Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival
Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival is a live album recorded at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. A split artist release, it documents performances by the Jimi Hendrix Experience on side one and Otis Redding on side two. Release and charts. Reprise Records released "Historic Performances" in the United States on August 26, 1970, less than a month before Hendrix died. It reached number 16 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and number 15 on the magazine's Top R&B Albums chart. The Recording Industry Association  of America certified it as a "Gold" album, signifying sales over 500,000 copies. The album was not released in the United Kingdom. Critical reception. In a contemporary review of the album, Jeffrey Drucker of "Rolling Stone" magazine said "memories are made of sets like this", and "even if you weren't [there], you'll find some very satisfying music by two of our most gifted artists." In "" (1981), music critic Robert Christgau called the album "as evocative a distillation of the hippie moment in all its hope and contradiction as you'll ever hear." He described Redding and Hendrix as  two radically different black artists showboating at the nativity of the new white rock audience, who had both "performed more subtly and more brilliantly" elsewhere, and were "equally audacious and equally wonderful" at the festival. In a lukewarm review, AllMusic's Bruce Eder regarded "Historic Performances" as a significant album when it was released, but it has become "purely of historic interest as an artifact of the time." Personnel. Side one Side two Production