Festival Express (2003)

In 1970, various musicians, their support and a film crew travel after a festival in Toronto to festivals in Winnipeg and Calgary on a chartered train. Some of the musicians include The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, The Band, Buddy Guy and Sha Na Na. It's five days of music, drinking, drugs and hard partying. There are also protesters demanding free concerts and ticket sales suffered. This is both a concert movie and shows the action on the train. "Woodstock was a treat for the audience, and the train was a treat for the performers." The music on the train is a bit different than the concerts with various groups jamming. The money talk is a bit of a bummer. For me, the highlight is Janis Joplin's concert performance which is electric as always. She also does jam out like so many others. The train looks like insanely fun and is truly behind the scenes. The greatness comes from these artists spending extended time together.

This is a document of the abortive 1970 trans-Canadian railroad tour featuring Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy, The Band, Sha Na Na, etc. Obviously inspired by Woodstock, the idea was to travel to several major Canadian cities, play a big day-long show at each, and collect a tidy sum. As with Woodstock, though, the dark side of hippiedom surfaced and there was a big hue and cry about the "outrageous" ($16 I think?) sums charged for the shows, so many people got in free and the promoters nearly lost their shirts.Contemporary interviews with survivors (Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Phil Lesh of the Dead; Buddy Guy and the principal promoter) are interspersed with archival (16 mm?) on-the-train footage and concert footage. The interviews are disappointingly pedestrian and similar, "oh it was so cool man we hung out and partied on the train and drank our asses off and took all these psyechedelics and then we got to play a lot and bummer that these kids were so ungrateful and bashed the police and bashed us because we didn't want to give it away free"...other than the promoter guy whose name I forget, they were all fairly dispensible. The train ride stuff was pretty cool, particularly a shot of Garcia doing a mostly-solo old gospel tune, and a nice vignette of The Band's Rick Danko, Joplin and Garcia doing a stoner improvisation...but there wasn't enough of this stuff overall, which is certainly rare and unique material.The concert footage was pretty awesome, though, and is the reason to see the film. Buddy Guy is incandescent in the one song we get to see complete("Baby Here I Come), Janis amazing on "Cry Baby" and almost as great on "Tell Mama" (though obviously messed up, on this song and everywhere else in the film...on the road to death), The Band impressive on "The Weight" and even more powerfully emotive doing "I Shall Be Released". The Dead's three songs are fine, but nothing really special from them; I wish they'd showcased Pigpen just a bit, as he was still singing in 1970...what, no "Hard to Handle"? Well worth seeing if you're a fan of any of the principle musicians...not much as a documentary. I'm a fan, so I liked it, but it's not for a general audience, really. Ya gots ta be a hippie, dude.

Why do producers have to ruin movies like this with after-the-fact interviews? At 89 minutes, that time would have been better spent showing more performances. So many great bands, and each deserves more than one song. The on-train documentary was all right but even that could have been abbreviated to make room for more jam sessions.The DVD includes the bonus material:Grateful Dead "Hard to Handle" Grateful Dead "Easy Wind" Janis Joplin "Move Over" Janis Joplin "Kozmic Blues" Buddy Guy "Hoochie Coochie Man" Mashmakhan "As Years Go By" Eric Anderson "Thirsty Boots" Ian & Sylvia "Tears of Rage" Tom Rush "Child's Song" Seatrain "Thirteen Questions" Better, but not nearly enough.

Great film! "Never had such a good time in my life before".The highlight for me was a baby Bob Weir (rhythm guitarist for the Dead) chewing out a hippie for condoning violence against the Canadian police:"I talked to some of those guys, and those cops were BOSS!"He then went on to explain that one policeman had been injured so badly that he was in the hospital with a metal plate in his head because his skull had been fractured. Weir said the policeman didn't deserve that because he was only doing his job, and that the people who wanted the festival to be free were wrong because the musicians needed to make a living.People never understood that real hippies were not violent/political, and they didn't hate the police. The Haight Ashbury freaks got on well with the police, and there really weren't any problems until (get this) the "hippies" without jobs moved into the neighborhood.This film was a real joy, and it proves to the general public a couple of things:1. Hippie folk were not lazy. They were capable of extremely hard work. 2. Janis Joplin was a lot of fun, regardless of what the people in my hometown in Texas say. 3. Jerry Garcia simply wasn't built for EVER drinking alcohol. 4. That was one helluva train trip!