[MONTERY POP screens Saturday June 17th at 7:05 pm and Sunday June 18th at 4:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
Music (and film)
producer Lou Adler, who helped stage the Monterey
International Pop Festival, proudly boasted that a "phenomenal"
1,100 media people covered the event (press arrangement handled by the ex-publicist for the Beatles), thus guaranteeing
that the weekend of June 16-18, 1967 would go
down in history
as the apex of the "Summer of Love." From that mix of cultural
revolution, undeniable talent, and stage-managed corporate hype came
MONTEREY POP, first in a cycle of widely-released,
mass-audience
"rockumentaries."
The feature
directed by D.A. Pennebaker skims highlights of the three-day, 33-act festival.
First the hippie music fans arrive, one predicting that the concert in
Monterey, California, will be "a love-in...like Easter, Christmas
and your birthday all at once!" Even the many police patrolling
the Monterey County Fairgrounds are shown smiling benignly.
