...Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, Ian Tyson, Bob Weir.(Although Janis' frequent partying miles were beginning to show in her face, fortunately it didn't extend to her voice. She would be dead in a few months. How could these people play so wasted?) I loved this film. Great concert footage alternating with interviews of people like Buddy Guy and Sylvia Tyson in her gently clipped Canadian accent. This was the music I grew up on as a teenager, so I am probably biased. I think it makes a good companion piece to "The Way the Music Died" on PBS a few months ago. Popular music really has changed a lot in the last 3 or 4 decades. Who today would want to see a documentary about Britney Spears or other Top 40 icons on a train across Canada or any other place? Bob Weir comments that while most of the performers were users of marijuana and halucinogens, that alcohol was a new thing for them, "and it worked just fine." He also noted that the giant display bottle of Canadian Club they persuaded the liquor store in Saskatoon to sell them "had some sort of gel caps in the bottom of it." The rioting kids who decided that the concert should be free angered me with their brazen sense of entitlement. It was another sign of the times, I guess. That's how impractical people really were in those days. The musicians consented to an additional free show in Toronto. This is another difference between them and today's less generous and permissive stars, who would say, "F--k this". Again Bob Weir: "the kids weren't interested in the music. They were just anti- authoritarian. I know. I'm that way myself."
Review of Festival Express
