Knowledge about Monterey Music Festival

Monterrey Music Festival is the earliest large-scale rock music festival in the world. The success of the Monterrey Music Festival has also inspired many people to organize large-scale music festivals. However, it is not a dream to run a music festival well, which requires good organization, efficient action, careful planning and the ability to deal with various emergencies. Of course, a good band is still the most important link. Although Woodstock Music Festival held in 1969 has always been recognized as the most successful music festival in history, frankly speaking, its success depends entirely on the enthusiasm and self-control of 500,000 young audiences. In fact, from the beginning, there were some problems in this music festival. First, the traffic is so heavy that many people have to give up their cars and walk more than ten kilometers to the performance site. In addition, due to the large number of people, we had to give up the plan of on-site ticket sales, which made the audience who bought tickets in advance complain. Also because of traffic problems, Richie Havens, the first performer, had to sing one song after another on the stage until the next performer arrived. Besides, the weather is exciting. During the performance the next day, it suddenly rained heavily. You know, all these problems can lead to a disaster. However, even if there are some minor problems, when the music starts, you will still be shocked by the whole scene. It is no exaggeration to say that Woodstock Music Festival can completely represent the whole 1960s, the ideal of counterculture and utopia, the spiritual journey of love, naturalism, anti-war, psychedelic drugs, political parties, civil rights movements, peace slogans, hippie communes and rock music.

Compared with Woodstock Music Festival, the Artamon Music Festival held in a racecourse in Northern California in the same year was much worse. This music festival is sponsored by Rolling Stone. They chose the motorcycle party "Hell Angels" in California to keep the festival in order. This is really a wrong choice. "Hell Angels" only know how to drink, hit people they don't like, hit people who dance, and even hit members of Jefferson plane. Until finally, when the Rolling Stones were performing, a member of "Hell Angel" stabbed a black man to death. Judging from the rolling stone documentary Gimme Shelter filmed by the Mesles brothers, the failure of this music festival is almost inevitable, which also indicates the beginning of violence in the 1970s. The wind direction of the times really can't be decided by one person. At those large music festivals, musicians suddenly found that the audience was much more powerful than themselves. The audience can worship the musician as a god or tear him to pieces. In fact, it is the audience who dominate the success of a music festival, and they are the protagonists. Just like at the White Music Festival in August, 1970. Although the British audience shouted "Let rock stars shake the Isle of Wight into the sea", 300,000 viewers did not let the island disappear. On the contrary, they are not friendly to some bands. However, the Wattstax Music Festival held in Los Angeles in 1972, known as "Woodstock", truly represented the unity of black people. Although Motown musicians did not participate in the performance for some reason, this music festival showed the importance of black rights to the world.

Throughout the 1970s, there were few truly representative music festivals. One of the reasons why young people don't like big music festivals more and more is that they don't like rock stars who show off on the stage. Farmers who provide venues for music festivals don't like music festivals either, because after every music festival, their farms will almost become bare spaces. The local police even dislike music festivals. Every time they spend a lot of energy dealing with weirdos from all directions. In the mid-1970s, the rise of punk music style in new york Club may actually lead to the complete disappearance of a new generation of musicians from large-scale music festivals. However, the reality is that super bands like Led Zappelin are still the protagonists of major music festivals, and organizers are increasingly relying on big stars to support the scene. How many rock stars participate in a music festival seems to be a measure of success. At this time, the music festival is gradually moving closer to commercialization. The ideal of * * * in the 1960s no longer exists. People who attend a music festival are no longer looking for comrades with the same cultural ideals and backgrounds, but just for the big stars on the stage or simply for fun. This inevitably brings such a question, why do large music festivals exist? If it's just for music, then those smaller stages seem to satisfy people's desire for music better. If it's for fun, is it worth completely destroying the natural environment for this pleasure?

By the 1980s, this problem had almost become a problem. Environmentalists are increasingly critical of music festivals, and some clever music festival organizers will consciously suspend for one year to restore the local ecological environment. Michael Ivis, the organizer of glastonbury festival in England, did just that. Glastonbury is actually a farm owned by Elvis himself. 197 1 year, he organized the first glastonbury festival here, and then the music festival has been closed until this year. It is hard to say why Michael Ivis held this music festival on his farm, but there is no doubt that glastonbury festival has been a profitable music festival for a long time. Perhaps it is because of commercial success that glastonbury festival has continued to this day. Now glastonbury festival is called the biggest music festival in the world. There were big and small music festivals in the 1980s. All music festivals try their best to attract audiences. Of course, the best way is to invite big-name bands or put forward loud slogans. 199 1 Perry Farrell, the lead singer of Jane's Addiction, came up with a good idea. His idea was to hold a music festival in which all underground bands participated at that time. The venue of the performance was not fixed in one place, but it was performed in different cities like a tour, which was later Lollapalooza. Because the bands they participated in were all bands outside the mainstream record companies at that time, their styles were completely different from the rock stars that the audience usually saw. Another more important reason was the explosion of alternative music represented by the Seattle band in the early 1990 s, and the Los Raparo Za Music Festival suddenly attracted a large number of young audiences. Coupled with the music festival held by 1994 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Woodstock Music Festival, it seems that people have suddenly returned to the most prosperous time of large-scale music festivals. The younger generation scrambled to play their parents' games. They throw mud, take off their clothes and take drugs, but behind these things, you already know that some things are gone forever.

Since the 1990s, every summer is the busiest and most exciting season for fans. They will travel around the world, from one country to another, from one music festival to another. The organizers of the music festival are all very professional teams. They should consider the various needs of the audience, eating, drinking, housing and transportation, the sales of related products at the music festival, how to arrange the band's performance more splendidly, the safety of everyone, and how to satisfy the sponsors. Commercial sponsorship has always been a prerequisite for music festivals. It can be said that without commercial sponsorship, there would not be hundreds of music festivals held around the world every summer. And big companies also get rich returns from music festivals-young people are an inexhaustible market for music.

The first rock music festival in China should start from 1997. In March of that year, the first China New Music Festival was held in Tangshan, Hebei. Although the organizers didn't know what rock music was in advance, the festival was interrupted in the middle, but it was a start. The real rock music festival is the first Midi Music Festival held by Beijing Midi Music School in May 1999. At that time, the performance venue was located in the auditorium of Midi Music School. Most of the audience were students from the Music School and other band members, as well as a small number of residents around the school. The performers are basically students who graduated from Midi Music School in different periods, so this music festival looks more like a report performance of Midi Music School. Although the quality of performing bands is uneven, most of the audience still found a sense of belonging in this simple auditorium. In the next few years, Midi Music Festival has a bigger venue, more audiences and higher popularity, but it still can't solve some problems, such as different levels caused by too many bands, short performance time for each band, such as bad sound, which are the core of a music festival. The Midi Music Festival every year is more and more like a gathering of all-people rock youth, but it seems to have nothing to do with music. However, some other music festivals in China, such as Snow Mountain Music Festival, Helan Mountain Music Festival and the recently held Grassland Music Festival, all have the same problem, that is, the organizers' lack of experience makes the music festivals unsatisfactory. Perhaps many times, we are shrouded in the shadow of a large music festival like Woodstock. We always fantasize about such an exciting scene in China, but at the same time, you should be soberly aware that the success of a large-scale music festival does not depend on some accidental factors. You know, Woodstock wouldn't exist without the Youth Culture Foundation in the 1960s and the performances of various clubs every night. Even once in a while, it's just an illusion.