If you have a chance you should watch Live at Reading. Great concert.

I've seen it, definitely a good night for them. At their peak as a live act they were very strong.

This one was epic:

Just an aside, I purchased the Monterey box set a number of years ago mostly as a "Who" "completist." However, it was the Otis performance that brings me back time and time again to watch that DVD. What a performer. I was blown away the first time I saw it, and continue to recommend the set for that reason alone. Its electric.

Same here. I love the Janis performance, as well. I'd rate the big four at Monterey thus:

1. Otis Redding
2. Big Brother and the Holding Company
3. The Who
4. The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Interestingly, The Who were not at all well received there. They weren't as well known in America at the time and the weekend was "peace, love and flowers" and they didn't represent any of that with their performance. Look at the faces in the audience afterwards and they're horrified. Definitely the wrong place and time for that kind of show. In terms of "what they do" it was great and put it at another venue, especially a year or two later, and it'd be much better received by the same crowd probably, but from the people I've talked to who were there, artists included, at the time it happened they were not appreciated by the majority. Revisionist history may tell a different story of course.

However, I do think that what they did allowed Hendrix to go over better than had Jimi gone on first and done his lighting the guitar on fire act. The audience was so numbed by The Who that they kinda warmed up to Jimi more and his antics seemed a more erotic version of The Who's destruction, which comes off as angry. That said, they were two great sets by two iconic live acts, but in terms of connecting to the audience The Who missed their mark with it at Monterey.

One footnote: The artists there also loved the Electric Flag's set, that had them buzzing, but it was Otis who shook everybody to their knees. Easily the single most praised set by other artists I've ever come across (in part because so many where actually there, but also the performance itself).

Well, they were well-received enough for Tommy Smothers to invite them to appear on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour later that year. But The Who were not yet the peerless live powerhouse act that they would shortly become. If you've seen their Monterey performance of "A Quick One While He's Away", and the version they performed a year-and-a-half later at the Rolling Stones' Rock 'n' Roll Circus, the difference is remarkable.



I think that's a fair assessment. The Who were indeed the antithesis of the peace, love and flowers crowd at that time. I recall David Crosby saying that, at the time, he was thinking, "How dare they break up a drum set." But later, at Woodstock, he said that he and the other members of CSN were thrilled to be there because artists like The Who and Hendrix were heroes to them. With Woodstock The Who became thoroughly embraced by the hippie subculture, which is interesting to me because I think The Who may be the only artist so fervently embaced by both the hippies and the punks.



From what I've read and seen, the most well-received set might actually have been Ravi Shankar's. Pennebaker even chose it to close his film. I don't think I could have endured four hours of that, myself, but the excerpt in the film is mesmerizing.

Inspired by IS influence. If you inspire me to do something, I was influenced by you, not by the people you learned it from. Astrid Kircherr didn't influence hairstyles all over the world--the Beatles did. Elvis was inspired by the Rock And Roll Trio, but when Elvis then influenced the world, it was Elvis doing it, not them.

I do agree with you that people are overrating Hendrix here.

I was aware of the Flag at Monterey as there's footage of them playing "Wine". Was the whole set recorded at least with audio, Sampson?

I've actually had this DVD for about 3 years before it came out. Definitely one of their best performances.

Agreed. The Smothers Brothers were also looking for something that would make for great TV and they got that.



Yeah, I was gonna mention Shankar too. He had them spellbound, from what I was told nobody moved during his set, not even to smoke a joint or go to the bathroom.

Not the way I figure it in the criteria. Inspired by is very different. Lots of bands were inspired by the Rolling Stones, but the Stones weren't innovators so to give them the primary influence points because a bunch of people who came along later were ignorant of where it began kind of runs counter to the whole "creativity, groundbreaking, innovative" mindset. Furthermore, inspired by is so much harder to accurately assess unless you were to ask each and every artist who ever played music, and even then their responses might vary from day to day or year to year, depending on their recollections. By contrast influence is easy to see, find where it began and credit the person who started it (primary influence). Find where something that already existed but wasn't widely done suddenly became much more popular (secondary influence). That's simple and consistent. Inspiration is anything but.

The three-disc Complete Monterey Pop Festival on DVD has it. The first disc is the original film, remastered. The second are the Otis and Jimi individually released sets (Otis Plays Monterey and Jimi Plays Monterey). The third is all outakes, which includes the Flag's "Drinking Wine".

Why you keep saying that The Rolling Stones are not innovators?

These are my 3 favorite songs by them: Satisfaction, Under my Thump and Paint it Black.

I will really like to know from where they copy those songs.

They didn't copy anything, but there's a difference between coming up with great original songs, as they did, and being innovative in the song structure, sound, texture, etc. Very few artists are groundbreaking stylistically and the Stones are not. They were slavish imitators of their heroes and great at it.