The Festival Express comes to town. It's 1970, the Summer Of Love is long gone, and Janis Joplin, The Band, The Grateful Dead and Buddy Guy are touring Canada, getting drunk and having fun. You up for the ride?
The Festival Express was a train taking rock ‘n’ roll greats around Canada in 1970, so that they could play a number of festivals. The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, The Flying Burrito Brothers and many more toured around the country, living together, partying together and jamming together. This film documents six days of rock harmony, in which so many elements that made the late 60s music scene so great come together to form one beautiful whole.
It’s an eerie film, in the best way. So many of the greats depicted here are long departed, now rendered alive and moving in this film. There’s Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, all scruffy beard and dorky glasses, jamming with mates and occasionally pausing to play the classic tale of the Altamont disaster, New Speedway Boogie. There’s Janis Joplin, the passionate blues great, who betrays just a little bit of awkward self-loathing… but then sings Cry, Baby like her life depended on it, which it probably did in many ways (she was to die just months later at age 27, the victim of a heroin overdose).
The concert footage is fantastic, expertly filmed and edited. The sound is superb. But it’s the old footage of the bands on the train, ludicrously drunk for the most part, that is so special. All the rock ‘n’ roll legends are shown as completely human, swapping their stories and hugging each other. We see a group of musicians still recovering from the brutal slaying of the hopes and dreams they built up over the Summer Of Love, coming together to mourn the passing of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s.
This doco does everything right. As a period film, it captures the mood perfectly. Much of the film is packed with vicious brawls and angry young people, taking any excuse to bash a cop, not wanting to pay for anything. Outside of the train, there’s a sense of loathing and foreboding, as many experience the death of the American dream. But inside the train, the spirit and freedom of the late 60s lives on. And it’s that spirit which makes the film so awesome – the togetherness with your fellow man, the oneness with nature, and the willingness to share whatever you have.
As a concert film, it's near perfect, suffering only slightly because you leave the film wanting even more footage. As a road trip movie - albeit on a railroad - it's fantastic, a journey to the heart of the American dream that Hunter Thompson searched for years later in Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas.
For anybody with an appreciation of ludicrously good music – and when you see The Band play Nazareth, you’ll know your appreciation is justified – this is a must-see. Make a night out of it… check out the film, and head home to a big record collection, put on The Band, light up a joint and go back to a time when the music meant everything.
(Originally published at inthemix.com.au).
The Festival Express was a train taking rock ‘n’ roll greats around Canada in 1970, so that they could play a number of festivals. The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, The Flying Burrito Brothers and many more toured around the country, living together, partying together and jamming together. This film documents six days of rock harmony, in which so many elements that made the late 60s music scene so great come together to form one beautiful whole.
It’s an eerie film, in the best way. So many of the greats depicted here are long departed, now rendered alive and moving in this film. There’s Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, all scruffy beard and dorky glasses, jamming with mates and occasionally pausing to play the classic tale of the Altamont disaster, New Speedway Boogie. There’s Janis Joplin, the passionate blues great, who betrays just a little bit of awkward self-loathing… but then sings Cry, Baby like her life depended on it, which it probably did in many ways (she was to die just months later at age 27, the victim of a heroin overdose).
The concert footage is fantastic, expertly filmed and edited. The sound is superb. But it’s the old footage of the bands on the train, ludicrously drunk for the most part, that is so special. All the rock ‘n’ roll legends are shown as completely human, swapping their stories and hugging each other. We see a group of musicians still recovering from the brutal slaying of the hopes and dreams they built up over the Summer Of Love, coming together to mourn the passing of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s.
This doco does everything right. As a period film, it captures the mood perfectly. Much of the film is packed with vicious brawls and angry young people, taking any excuse to bash a cop, not wanting to pay for anything. Outside of the train, there’s a sense of loathing and foreboding, as many experience the death of the American dream. But inside the train, the spirit and freedom of the late 60s lives on. And it’s that spirit which makes the film so awesome – the togetherness with your fellow man, the oneness with nature, and the willingness to share whatever you have.
As a concert film, it's near perfect, suffering only slightly because you leave the film wanting even more footage. As a road trip movie - albeit on a railroad - it's fantastic, a journey to the heart of the American dream that Hunter Thompson searched for years later in Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas.
For anybody with an appreciation of ludicrously good music – and when you see The Band play Nazareth, you’ll know your appreciation is justified – this is a must-see. Make a night out of it… check out the film, and head home to a big record collection, put on The Band, light up a joint and go back to a time when the music meant everything.
(Originally published at inthemix.com.au).
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