Festival Express (2003)

** out of ****

Don't believe the hype.

I remember seeing this film reviewed on TV some 10 years ago, where it was given reverent praise. It sounded like a can't-miss; Janis Joplin, The Band, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy and others all traveling across Canada on a train, moving from concert site to concert site. Along the way they party like there's no tomorrow and jam all night long for the cameras. How could this be anything less than amazing?

I'll tell you how. Use low-grade film, very poor sound recording and keep everyone drunker than Dean Martin on a binge. Mission accomplished.

Whereas most films that capture the music and attitudes of the 60s (especially amongst popular bands) saw them all higher than kites, despite the drugs they could still function and perform. Excessive boozing acts on your body differently – you become utterly disconnected from your senses, forget what you were saying as you were saying it, and generally can't make your fingers work properly on the guitar. In the movie much is made of the fact that they were drinking instead of drugging, but it made for poor music and a lot of incoherence.  People who are passed out tend to be poor musical contributors.

There are some decent performances recorded, specifically the Dead and The Band, and Janis doesn't stink the place up but isn't at her best. The final performance of the film is Janis playing the Calgary festival, which is a little sad because not only has she been drinking for a week, she is also clearly as baked as brownies. She would die only a few months later of a drug overdose, and knowing that I found it more intriguing just to see her in this condition than anything she does musically.

Quite a bit of conversation goes on about the festival itself, and the protests that were raised by it. Many of the young people of Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary thought the concerts should be free and got violent and abusive when they couldn't get in without paying the $16 attendance fee. The film portrays these kids as greedy little buggers (I tend to agree) who think that being a musician is solely an altruistic act. That the festival organizers were losing their shirt and the bands needed to get paid seems irrelevant to them, and the borderline-riot caused by these kids trying to get in for free brutalizes the security forces. In a way, it shows why the whole hippie movement died out – communal living can only go so far before people need to get paid for what they're good at, no matter how much you'd like to enjoy it for free. The market economy at work.

But despite the financial losses, the festival continued to the end, and the musical acts (in modern interviews) say they were never deprived of a thing. Food, booze, full access to everything; one performer stated that where Woodstock had been a treat for the fans, the Festival Express train was a treat for the performers.

There are some very interesting sequences in the movie, mostly dealing with the various bands interacting on the train, but overall I was very disappointed based on how good I expected this to be. Worth seeing if you enjoy the groups and the era, but if you are looking for music you'll much prefer the Woodstock or Monteray Music Festival documentaries.