Shake!: Otis at Monterey

"This is the love crowd, right? We all love each other, don't we?"

There's an angle Pennebaker uses from behind Redding during his song Respect that produces such feeling - the spotlight haloed around his head like an aura, his breath visible in the surrounding darkness, and the flares of light rain looking as incandescent as his energy level. Backed by Booker T. & the M. G.'s, Redding made the most of the moment during a star-studded festival in June, 1967 that also saw breakout performances from Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. The film is as short and sweet as Redding's set, just five songs (and unfortunately before he had penned (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay), and of course as short as his life, tragically ended in a plane crash just six months later on a winter night in Madison, Wisconsin. I loved the footage of the crowd taken from other points of the festival during the final song, Try a Little Tenderness; despite putting this together two decades later, Pennebaker captures both the artist and spirit of the festival here.

It's June 17, 1967 Monterey, California. Tommy Smothers comes on stage and introduces Otis Redding. It's twenty minutes of Otis performing. This is exactly what you expect, no more, no less. Sure, it's great for fans but it's great for any music lovers. His music is easy to love. There is one weird thing that the filmmakers did with "Try a Little Tenderness". They took the words "Young girls they do get wearied" to literally start a montage of every girl at the festival. It's a little weird and a little stalkery. Maybe I'm being too sensitive.

Otis Redding performs at Montrey. In this period, he was an enormously popular performer, rivaled only by James Brown for the level of his energy. Yet while everyone was in awe of Brown, Redding had something more important: people paid attention to his performances, and changed what they wer doing. He was influential.

Looking at this documentary, you can see why. There's an innocence in his stage personna, a sense ofhe's getting up there, having fun,and somewhat surprised that people are enjoying it. He can see that pleasure in his sidemen, the smiling drummer, the guitarist racing to keep up. He was a genuine artist and he's been greatly missed

During the Monterey Festival, D.A. Pennebaker shot the whole festival, and then released 2 special films focusing on 2 artists, one is Jimi Hendrix (which I've also reviewed) and the other is Otis Rettig. Let me just pause here and say I knew NOTHING about Otis when I watched this (he wrote Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay, right?) and while I STILL don't know much about him, I sure got to see him perform! It's interesting to see that this film by Pennebaker gets higher ratings by the people who have seen it, and I agree, because this guy puts on a SHOW that even I was amazed by. Full of great soul numbers and surprise inclusions (Satisfaction and Respect get great covers) the man doesn't care if it's pouring rain out (which it was) or if it was 1:00a (ditto) all his energy went into this performance, and it truly is a sight to behold.

A legend at play showing why he was a legend. Epic but all too brief. Like his life.