What's most surprising for those who only know Hendrix for his feedback-heavy licks** and Redding for his pop standard "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay" is the great range of both artists, from Hendrix's wonderful cover of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" to Redding's soulful version of the lounge act perennial "Try a Little Tenderness." Still, most in the Monterey audience of mostly well-groomed, well-dressed young adults (the hippie contingent is surprisingly modest) had probably never seen the likes of Redding, and certainly nothing in their wildest dreams like Hendrix, whose "guitar pyrotechniques" (as The Who's Pete Townshend calls it) became a prickly bone of contention when both Hendrix and The Who were reluctant to follow the other onstage, even though both wanted to introduce the audience to the apocalyptic instrument destruction that was still brand-new in 1967.

Hendrix's theatrics comes off as pretty silly compared to his playing. The pink feather boa and ultimately pointless Fender Stratocaster barbeque (which has trouble staying lit, despite Hendrix's liberal sprinkling of lighter fluid) play like a time capsule, but the outstanding Redding set looks like it might have been filmed yesterday.

Directors/editors D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and (on Shake!) David Dawkins use the old film well. On Jimi, they open the show with a great newly-shot montage of artist Denny Dent, in creating a portrait of Hendrix, doing with paint what Hendrix does with his guitar. Mostly though, the filmmakers let the performances speak for themselves, though they do cut it together in a way that compliments the mood and rhythm of the songs.

Video & Audio

Both films are presented in their original full-frame formats, drawn from 35mm dupe negs. The nearly 40-year-old footage looks great, all sharper than you'd expect, with true color and good contrast. Of course, for something like this the sound is what really matters, and Criterion has really knocked itself out here, with Dolby Digital 2.0 and 5.1 mixes, along with a 5.1 DTS track, that all sound phenomenal. The Hendrix show opens with some crudely recorded and monophonic material from a performance in London, but once he gets to Monterey, where everything was recorded on analog 8-track tape, the sound just explodes with oomph.

Extra Features

Jimi Plays Monterey includes a superb Audio Commentary with music historian and critic Charles Shaar Murray that's full of enthusiasm, excitement and crammed with good information. (It's also colorfully evocative: "God!" he says at one point, "[His playing] sounds like a hand grenade bouncing around in a pinball machine!") I almost wished I had listened to it first, so that I could have appreciated Murray's observations while listening to the performance.

Also included is an interesting Pete Townshend Interview running four minutes which discusses his run-in with Hendrix at Monterey. A trailer finishes off that set of supplements.

Shake! Otis at Monterey comes with two Audio Commentary tracks, both by music historian Peter Guralnick: the first covers each song individually, the second discusses Redding's career. It's less invigorating than Murray's, and a little tightening probably could have folded the two tracks into one, but it's okay.

Criterion deserves special kudos for their consistent indexing of their commentary tracks. Almost no one else does this, yet I find these indexes enormously helpful, both in terms of finding information, and when I want to listen to a feature commentary over several days, and need to find where I left off. I wish more labels would do this.

Also included is a an Interview with Phil Walden, Redding's manager until the artist's death in 1967. It runs 18 minutes.

Finally, a short but sweet Booklet includes an essay by Rolling Stone's David Fricke, with helpful information about the film and the artists' legacies.

Parting Thoughts

Even those not terribly familiar with Hendrix and Redding will find much to like in this program, and for music fans who don't already have the Complete Monterey, this is a must-have.

**For years this reviewer unfairly held a low opinion of Hendrix, though it wasn't his fault. 20-odd years ago while at university, someone would blast the local dormitory with Hendrix's ear-splitting rendition of "Star Spangled Banner" every morning at 7:00am.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.