| 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]
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer and musician. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence.
Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock, was a music festival held during August 15–18, 1969, on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York, United States, 40 miles (65 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock. Billed as "an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music" and alternatively referred to as the Woodstock Rock Festival, it attracted an audience of more than 400,000 attendees. Thirty-two acts performed outdoors despite sporadic rain. It was one of the largest music festivals held in history.
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 British 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, and Carlos Santana, as well as records for other well-known artists in various genres, including Anthrax, Joe Cocker, Loudness, Peter Frampton, John Mayall, Ten Years After, Mott the Hoople, John Sebastian, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick, Small Faces, Sir Lord Baltimore and Whitesnake.
Woodstock is a 1970 American documentary film of the watershed counterculture Woodstock Festival which took place in August 1969 near Bethel, New York.
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, and Bob Neuwirth, who figured prominently in Pennebaker's Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back, acted as stage manager. 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 a name given by John Lennon to a temporary supergroup he 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 wife 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 persons. 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.
Jimi Hendrix: An Illustrated Experience is a biography of American guitarist Jimi Hendrix, written by his stepsister Janie and his biographer John McDermott, and published on October 9, 2007. The book tells the story of Hendrix and his life through reproductions of rare material such as letters, drawings, postcards and posters. An Illustrated Experience also contains a companion CD entitled Hendrix: Live, which includes three live tracks, two interviews, and a studio jam entitled "Keep on Groovin'".
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 and Yoko Ono, 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 Revival69: The Concert That Rocked the World.
Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music is a 4-CD live box-set album of the 1969 Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York. Its release marked the 25th anniversary of the festival. The box set contains tracks from Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, Woodstock 2, and numerous additional, previously unreleased performances from the festival as well as the stage announcements and crowd noises. Just prior to the box set's release, Atlantic Records released a much shorter 1-CD version entitled The Best of Woodstock. In 2019, Rhino Records issued a 38-CD box set called Woodstock – Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive which includes every musical performance as well as stage announcements and other ancillary material.
Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter whose career spanned from 1962 to 1970. He appeared in several commercially released films of concerts and documentaries about his career, including two popular 1960s music festival films – Monterey Pop (1968) and Woodstock (1970). A short documentary, Experience (1968), also known as See My Music Talking, was also screened.
Janis: Little Girl Blue is a 2015 American documentary film directed by Amy J. Berg, about the American singer-songwriter Janis Joplin. It was premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival and then shown in the TIFF Docs section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
Live: Ravi Shankar at the Monterey International Pop Festival is a live album by Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, released on the World Pacific record label in November 1967. It consists of part of Shankar's celebrated performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in California on 18 June 1967. Shankar was accompanied throughout by his regular tabla player, Alla Rakha, who performs a frenetic five-minute solo on the recording.
Nancy Beth Reiner was an artist whose work was featured as the cover art of various record albums between 1967 and 1971. She is most notable as the cover artist for The Cry of Love, the 1971 posthumous album by Jimi Hendrix.