By Steph Port //
Monterey International Pop Festival 50 //
Monterey County Fairgrounds – Monterey, CA
June 16th-18th, 2017 //
Last weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, the iconic three-day music fest held at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in 1967 that featured such artists as Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Grateful Dead, Ravi Shankar, Simon & Garfunkel, the first large-scale performance by Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding.
To celebrate the occasion, Monterey International Pop Festival’s 50th anniversary featured a lineup of original performers and newer artists alike who all paid tribute to the original event in some way.
Many of this year’s artists covered songs by 1967 performers, such as Norah Jones (Grateful Dead’s “Ripple”), Jack Johnson (Steve Miller Band’s “Joker”; Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady”), Nicki Bluhm & Dirty Dozen Brass Band (Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”), Hiss Golden Messenger (Grateful Dead’s “Brown Eyed Women”) and Booker T. Jones’ Stax Revue (Otis Redding’s “Respect”).
Jim James
The three-day stretch featured plenty of sit-ins and collaborations as well, including Father John Misty, Nathaniel Rateliff and Danny Clinch joining Leon Bridges for his encore, Jones dueting with Johnson on a beautiful cover of “I Shall Be Released” and Duane Betts joining North Mississippi Allstars for “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”, to name a few.
An on-site art exhibit featured original documents and photographs and showed parts of D.A. Pennebaker’s famed documentary “Monterey Pop”. The Morrison Hotel Gallery also hosted a pop-up gallery, which showcased 50 photographic prints of the artists that performed at the original festival, with several of the photographers in attendance.
The spirit of the Summer of Love could be felt throughout the weekend. Artists were honored as an important part of Monterey Pop’s legacy, and we all left with a sense of gratitude for its impact on contemporary culture and how we see music today.
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