Check this out from youTube! A live “Viola Lee Blues” from 1967
Gary Lambert just posted these comments about the video in The WELL:
The stage looks too big (and high) to be the Fillmore of that period. I think it may well be a Monterey Pop outtake, which would make this a very significant find. The camera work looks consistent with the way Pennebaker and his crew shot the rest of the Monterey footage. And there’s a clue at the end: at the end of the song — almost before the last note has sounded — you see a guy with blonde, Beatlesque hair commandeer the microphone to make some kind of announcement. I would bet that this is Peter Tork, who was dispatched by the panicky festival promoters to interrupt the Dead’s set, in an effort to calm down some purportedly unruly behavior in the crowd (and who was pretty much laughed off the stage for his efforts).
It was long rumored that the Dead had gone unfilmed at Monterey because, mistrustful of the L.A. industry types behind the festival, they wouldn’t allow it. But I met Donn Pennebaker at a film festival in the mid-70s and asked him about it, and he set the record straight, telling me that he had filmed them, and thought the performance of “Viola Lee” was one of the very best things that happened during that amazing weekend — so much so that he put together a full assemblage of the song in the editing room — but that several things conspired to keep the GD out of the film. From a practical standpoint, the “Viola” was just too long for what was always planned as a 90-minute film (and which already had a 15-minute Ravi Shankar performance as its climax). And the Dead were disinclined to be included anyway, for a variety of rumored reasons (from their aforementioned disdain for the promoters to having hated their performance — or, at least, having felt as though they had musically outgrown it by the time the film finally came out in 1969). That disinclination seems to have persisted right through to the release a few years ago of the expanded 3-DVD Monterey Pop box, which remains GD-free, despite renewed Pennebaker efforts to secure the band’s permission.
I was talking to a guy from Phoenix at the Warfield upstairs last Friday nite while waiting for John Mayer to finish, and he was regretting that he’d never seen Pigpen on video. Too bad I didn’t get his email address so I could direct him here. I used to subscribe to the Playboy Channel, and one nite on a broadcast of Playboy after Dark they had the boyze on doing a few numbers. They had it scheduled for rebroadcast and I had VCR and tape ready, but they put on something else instead, and shortly after I dropped my subscription due to boredom. It was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen, in an existential sort of way. Jerry answering all of Hugh Hefner’s questions as if it were a serious interview, and what was Pigpen doing in the middle of all those playmates? Anybody else ever see it? Geez, this Fillmore West run is too good! Anybody got a time machine?
Sorry, I meant the guy regretted he’d never seen Pigpen live and had only seen him once on video when someone was playing a video at the Warfield one nite that purportedly came from Bill Graham’s private collection. Wonder what that could have been?
Another great dose of Pigpen is on the Festival Express DVD. The bonus material includes two pigpen numbers – mindblowing stuff.
I only got to see Pigpen once – 3/5/72, my first show – but I was way up in the rafters of Winterland, stoned to the gills on a little too much vitamin L, and I have NO IDEA what I was seeing.
He and Jerry were quite the tag team. Jerry would take you out to the edge of space, and just when it seemed you were going to float away forever Pigpen would bring you back to the body with those soulful grooves. I’ve decided I’m tired of waiting for GDM to put together a Pigpen tribute CD, so I’m going to see what I can put together for myself including stuff you’ve played for the Marathon. Damn, if he’d lived he’d probably be headlining the Sf Blues Festival.
The Festival Express also includes some killer Janis footage. By all means get it if you don’t have it.
Janis at her absolute best, and also The Band at their best.
Imo, the film ‘Janis’ is Janis at her absolute best. All her performances in Festival Express were taken from it, , as well as plenty of early performances with Big Brother (studio and live) , the Kozmic Blues Band, and Full Tilt Boogie. It includes fun big Brother interviews, the Dick Cavett interview where she talks about going home to Texas, the press conference in Port Arthur. Highly recommended to anyone who loves Janis and/or loved her sequences in FE. As far as I know, it’s only out on VHS (I saw it many times in the theater on the big screen when it was first released): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6300183505/qid=1136651969/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-1652024-8616056?v=glance&s=video&n=507846
There is no question that this material is from Monterey Pop.