Pretty Good

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

What's so fascinating about this film is how its music soars, despite the pot-fogged incidents that happen offstage, and despite poor concert production planning. Only great musicians of merit could survive this crap: An embarrassing mid-concert altercation between Steven Stills and a hostile audience member, all in full view and focus of the audience, after which Stills performs his set. Cringe-inducing interstitials of of wacked-out audience members-- from drug addict transient/philosophers with truant, abused, harmonica-chewing children, to poet wannabees with bad dentistry along Highway 1-turned-parking lot.Did it ever dawn on Crosby, Baez or Hendricks that they're wasting their time singing to the great unwashed? People who have smeared their faces with greasepaint, siphoned stolen gas by mouth and can't find their children? People who call attention to themselves at public concerts by running naked without having trimmed their pubic hair? Luckily these great musicians don't seem to let it get to them. (Except for Stills who walks into the crowd and mauls a psychotic loudmouth.)What becomes really clear is how naively the whole concert production was engineered. No parking. No rehearsal (as a bewildered Joan Baez looks about the stage for an ending after the 20th chorus of "Oh Happy Day".) No barrier between audience and performers-- anyone could jump in the downstage swimming pool and cause a ruckus at random. (The "swimming pool downstage" was a weed-fried concert promoter's whimsy-turned nightmare-- too odd to be believed, and would be unthinkable for today's uber-engineered concerts.) It's hilarious to watch a generation of brilliant, carefree artists step in their own crap because of faulty production design and engineering.This film is hideous and beautiful. Like a 1920's Montparnasse outdoor art show in a rainstorm. Or like an evening with David Crosby-- in a hot tub.

The Esalen Institute where this concert took place began as a comparative religion institute in 1962 and still exists today attracting musicians, artists, filmmakers, authors, philosophers and other notables conducting seminars and symposiums. In 1969 it hosted it's 6th annual music festival which is the subject of this film. In the 60's such performers as Simon & Garfunkel, Arlo Guthrie, Ravi Shankar, Judy Collins, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Grace Slick, James Cotton and even a 19 year old Bruce Springsteen played at various festivals. None of the afore mentioned are in this film. Many luminaries visited the institute in the 60's including Ansel Adams, Aldous Huxley, The Grateful Dead, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Hunter Thompson. As the 60's drew to a close filmmakers Baird Bryant and Johanna Demetrakas decided to capture on film the 6th annual concert at Big Sur. Bryant had five cameras to film the event including himself, Bill Kaplan, Gary Weis, Peter Smokler and Joan Churchill. About 12,000 people attended the two day event so this is a vastly scaled back outdoor concert from Woodstock that had happened only one month before. Crosby, Stills, Nash along with Neil Young who had joined CSN in their debut as a foursome at Woodstock are the featured act still working on their play list. Joan Baez who in her late teens lived at the Esalen Institute is a performer here as well as her sister Mimi Farina. Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian and Dorothy Morrison of the Edwin Hawkins Singers are the other nationally known acts on the bill. Other performers include Texas folk singer Carol Ann Cisneros and the other acts rounding out the bill are The Struggle Mountain Resistance Band, The combs sisters and Julioe Payne. The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Incredible String Band also performed at the festival but are not in the film. in an unconventional stage setting for an outdoor 60's concert the performers play on the pool deck in front of a large swimming pool that separates them from the audience. This is a low budget film that tries hard to be a combination documentary, concert film and art film but mostly fails in all three. It is a good snapshot of 60's love and peace through music however. I would give this a 6.5 out of 10.

If hippies were all about peace and love why did Stills try to whip ass and take names? Amateur camera work and some really bad acts couldn't take away from the coolness of this documentary. I never heard of several of the performers and never cared 2 cents for Baez or Mitchell, but CSN&Y were worth the price of admission. Nice look at the good old days; glad I wasn't there - what a crowd scene. A better film in this genre was '67's Monterrey Pop Festival.

This concert film -- a documentary of the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival -- pales in comparison to "Woodstock" production-wise, but nonetheless features powerful footage of a number of the '60s best, incl. Joan Baez ("Song for David", "Sweet Sir Galahad"), Joni Mitchell ("Woodstock") and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young" ("4 + 20", "Judy Blue Eyes"). Never released on video and sometimes hard to find (it's frequently shown on latenight TV) but well worth the effort.