#Ted Streshinsky

[undergroundrockpress]

Summer solstice celebration at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Photo : Ted Streshinsky (1967).

[introspect-la]

KEITH MOON AT THE INTERNATIONAL PINBALL TOURNAMENT BY TED STRESHINSKY (1969)

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.

Joan Didion, The White Album

Ph Ted Streshinsky

[5oclockcoffees]

"But here is how I most often preferred to visualize myself: not on a moor, not in Shubert Alley, but standing on the steps of a public building somewhere in South America (Argentina comes first to mind, although Argentina was like the sable coat, never actually seen, more concept than reality), wearing dark glasses and avoiding paparazzi. If you were to have asked me why I was standing on the steps of this public building in Argentina, I would have had a ready answer: I was standing on the steps of this public building in Argentina because I was getting a divorce. Hence the dark glasses, hence the paparazzi. I would let other six-year-olds (Brenda, say) imagine their wedding days, their princess dresses, their Juliet caps and seed pearls and clouds of white tulle: I had moved briskly on to the day of my (Buenos Aires) divorce, and the black silk mantilla the occasion would clearly require."

In Sable and Dark Glasses: Joan Didion remembers her distaste for being a child and her yearning for a glamorous, grown up life.

[victusinveritas]

I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it. ~Joan Didion, The White Album

Art: Photograph by Ted Streshinsky

[jonesbrianshining]

Janis Joplin a Big Brother and Holding Company na mezinárodním popovém festivalu v Monterey v roce 1967

© Ted Streshinsky

[whileiamdying]

The Fiery Sounds of the Monterey International Pop Festival

Revisiting the event’s memorable set list, 57 years later.

June 18, 2024

Ravi Shankar onstage at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967.Credit...Ted Streshinsky/Corbis, via Getty Images

By Lindsay Zoladz

Dear listeners,

Fifty-seven years ago today, the Monterey International Pop Festival — the three-day event that arguably invented the modern music festival — concluded in a blaze of glory. That Sunday boasted quite a bill: Ravi Shankar mesmerized the crowd with a set of ragas that lasted more than three hours. The Who obliterated the calm with a proto-punk set which ended when Pete Townshend smashed his guitar. Jimi Hendrix attempted a one-up by lighting his on fire. The headliners the Mamas & the Papas had the unenviable task of following all that.

I’ve had Monterey Pop on the brain recently, since last month I published an in-depth piece about the life and legacy of “Mama” Cass Elliot. (I began the essay with a self-deprecating joke that Elliot made onstage at the festival, which took place just six weeks after she’d given birth to her daughter.) The story of Monterey Pop is entwined in the story of the Mamas & the Papas: The group’s leader, John Phillips, was one of the organizers of the festival, and he even wrote the event’s de facto theme song, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” which was recorded by the folk singer Scott McKenzie. The Mamas & the Papas were perhaps the most famous band on the bill at the time, but that would soon change. The festival — like D.A. Pennebaker’s era-defining, fly-on-the-wall documentary “Monterey Pop” — was a snapshot of the precise moment when the prevailing sounds of folk-rock began to give way to a louder, gnarlier kind of rock ’n’ roll practiced by Hendrix, the Who and another of the weekend’s breakout stars, the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin.

One of the things that makes Pennebaker’s documentary so valuable is the fact that it captured, in vivid liveliness, so many musical luminaries who would soon be gone: Joplin, Hendrix, Elliot and Otis Redding, who died in a plane crash before the film was released. Pennebaker and his crew shot these artists in intimate, immediate close-up, pioneering the visual language of concert documentaries to come.

Today’s playlist revisits some of Monterey Pop’s legendary set list, specifically focusing on the songs performed in Pennebaker’s film. It’s a mix of live cuts and studio versions, of flower-child folk and rabble-rousing rock. It is unlikely to inspire you to go full pyromaniac like Hendrix, but just in case, you might want to have a fire extinguisher handy.

1. Scott McKenzie: “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”

What’s the best way to promote a festival you’re trying to plan at the last minute? Write a hit song urging people to come, of course. Penned by John Phillips and recorded with haste by Scott McKenzie (it was released just a month before Monterey Pop), this ode to San Francisco was at once a generational anthem and an advertising jingle. That’s viral marketing, 1967-style. ▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

2. The Mamas & the Papas: “California Dreamin’”

By all accounts, the Mamas & the Papas’ performance at the Monterey Pop Festival was not their best; in Pennebaker’s film, it’s clear they’re struggling to stay in sync and that Michelle Phillips’s microphone did not seem to be working at all. But because of John Phillips’s involvement in organizing the event and his group’s headlining spot, the Mamas & the Papas remain some of the festival’s most prominent figureheads.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

3. Simon and Garfunkel: “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”

Backed only by Paul Simon’s acoustic guitar, the dulcet tones of Simon and Garfunkel closed out the festival’s opening night. Their set, which included this ode to New York’s Queensboro Bridge, contrasted with some of the weekend’s heavier, harder rocking performances to come.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

4. Janis Joplin: “Ball and Chain (Live)”

Though Big Brother and the Holding Company and its lead singer Janis Joplin were some of Monterey’s biggest breakout stars — the band got a record deal with Columbia on the strength of its performance — their initial Saturday afternoon set had not been captured on film. When it became clear that Joplin’s ragged rendition of Big Mama Thornton’s “Ball and Chain” (performed here in 1970 at Calgary’s McMahon Stadium) would go down as one of the weekend’s highlights, she and the band were given a two-song encore slot the following day, which Pennebaker and his crew were sure to film. That bonus performance resulted in one of my favorite moments in Pennebaker’s documentary: an awed reaction shot of Cass Elliot watching Joplin and mouthing the word “wow.”

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

5. The Who: “My Generation”

The Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience were bigger in the U.K. than the U.S. in June 1967, but after Monterey that would change for both of them. A friendly competition existed between these two acts, and they decided to flip a coin to determine who would go first — and who would get to make it seem like they had invented the idea of destroying one’s guitar onstage. The Who won the coin flip, and their kinetic performance of set closer “My Generation” ended in destruction.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

6. Otis Redding, Booker T. & the M.G.’s and the Mar-Keys: “Shake (Live)”

Yet another of the festival’s breakout stars was Otis Redding, who was backed by not one but two great groups: the session brass players the Mar-Keys and instrumental Memphis soul powerhouses Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Redding’s performance was so electrifying that Pennebaker later released a stand-alone short film, “Shake! Otis at Monterey,” documenting the entire set.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

7. The Jimi Hendrix Experience: “Wild Thing (Live)”

Knowing that he now had to upstage the Who, the wily Hendrix acquired a small container of lighter fluid and hid it onstage. The rest — his groundbreaking, earth-scorching performance and the sacrificial conflagration in which it ended — is rock history.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

8. Ravi Shankar: “Dhun (Dadra and Fast Teental) (Live)”

Though the Indian sitarist Shankar’s hypnotic set took place earlier on Sunday, Pennebaker wisely used it as the finale of his film, underscoring the “international” descriptor in the festival’s title and providing an ecstatic comedown to the weekend’s long, strange trip.

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube

[acidisgroovy]

(via (1) Facebook)

Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco 1967 photo by Ted Streshinsky

[heronstill]

Acid Test - 1966

Photo : Ted Streshinsky.

[mdzitane]

I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it. ~Joan Didion

(Art: Photograph by Ted Streshinsky)

[alphaman99]

Philo Thoughts

I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it. ~Joan Didion

(Book: The White Album)

(Art: Photograph by Ted Streshinsky)

[undergroundrockpress]

Acid Test - 1966 Photo : Ted Streshinsky.

[2othcentury]

Students at U.C. Berkeley demonstrating their opposition to the war, Berkeley, California, 1965 © Ted Streshinsky

[thewednesdaynight]

[the-birth-of-art]

Ken Kesey (r) and his wife Faye (l) talk with his girlfriend MG (center).

photo by Ted Streshinsky

[everydayesterday]

The People’s Park Protests Photo by Ted Streshinsky