The Complete Monterey Pop Festival (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

This concert has been remastered to a 1080P Blu Ray release and NOT 4K as some of the reviews have said.The video quality is not that bad. You do see the graininess of the original recording and it is not full screen HD. It is a 4x3 ratio which is the way that it was recorded.The audio for the concert has been remastered to DTS-HD which is excellent. The accompanied disks are Stereo.For what is included with purchase, I wish it would have been the full concert on 1 DVD. Most entertainers perform 1 song and the big names perform a couple. There is a second disk for Jimi Hendrix which has him playing 5 songs, but this set is not part of the main movie and the main movie has Jimi playing a song that is not on the 2nd DVD. The audio quality of Jimi ( and everyone else) is outstanding.This concert was for several days and there should have been a disk for each day. The 2nd and 3rd disk should have been part of the 1st DVD. There is way more to this concert than what was presented here.Packaging is very well put together.

If you love 60's music............you MUST have this!!First, you get the original Monterey Pop film, remastered. I am fairly certain everyone here has seen it..............it's only about an hour and ten minutes long, but just Janis doing Ball And Chain would be quite enough. But I'm just getting started. You get Hendrix and Otis Redding's entire performances in this package. I already had them both, but if you don't............where ya been?Then we come to the expanded Monterey Pop disc, two hours of never before released footage from the Festival. I'm spellbound by this, and have watched it once a week for the last several weeks. It opens with a great vocal group that I'd completely forgotten about, The Association, doing a stunning Along Comes Mary. Then a two song segment that absolutely melts me and brings tears to my eyes every time I see it: Simon and Garfunkel, so impossibly young and in their prime, do deliciously beautiful renditions of Homeward Bound and Sounds Of Silence. This is nothing short of classical music folks; it'll be played 100 years from now.As if that weren't quite enough: The Byrds do three tunes, including a most stunning Chimes Of Freedom (Dylan), He Was A Friend Of Mine (very political tune about President Kennedy), and a rockin' Hey Joe. This DVD would be worth the price just to hear Crosby and McGuinn's twin guitars and harmonies almost 50 years after the fact. Then you get Buffalo Springfield (For What It's Worth), Crosby subbing for a recently departed Neil Young. You get Electric Flag featuring Michael Bloomfield on guitar, some jumpin' upbeat blues, Drinkin' Wine. Then there's the great Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Elvin Bishop on guitar, without a doubt one of the most influential 60's blues outfits doing Driftin' Blues. Janis w/ Big Brother get another tune, this time Combination Of The Two, from Cheap Thrills, very fun R&B tune. The Mamas and The Papas get an entire set..............yeah, no less than six tunes! The Who get three tunes.............remember this is pre-Tommy. Powerful stuff, as anyone would expect. Throw in a Jefferson Airplane tune, Somebody To Love...........damn, talk about a righteous 60's feeling. If I were trapped on a desert island, had a DVD player and a TV and only two DVD's............I think it would have to be this one and Woodstock. But remember, Monterey Pop by D.A. Pennebaker is the one that started the whole rock Festival film thing..............it was the first. And with this expanded version, it's every bit right up there with Woodstock. Priceless just to have video documentation of this groundbreaking Festival from 1967. And what they've done with the sound is just phenomenal.

Bought the Criterion DVD set many years ago. This Blu Ray is an upgrade of that set (i.e., no significant new content). First of all, the sound quality is beyond compare. You feel like you are sitting in the middle of the audience in a perfect venue. The picture quality on the main disk is really good. The 2nd & 3rd disk has the superior sound, but you get the feeling they didn't do much to upgrade the video. Overall, I am pleased with the product. One warning - older Blu Ray players with slower processors will struggle playing this disk.

Filmed at California's Monterey festival in mid 1967 at which most of the new San Francisco bands performed, "Monterey Pop" captured the feel of the artists and, equally importantly, the audience at an event that catapulted the West Coast onto the international stage. Problem was that for various reasons, including poor playing & camera-work, a large number of these bands never made it into the released version leaving much of the film dominated by the more established & "professional" UK & US groups such as the Who, Eric Burdon & the Animals, the Mamas & Papas and Jimi Hendrix. But... no matter, because the contributions from Jefferson Airplane (and their superb lightshow lifted straight from the San Francisco ballrooms), Country Joe & The Fish (whose rendition of "Section 43" is a near perfect insight into "hippiedom"), Big Brother & The Holding Company (featuring Janis Joplin at her peak) and Ravi Shankar provide one of the few visual records of the San Francisco music scene at the time.So, if you're interested in finding out what was happening see the original film. But if, like me, you already have it, or if you're just more curious, then this expanded 3 disc DVD edition is just about all you could ask for, and probably all you're ever going to get. Sure, the film quality on several of the additional sequences is poor but hey, you get a further two hours of performances - including Al Kooper, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield (with David Crosby & without Neil Young), the Association, Laura Nyro and Electric Flag, none of who were included in the original film, and... additional numbers from artists who made it into the original, including Country Joe & the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, Simon & Garfunkle, Big Brother & the Holding Company, the Who and the Mamas & Papas. Plus... a further hour featuring the full sets from Jimi Hendrix (simply electric!) and Otis Redding.In amongst what totals over four hours of music, you get much good and some bad - this was 1967 and many of these groups were still finding their way - but as a comprehensive insight into both the festival and the mid 60's "underground" scene it's unbeatable. And... to top it all, the comprehensive booklet included in this boxed set includes several lengthy reviews of the event, and the background to it, that put it all into context. Wonderful stuff...

The good news - well like others have said the surround sound is incredible. It's a 50 year + old show but it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. The bad news is that the film itself isn't too great- acts out of sequence - and seems dis-jointed when compared to say "Woodstock" .However the two extra films of Otis and Jimi's performances are gorgeous .. in both picture and sound quality. You can't help but to "shake" when Otis is on .. and Hendrix wow- you get a performance by him of "Sgt Pepper's .." (from an earlier London show ..) and then the show in all it's glory- though I don't know about "Purple Haze" which is played live over the end credits - was this from Monterey or not ??The only complaint I have is about the bonus disc of other recorded performances filmed but not included in the film .. this didn't play on my set-up .. and to my surprise I found that it was because the disc was covered in finger prints .. not guilty .. however after a thorough clean it played fine.. although these performance are not top quality and nor in surround sound .. shame ..But overall it's a must for the sound and picture quality of the three main films .. and on pre-order it was only £18 .. a bargain ..

Stunning movie, a great cultural documentThe main feature in the Criterion box has had an extra up-to-date restoration, so it looks FANTASTIC. The Hendrix and Otis Redding features and the Outtakes are taken from the older Criterion release, so they look a bit less stunning, but still perfectly fine. The sound is AMAZING.

Unfortunately this 3 set DVD would not play on my Lenovo PC lap top. The first order didn’t play so returned to Amazon who issued another box set immediately, great service !However this new set would not play either.My p c has been serviced and plays my other DVD’s so what’s going wrong ?

Great video and sound quality - good to see again after all these years. The Outtakes are much more variable in terms of music and performance quality - interesting and some gems within the two hours but you can see why they were left out of the main film. Recommended to anyone interested in the music of this period.

Brilliant record of American classic festival got the video 35 years ago had to get blu-ray for picture and sound quality 100% satisfied brilliant