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What’s up Sorry State readers? I hope everyone is having a nice week. My mind has been all over the place this week and sometimes when I find myself feeling this way, I like to listen to more instrumental music so I can kind of let my mind wander and think about different things. This week I found myself listening to an album I picked up a couple weeks ago, Ravi Shankar At The Monterey International Pop Festival. A lot of people have mixed feelings on live albums, but I’m personally a big fan of them. If your music doesn’t sound good live, then what’s the point of it? I love getting a new record that doesn’t sound like anything else I own already. I went over to a friend’s house the other week and brought some records to play, and at one point I pulled this one out and we listened to the whole thing and at the end my friend said “What do we even follow up with after that?” Probably just more Ravi Shankar records, but this is the only one I have for now, so I’m gonna have to just keep replaying it. As you could guess from the title, the music is taken from his performance at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, the same festival where Jimi Hendrix famously lit his guitar on fire, which Ravi was “horrified” to witness. His performance took place on the third and last day of this festival, on Sunday afternoon after a rainy morning, in front of a bunch of weird ass hippies, which he wasn’t really a fan of. But he grew to like some of the people in the crowd that he could tell were really enjoying the music. That’s part of the reason I enjoy live albums so much, because I like learning about the history behind the show and what was happening at the time and how people were feeling, because it can really affect how the music sounds. Anyway, this record has quickly become one of my favorites and I hope to add some more of his to my collection.