- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Otis Redding have a side each on this album of their live sets at Monterey Pop, an early important rock concert event.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Otis Redding – Live at Monterey Pop (1967): The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Otis Redding have a side each on this album of their live sets at the Monterey International Pop Festival, one of the first important rock concert events. All these years later, some might view Monterey Pop – held during the “Summer of Love”, on June 16-18, 1967, in Monterey, California – as a dress rehearsal for the even larger Woodstock Music and Air Fair – held on August 15-18, 1969, in rural New York State. For one thing, the two festivals had many of the same acts. However, Monterey Pop has its own personality and its own documentary film, made by D. A. Pennebaker who is best known for his film about Bob Dylan called Dont Look Back (1967, though filmed in the Spring of 1965) – there is no apostrophe in the original title. And Monterey Pop is more notable from an historical standpoint as well; nearly all of the performers at Woodstock were well known by then, whereas Monterey Pop marked the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who, Ravi Shankar, Otis Redding, and Janis Joplin (who was in the band Big Brother and the Holding Company). Jimi Hendrix had been touring in England, though not much in the U.S. at that point. Otis Redding’s Monterey Pop appearance was a major shot in the arm for his career, though sadly, Redding died in an airplane crash by the end of the year. Since neither the Beatles nor the Rolling Stones were touring at that point in time, the Who represented the British Invasion on the bill. Ravi Shankar, a master of the sitar who was also at Woodstock, released an album on World Pacific Records in 1967 called Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival; it reached #43 on the Billboard 200 albums, Shankar’s highest placement on the American charts.