Gimme Shelter (1970)

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Gimme Shelter (1970)
Topic Started: Feb 24 2008, 09:22 AM (117 Views)
Laughing Gravy	Feb 24 2008, 09:22 AM Post #1
Revered in the UK Posts: 11,070 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: August 31, 2005	A filmed record of the infamous 1969 rock concert at Altamont Speedway in which a concert-goer is stabbed to death by one of the stage security hands, a result of somebody's decision to hire Hell's Angels as security. The film begins with Mick and Mick and Keith and Charlie and Bill onstage at NY's Madison Square Garden, and they look and sound great. The end of a long tour, but the boys look ready to keep at it, and so a decision is made to do a free concert in California. We then fast-forward to Mick Jagger watching tapes of that free concert in horror and shock (the murder was captured on camera from the stage) and then we go back and watch the extremely half-assed preparation for putting the concert together, finding a venue at the last minute, etc. The concert footage includes Ike & Tina Turner, Jefferson Airplane and The Flying Burrito Bros., but not much of any of them. The concert was apparently ugly from the start; nearly as much time is devoted to various band members pleading with the crowd to "cool it" is shown as actual performing. Once you've got 300,000 people there, though, you can't cancel the concert: it would've gotten uglier. So the Stones go on, interrupt songs to admonish the crowd and their security guards to feel the love instead of the club, and launch into "Under My Thumb" as a tall man in a green suit is stabbed in the back. I'd always heard the Stones were the bad guys here, that there music somehow inspired the base instincts that led to this tragedy, but they simply appear to be a bunch of clueless musicians caught up in a maelstrom beyond their control. Massive events like this one can't be done on the fly; somebody gets hurt. As for the movie itself, it's a good one, and the Criterion disc is superb, with another 20 minutes of outtakes, mainly the Stones listening to some of the new recording tracks they'd been laying down, including a couple of Chuck Berry tunes. There's also a thick pamphlet stuffed with essays on the concert, the band, the film, and the "death of the 1960s".


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