| Keep on Rockin' | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | D.A. Pennebaker |
| Produced by | D.A. Pennebaker |
| Starring | Little Richard |
Production company | Geneon (Pioneer) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 30 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Keep on Rockin', aka Little Richard: Keep on Rockin (United States video title) is a film of a 1969 Little Richard concert at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival [2] originally released in 1970. [3] The film is in colour.
The movie was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The headliner was John Lennon. [4]
The New York Times explains "The movie is prefaced by some footage of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix". [3]
The film was originally entitled Sweet Toronto, and was supposed to be released in 1972. However, John Lennon demanded payment for footage of the Plastic Ono Band. A reedit of the film, which has the band removed from it, was released in 1973 as Keep on Rockin'. The original footage was eventually released in 1988 as Sweet Toronto . The film is currently "unavailable for sale" according to its listing in the Pennebaker Hegedus Films catalogue. Footage from the film has resurfaced in many knock-off releases such as Little Richard (1981) and Jerry Lee Lewis: The Story of Rock and Roll (1990). [5]
In 1992, the film was released alongside two other live-performance videos by Warner Reprise as part of their Classic Rock series. They advertised by saying: "It's often said about great, frenetic rock music that you can imagine the musicians sweating...[these videos] contain so much sweat pouring from the faces of Little Richard, Chuck Berry and James Brown that you'll want to keep a bucket by the TV set". [6]
Mark Deming of Rovi explains that the film "captures the self-proclaimed "quasar of rock" in fine and unfettered form in this 1969 date at a Toronto festival". [4] He performs a series of his greatest hits. [2]
Umbrella Entertainment describes it as a "rare, electrifying Little Richard performance". [2] [7] The Phoenix described it as a "musical extravaganza". [8]
Nora Sayre of The New York Times described it as "nostalgic", as it recreated the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, where "the music of the mid-nineteen-fifties captivated an Aquarian audience—just midway in time between Woodstock and Altamont". She adds "this film shows a sensitivity to individuals that some rock movies—such as Woodstock—lacked. [This] work does tend toward prescience—to record what will be important before most of the public is aware of it." [3]
Stephen Mamber contrasted Keep on Rockin' with Monterey Pop , saying the former film is "a clear application of well-defined cinema-verite [or direct cinema] principles and the best way to understand the short-comings of Monterey Pop is to study [Keep on Rockin']. Instead of creating a mosaic structure, Pennebaker [in Keep on Rockin'] limits himself to only four performers, each seen at some length. The independent sequences have a development that only real-time, relatively uninterrupted seems able to provide, and consequently the whole film has a completeness that is inevitably missing from Monterey Pop, with its highly selective editing approach". [5]
The film was released on November 12, 2004 by the Geneon Entertainment studio. The only special feature was Interactive Menus. [9] It consisted of one disc. It was released in region 4 on 29/03/2008. [2]
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in the history of popular music and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music."
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer and songwriter. One of the most iconic and successful rock performers of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals, as well as her "electric" stage presence.
John Graham "Mitch" Mitchell was an English drummer and child actor, best known for his work in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2016, Mitchell was ranked number 8 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Drummers of All Time".
The Monterey International Pop Festival was a three-day music festival held June 16 to 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Who and Ravi Shankar, the first large-scale public performance of Janis Joplin and the introduction of Otis Redding to a mass American audience.
Donn Alan Pennebaker was an American documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of direct cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2013, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award. Pennebaker was called by The Independent as "arguably the pre-eminent chronicler of Sixties counterculture".
Live Peace in Toronto 1969 is a live album by the Plastic Ono Band, released in December 1969 on Apple Records. Recorded at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival, it was the first live album released by any member of the Beatles separately or together. John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono received a phone call from the festival's promoters John Brower and Kenny Walker, and then assembled a band on very short notice for the festival, which was due to start the following day. The band included Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, and drummer Alan White. The group flew from London, and had brief unamplified rehearsals on the plane before appearing on the stage to perform several songs; one of which, "Cold Turkey", was first performed live at the festival. After returning home, Lennon mixed the album in a day.
Edwin H. Kramer is a South African-born recording producer and engineer. He has collaborated with several artists now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Kinks, Kiss, John Mellencamp, GRODD and Carlos Santana, as well as records for other well-known artists in various genres.
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was a British concert film hosted by and featuring the Rolling Stones, filmed on 11–12 December 1968. It was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who proposed the idea of a "rock and roll circus" to Jagger. The show was filmed on a makeshift circus stage with Jethro Tull, The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithfull, and the Rolling Stones. John Lennon and his fiancee Yoko Ono performed as part of a one-shot supergroup called The Dirty Mac, featuring Eric Clapton on guitar, Mitch Mitchell on drums, and the Stones' Keith Richards on bass. The recently formed Led Zeppelin had been considered for inclusion, but the idea was rejected.
"Give Peace a Chance" is an anti-war song written by John Lennon, and recorded with the participation of a small group of friends in a performance with Yoko Ono in a hotel room in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Released as a single in July 1969 by the Plastic Ono Band on Apple Records, it is the first solo single issued by Lennon, released while he was still a member of the Beatles, and became an anthem of the American anti-war movement during the 1970s. It peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 2 on the British singles chart.
The Plastic Ono Band was a rock band formed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 for their collaborative and solo projects based on their 1968 Fluxus conceptual art project of the same name.
Monterey Pop is a 1968 American concert film by D. A. Pennebaker that documents the Monterey International Pop Festival of 1967. Among Pennebaker's several camera operators were fellow documentarians Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles. The painter Brice Marden has an "assistant camera" credit. Titles for the film were by the illustrator Tomi Ungerer. Featured performers include Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, the Mamas & the Papas, the Who and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose namesake set his guitar on fire, broke it on the stage, then threw the neck of his guitar in the crowd at the end of "Wild Thing".
The Dirty Mac was John Lennon's temporary supergroup organised in December 1968 that featured Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell and himself. The band assembled for a one-off performance on the Rolling Stones' TV special titled The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. The Dirty Mac played Lennon's Beatles composition "Yer Blues" and "Whole Lotta Yoko", an extended blues improvisation in which they were joined by Lennon's then-girlfriend Yoko Ono and violinist Ivry Gitlis. The TV special, which included appearances by the Rolling Stones, the Who and Jethro Tull, among others, did not air as originally planned and was not released officially until October 1996.
Sweet Toronto is a documentary by D.A. Pennebaker of the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, a one-day festival held September 13, 1969, at Varsity Stadium on the campus of the University of Toronto and attended by some 20,000 people. The event was produced by John Brower and Ken Walker. John Lennon, who seven days later would unofficially resign as a member of the Beatles, played as part of the Plastic Ono Band, whose members also included Yoko Ono, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, and Eric Clapton. Their set was released as the album Live Peace in Toronto 1969.
Jimi Plays Monterey is a posthumous live album by Jimi Hendrix released in February 1986. It documents the Jimi Hendrix Experience's performance at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 18, 1967. In 2007, it was superseded by Live at Monterey, produced under the auspices of the family-controlled Experience Hendrix.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience is a box set by the British-American rock band the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in 2000 by MCA. The material includes alternative recordings, live performances and some rarities. Although most of the material had been released in earlier compilations, some previously unreleased material was also included.
Jimi Hendrix is a 1973 rockumentary about Jimi Hendrix, directed and produced by Joe Boyd, John Head and Gary Weis. The film contains concert footage of Hendrix from 1967 to 1970, including the Monterey Pop Festival the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, Woodstock and a Berkeley concert. The film also includes interviews with Hendrix' contemporaries, family and friends. Others appearing in the film include Paul Caruso, Eric Clapton, Billy Cox, Alan Douglas, Germaine Greer, Hendrix' father, James A. "Al" Hendrix, Mick Jagger, Eddie Kramer, Buddy Miles, Mitch Mitchell, Juggy Murray, Little Richard, Lou Reed and Pete Townshend. Noel Redding refused to be interviewed as he had a pending lawsuit against the Hendrix Estate.
The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival was a one-day, twelve-hour music festival held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 13, 1969. It featured a number of popular musical acts from the 1950s and 1960s. The festival is particularly notable as featuring an appearance by John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Eric Clapton as the Plastic Ono Band, which resulted in the release of their Live Peace in Toronto 1969 album. The festival was also the subject of two films: D.A. Pennebaker film Sweet Toronto and the 2022 Ron Chapman film Revival 69: The Concert That Rocked the World.
This is a summary of 1969 in music in the United Kingdom.
Go Cat Go! is an album by the American musician Carl Perkins, released in 1996. For most of the songs, Perkins performs with other artists. The album includes recordings from all four ex-Beatles, with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr recording new material, while John Lennon's version of "Blue Suede Shoes" comes from his album Live Peace in Toronto 1969. Jimi Hendrix's version of the same song is also an archive recording.
Janis: Little Girl Blue is a 2015 American documentary film directed by Amy J. Berg, about the American singer-songwriter Janis Joplin. It had its world premiere at the 2015 Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2015, and was released theatrically in the United States by FilmRise on November 27, 2015.