MC Weekly Replays Monterey’s Musical History

On the cover of its annual Best of Monterey County issue, MC Weekly focuses on one of the region’s resources: great music. “It was before Woodstock, and better,” writes Monterey County Weekly’s Paul Wilner, who unlooses some nostalgic ink on the subject of the famous Monterey Pop festival of 1967, which he was lucky enough to have seen as a high school junior. If you could get a hard to find $6.50 ticket, you could watch the Class of ‘67 down there in the pines and the fog: Jimi Hendrix, the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds, the Who, the Jefferson Airplane and many more. Wilner was there for Sunday’s show with sitarist Ravi Shankar—an event that caused false rumors of George Harrison’s surprise appearance.

But that’s not all: Wilner also writes about the region’s other treasures, from the Carmel Bach Festival, founded in 1935, to the Monterey Jazz Festival, co-founded in 1958 by Jimmy Lyons and jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason. He also offers a roster of a century’s worth of great moments of Monterey music, starting with the opening of the Golden State Theatre in 1926. Nice to see a citation of the Tribal Stomp in 1979 with the Clash, the Chambers Brothers, and Peter Tosh. Another item: the opening of the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, which has hosted shows by the likes of Patti Smith and The Mekons.

Read more on MontereyCountyWeekly.com:

“Rock, Bach, blues and jazz are all hallmarks of the thriving (and historic) Central Coast music scene.”

“Magic moments with Janis, Jimi, Otis — and Ravi Shankar. It’s the Love Crowd, baby.”

“Looking back on a long history of Monterey County music through some highlights.”