Monterey International Pop Festival, Part-8/9

En esta penúltima entrega dedicada al Festival de Monterrey en el Retro-Visor de esta semana le vamos a prestar atención a las actuaciones de The Grateful Dead y de Jimi Hendrix. La banda liderada por el californiano Jerry Garcia se distinguió, básicamente, por su capacidad de mezclar estilos e influencias variadas en su música, prácticamente todos los géneros mayormente practicados en Norteamérica (Folk, Pop, Country, Jazz, Rythmn´n´Blues), abriéndose igualmente a las jam sessions y a las improvisaciones gracias al innegable talento de sus miembros; si bien su notoriedad les llegó gracias a su irrupción en medio de la escena Pre-Psicodélica, compartiendo escena con gentes como The Jefferson Airplane o The Lovin´ Spoonful.
“The Grateful Dead formed during the era when bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were dominating the airwaves. “The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock ‘n’ roll band,” said Bob Weir. “What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn’t think of anything else more worth doing” Former folk-scene star Bob Dylan had recently put out a couple of records featuring electric instrumentation. Grateful Dead members have said that it was after attending a concert by the touring New York City band The Lovin’ Spoonful that they decided to “go electric” and look for a dirtier sound. Gradually, many of the East-Coast American folk musicians, formerly luminaries of the coffee-house scene, were moving in the electric direction. It was natural for Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, each of whom had been immersed in the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and early ’60s, to be open-minded toward electric guitars. But the new Dead music was also naturally different from bands like Dylan’s or the Spoonful, partly because their fellow musician Phil Lesh came out of a schooled classical and electronic music background, while Pigpen was a no-nonsense deep blues lover and drummer Bill Kreutzmann had a jazz and R&B background. For comparison purposes, their first LP (The Grateful Dead, Warner Brothers, 1967), was released in the same year that Pink Floyd released The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Grateful Dead’s early music (in the mid 1960s) was part of the process of establishing what “psychedelic music” was, but theirs was essentially a “street party” form of it. They developed their “psychedelic” playing as a result of meeting Ken Kesey in Palo Alto, CA and subsequently becoming the house band to the Acid Tests he staged” (wikipedia.org)
Hablar de Jimi Hendrix a estas alturas resulta casi absurdo, en cuanto que está considerado como uno de los mejores guitarristas de todos los tiempos, así como de los más innovadores. Fue de los pioneros en introducir el concepto del Power-Trio, aunando las tareas de guitarrista rítmico y solista en una sola figura, gracias al empleo de pedales de feedback o los entonces novedosos wah-wahs. Partiendo de bases de Rythmn´n´Blues, su música derivó hacia el Ragga-Rock o el Rock Progresivo, siendo una influencia vital en bandas y guitarristas posteriores, especialmente en los setenta. Como curiosidad, os diré que ninguno de los tres miembros originales de The Jimi Hendrix Experience permanece con vida, detalle macabro donde los haya.
“Though initially conceived as Hendrix’s backing band, The Experience soon became much more than that. Following the lead of Cream, they were one of the first groups to popularise the “power trio” format, which essentially stripped a rock band line-up down to the essentials: guitar, bass and drums. This smaller format also encouraged more extroverted playing from the band members, often at very high volumes. In the case of The Experience, Hendrix mixed lead and rhythm guitar duties into one, while also making use of guitar effects such as feedback and later the wah-wah pedal to an extent that had never been heard before. Mitchell played hard-hitting jazz-influenced grooves that often served a melodic role as much as they did timekeeping. Redding played deceptively simple bass lines that helped to anchor the band’s sound. Visually, they set the trend in psychedelic clothes, and, following his band-mates’ Bob Dylan 1966-style hair-do’s, Mitchell got himself a permed copy. The group came to prominence in the US only after the June 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, one of the first major rock music festivals. The band’s performance ended with Hendrix famously setting his psychedelically painted Fender Stratocaster on fire. After the festival they were then asked to go on tour with The Monkees as the opening act. They left the tour after only a few dates – Chas Chandler later said that it was all a publicity stunt” (wikipedia.org)

Disc 8 (Sunday Night 18.06.1967)

GRATEFUL DEAD
1. Viola Lee Blues
2. Cold Rain and Snow

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE
3. Killing Floor
4. Foxey Lady
5. Like A Rolling Stone
6. Rock Me Baby
7. Hey Joe
8. Can You See Me
9. The Wind Cries Mary
10. Purple Haze
11. Wild Thing
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