I was thinking the other day about music festivals, and how they don’t really appeal to me anymore. I thought about the festivals of the past, and how they sounded so much cooler than what we have going on now. I’m currently reading Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto, and he made a statement about how nowadays, counterculture is the mainstream. Perhaps this is why music festivals in the ’60s and ’70s…even the ’80s…seemed much more appealing to me. They were statements of counterculture, showing the mainstream culture their size and scope by congregating all in one festival. Now, festivals are attended by the mainstream, as it’s become a more accepted form of entertainment. Beyond this assumption, it’s possible to tell a story when you look at these now legendary festivals; you can follow the evolution of culture. Or, devolution, depending on how you look at it.

July 1965: Newport Folk Festival, Newport, RI

This yearly festival was headlined in 1965 by folk icon Bob Dylan, who was famously booed by the crowds for going electric for his set. It was his first ever electric performance, and it is suspected that the crowd felt that he was abandoning his roots. He was, however, planting roots for many to come after him. This happened at a point in time where rock ‘n’ roll was still regarded as fringe, and folk music was safe…and blurring those lines helped advance rock music.

July 1967, Monterey International Pop Music Festival, Monterey, CA, 200,000 people. $6.50 for seats and $1.00 for field entry.

As the first real rock festival, Monterey is often outshined by Woodstock. The Monterey Festival marked not only the beginning of the hippie movement, and with it, the spread of LSD, but it was also the introduction of the generation’s most important musicians: Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. It was also The Who’s first American performance. The festival is considered to be the tentpole for the Summer of Love, the pinnacle of the hippie movement whose epicenter was Haight Ashbury. The performances by several world artists marked the infusion of Eastern culture into Western culture that occurred during the hippie movement. This was spearheaded by Brian Jones, who introduced Hendrix to the stage, but neither he nor The Stones played the festival.
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