VARIOUS ARTISTS
All My Loving (Voiceprint; DVD)
First screened on the BBC in 1968 (after the nightly closedown, due to its risqué content),
Tony Palmer's film attempted to bring cutting edge pop music into focus and into people's living rooms.
On the latter count, he obviously succeeded.
Nowadays we view the likes of The Pink Floyd, Cream and Frank Zappa as mainstays
of classic rock, their music easily and endlessly available and their histories re-written in monthly
music magazines on a regular basis. Back then, despite some moderate chart action, they were still
considered firmly underground, part of a vanguard of new, dangerous, politically charged artists who'd
just as soon ply your teenage daughter with that acid stuff before deflowering them and flying them
to the other side of the world for a festival in San Angeles, as look at you.
Palmer's film isn't subtle in getting across its message but then 1968 was
the year the dream ended and the world caught fire. The scenes of Vietnamese civilians having their
brains blown out in the street by US soldiers and running through the jungle alight are well-known,
even iconic images to us now but then it was like having death in your front room. Palmer goes to town
with these images, cutting them into footage of Hendrix and The Who doing their auto-destruction routines.
Try as I may, his message is lost on me.
Back in grey old contemporary London town, we have Kit Lambert interviewed in the back of his limo,
Grapefruit filmed as they shop for wing-collared yellow velvet jackets, Eric Burdon offering
another of his half-baked, tangential "what is he on about?" philosophies and assorted movers,
shakers and groovers chipping in their tuppence worth on the state of the music business and the ultimate
transience of pop.
My own personal favourite moment comes when Palmer cuts from a hilariously stereotypical old school
Tin Pan Alley grease ball banging on about how nobody can write songs anymore ("'I love you,
la la la', that's it!") to a clip of a cross-legged Donovan singing the achingly poignant and startlingly
verbose 'Lullaby Of Spring', a song that evokes the 18th century poetry of James Thomson
and the changing of the British seasons with more elegance and depth than Harry Greaseball and his
fading kind could ever hope to have comprehended.
That showed 'em.
www.allmylovingdvd.com
Andy Morten
GLENN CAMPBELL
Best Of: The Glen Campbell Music Show – 1972 & 1975 London TV Show Performances (RPM Films; DVD)
One time Wrecking Crew twanger, Beach Boys stand in, Jimmy Campbell song vessel and '70s housewives'
choice; the trajectory of Campbell's flight to fame was a strange, but deserved one. As these early-late
'70s camp TV specials display, Campbell was a versatile singer and an astounding guitar player.
His ascent to unhipdom was rapid though, and one look at the purple rinses, twin sets, polyester suits
and comb-overs of the audience show how this orchestrated country-pop-soul legend was once the domain
of the chronically square. In 2007 it all seems more than acceptable though with 'Wichita Lineman'
and 'Galveston' shining like beacons from a varied set only let down by MOR makeovers of such standards
as 'Dream Baby'.
The bonus feature of Campbell and Jimmy Webb from 1975 is lavish and excessive to a tee.
And you can't knock it.
www.rpmrecords.co.uk
Jon 'Mojo' Mills
THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE
Live At Monterey: The Definitive Edition (Experience Hendrix/Universal; DVD)
By any notion Monterey Pop was a successful festival. The sun shone, no rain, no problems with the police
or traffic. Drugs, but no violence; it really was a weekend of peace, love and pretty good music.
Heck, they even had seats.
Brian Jones strolled among the hippies like a mediaeval prince (with just 24 months left on the planet).
On Saturday night Otis Redding tore the place to pieces, his performance of 'Try A Little Tenderness'
being one of the few pieces of music that reduces me to tears, poignant for, within less than six months,
he too would be gone.
And then there was The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Very few of the 12,000 congregation had heard of Jimi prior
to the event. Can you imagine having no concept of Hendrix or his music? Only the "inner circle"
within the American pop industry had got word of this guitarist who was blazing a trail across Europe.
McCartney, Clapton and Andrew Oldham were all name-checking this guy to the festival's grandees.
By Sunday evening, June 18th 1967, when The Who were destroying their equipment, they'd still
not heard of him.
The Grateful Dead did their thing, and then onto the stage appeared the diminutive Jones, a mop of golden
hair atop his bonce, and in his fey lisping Cheltenham voice spake thus; "I'd like to introduce to you
a very good friend, a fellow countryman of yours. . . he's the most exciting guitarist I've ever heard,
The Jimi Hendrix Experience."
Cue the man with the scarlet loons, orange ruffled shirt, pink feather boa, psychedelic jacket, Cuban heels,
Fender Stratocaster, plus the two cats from England (Mitch Mitchell and "Bob Dylan's grandmother").
I am sure that Shindig! readers need no further commentary on Jimi's incendiary performance
at Monterey, but the Hendrix Estate has put together a pretty nifty package here.
Pennebaker had six cameras trained on the stage and all footage has been re-examined and given
State-of-the-Art treatment (although 'Can You See Me' was not filmed at all). A new half-hour documentary
bookends the concert and though the familiar story of Chas Chandler "discovering" Jimi, bringing him
to England, blowing away the rock glitterati, then taking him back in triumph to his homeland is retold,
it is an informative and surprisingly fresh look at the Hendrix legend and the festival's genesis.
The accompanying booklet includes the sweet thoughts of Mitch Mitchell ("what a lucky chap I was at that age"
– maybe, but don't ever forget the part you played, old boy), an essay by Jimi biographer
John McDermott and some great stills that I had never previously seen.
The disc also includes jaw-dropping early (February '67) versions of 'Like
a Rolling Stone' and 'Stone Free' at Chelmsford Corn Exchange (apparently the earliest film of the
Experience in concert), plus an interview with Monterey bankroller Lou Adler.
For Hendrix nuts who thought they'd seen everything this release breathes
new life into an old friend. A companion CD and HD-DVD are also available.
http://www.jimihendrix.com
Vic Templar
