound and picture quality of the three main films .. and on pre-order it was only £18 .. a bargain ..

Stunning movie, a great cultural documentThe main feature in the Criterion box has had an extra up-to-date restoration, so it looks FANTASTIC. The Hendrix and Otis Redding features and the Outtakes are taken from the older Criterion release, so they look a bit less stunning, but still perfectly fine. The sound is AMAZING.

Great video and sound quality - good to see again after all these years. The Outtakes are much more variable in terms of music and performance quality - interesting and some gems within the two hours but you can see why they were left out of the main film. Recommended to anyone interested in the music of this period.

Great upgrade from the criterion dvd the dvd was good but this 4K restoration is superb I saw one comment criticising the picture quality I wonder what the viewer is watching it on.

Unfortunately this 3 set DVD would not play on my Lenovo PC lap top. The first order didn’t play so returned to Amazon who issued another box set immediately, great service !However this new set would not play either.My p c has been serviced and plays my other DVD’s so what’s going wrong ?