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Festival Express
****
Optimum Home Entertainment
Reviewed for MOJO
(UK)
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You can imagine how it must've gone down: A couple of aspiring
hippie capitalists are passing around the peace pipe. You know
what would be groovy? We rent this train, man, and invite some
of the hippest bands to come along and we drive it across Canada.
And we pay for it by putting on concerts for the people every
day or two. And we make sure the bands have all the booze and
dope they can handle…
Whether it was conceived quite that way, who knows, but in the
summer of 1970, it happened. For five days the Festival Express
chugged along, from Toronto to Winnipeg to Saskatoon-where the
dehydrated railroaders passed the hat and bought out the local
liquor store-to Calgary. Among its passengers: Janis Joplin, the
Band, the Grateful Dead, Delaney and Bonnie, the Flying Burrito
Brothers, Buddy Guy, Sha Na Na-how did they always end up at these
things, anyway?-Ian and Sylvia and Eric Andersen.
None of them wanted it to end. Observes music journalist David
Dalton in Bob Smeaton's long-delayed documentary of the event:
"Woodstock was a treat for the audience. The train was a
treat for the performers."
A treat until they stepped off the train, that is. At every stop,
militant longhairs-the Dead's Bob Weir describes them now as "pathologically
unauthoritarian"-railed against the $14 ticket price, demanding
that the bands perform for free. Scuffles ensued, police were
confronted, heads were busted. Promoters Ken Walker and Thor Eaton,
both in their early twenties, saw their vision of megabucks disappear
down the crapper. "The audiences weren't worth the effort,"
Walker comments in an interview segment.
Still, they partied on, the entire bacchanal filmed by a crew
that was often as comatose as the musicians. More than a few of
the performances approach brilliance: Pigpen fronting an impossibly
young and supple Dead; the Band barnstorming through Little Richard;
a head-scratching, acne-scarred, stringy-haired, incendiary Joplin
in full soul-woman command, three months before her death. On
board, in one of several impromptu sessions, the Band's Rick Danko
converts the old prison work song "Ain't No More Cane"
into a raucous, drunken, howling hootenanny, prompting sideman
Jerry Garcia to declare his undying love to Janis. Lots of ghosts
here.
Prior to its theatrical release, the 50 hours of raw footage had
been lost, then tied up in litigation for decades. A true missing
link, the Festival Express marked a last stand for DIY rock before
big business sunk its claws in deep. Drivin' that train, high
on youth, bravado and whatever else they could get their hands
on, those fortunate enough to have been on this traveling rock
and roll circus knew even then they'd never see its like again.
JEFF TAMARKIN
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