Word: rocked
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After this lengthy introduction I move to the delicious business of describing the Miami Pop Festival. Held for three days in late December in a gigantic race-track cum park just outside Miami the Festival unrolled smoothly. It represented in its music a cross-section of the entire rock scene today: folk (Joni Mitchell, Buffy Ste. Marie, etc.), blues (James Cotton, Butterfield), jazz (Charles Lloyd), rock, progressive rock, Motown (Marvin Gaye, Jr. Walker) and even top-40 rock (the Boxtops, the Turtles). All this in a setting of serene scenic beauty...
...entirely appropriate that the Festival started with Chuck Berry playing early on the first day and very nearly stealing the whole show with his fervent affirmation, and confirmation of the values we hold so dear in rock and roll: dynamism out of steely simplicity. Doing songs that are nearly fifteen years old, Chuck Berry, like Elvis, nearly proves that supreme rock 'n' roll is, in fact, as timeless as it so often seems when you're listening and quivering to it. "We are going to do a number that everybody (high-pitched scream) knows. An old (English accent...
...Chuck Berry, again appropriately, to Terry Reid, the latest staggering import from England. At 19 Reid runs one of the most well-honed combos around: drums, organ and himself singer-guitarist. His group's polished, gleaming-hard sound has all the taut excitement that one associates with the best rock. In a sense Terry Reid, with his towering individual talent for arranging and composing and leading, is very much a Chuck Berry figure. He has the same inventive rock 'n' roll ear, the ability to make original driving music out of the simplest basic elements, all presented in an overpowering...
...pleasant original riff and this is milked in the song just about as far as it will go and no more--not pounded to death as some American groups are prone to do with their own minor creations. Within the limits in which prediction is possible in rock Terry Reid is definitely a find...
...sometimes short, minutes. The music was essentially freeform or no-form jamming. If you put any bunch of talented musicians on stage and have them improvise for an hour it is inevitable that they will get it together a few times. For all that, it is clear that progressive rock is not instantly exalting the way supreme unvarnished rock 'n' roll (Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Who, etc.) is. Rather the Grateful Dead came into their own as superb environment musicians--when the environment is right, for example, on the grounds of Columbia for free during the insurrection. In front...