I find it very interesting that it took 25 years to get this documentary seen. Meanwhile there are now generations who believe the Woodstock myth: That one should follow one's instincts and intuition minus logic minus reality. (Yes I know there are better aspects of the dream.) Even the more well known Altamont festival took years to be as known as it now is, which still pales in comparison to Woodstock. Everyone knows Woodstock. Just as everyone knows the flower power myth and the San Francisco dream. Yet the media didn't really cover the failure of the hippie dream. (The media also hardly covered the deaths of Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison.) I suspect that was for two reasons: One, it didn't mean that much to the straight media at the time; and two, there was a lot more money to be made off of the dream than off of its failure. And yet we all live in the fallout from that of that failure without really understanding it. Gimme Shelter, the film of the Rolling Stones at Altamont, is one essential document of the failure of that dream. And this film is another. I echo the words of the others here who recommend this to anyone interested in rock music. I would extend that to anyone who wants to understand why the present moment is what it is: Not as the final explanation but as a historical step along the way.
Yes there is brilliant music here. The Who's Naked Eye stands out as it does at the end of the film. And interestingly enough I'm sure it was placed at the end as a comment on the nature of such dreams. Pete Townshend understood fairly early on the failure of the dream. 'Won't get fooled again' is indeed the cynical motto of the years from Punk and Beyond. Now, however, even those words seem like a hopeless dream. I don't think we understand where we are until we understand that we will be fooled again and again, and until there is a major paradigm shift. As long as music is held in a divine light we will be drawn to it like locusts to a field of wheat. The new paradigm can't be left or right. Rather we need a view based upon intelligence over sensation. Yes Hendrix plays brilliantly here. But it doesn't make me feel good that he does. People worshiped him and let him kill himself. Ditto Morrison. Ditto the dream. See this film. Let your friends see it. Learn. Think.
Yes there is brilliant music here. The Who's Naked Eye stands out as it does at the end of the film. And interestingly enough I'm sure it was placed at the end as a comment on the nature of such dreams. Pete Townshend understood fairly early on the failure of the dream. 'Won't get fooled again' is indeed the cynical motto of the years from Punk and Beyond. Now, however, even those words seem like a hopeless dream. I don't think we understand where we are until we understand that we will be fooled again and again, and until there is a major paradigm shift. As long as music is held in a divine light we will be drawn to it like locusts to a field of wheat. The new paradigm can't be left or right. Rather we need a view based upon intelligence over sensation. Yes Hendrix plays brilliantly here. But it doesn't make me feel good that he does. People worshiped him and let him kill himself. Ditto Morrison. Ditto the dream. See this film. Let your friends see it. Learn. Think.