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.

Documentary originally filmed in 1970 about a series of 3 Canadian music festivals (effectively a 3 stop tour) and the train trip taken by the performers (Janis Joplin, The Band, Flying Burrito Brothers, Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie and many others) between Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary. There are impromptu performances and dialog from the train journey, concert footage and short contemporary (present day) interview segments with musicians and promoters from the original festival. The disorganized informality of the the whole event seems to capture the atmosphere of the era. The musical performances are surprisingly good and the low tech, low budget film work is excellent.

Festival Express (2003) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Highly entertaining and interesting documentary covering the Festival Express Tour of 1970. Basically the concert promoter got the bright idea to get various major acts to do a three show tour in Canada with the only hitch that they'd travel by train. With that in mind, the musical jams on the train were often times better than what showed up on stage. The Grateful Dead, The Band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Janis Joplin, Buddy Guy, Sha Na Na and various others were on the bill and they all get plenty of screen time here. The documentary does a nice job at telling us what this festival was all about while at the same time delivering some wonderful musical performances including Joplin's show stealing Cry Baby. It's also interesting to hear why the concerts flopped. Why would this lineup lose money? Because of hippie protesters who started riots because the tickets were $14 and not free.

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.