Little Richard: Live at the Toronto Peace Festival 1969. D.A. Pennebakker, dist. by Shout! Factory. Mar. 24, 2009. MUSIC DVD $13.98.

Little Richard had everything to prove. Accepting an invitation in 1969 to play at the Toronto Peace Festival alongside John Lennon, the Doors, and Alice Cooper, he had to show, amid acid rock and psychedelia, that HE, who had been their since the very beginning, was still the uncrowned king of rock 'n' roll, and that good, basic, dirty rock 'n' roll could still move people like nothing else. 

So, in front of a tuned-in, turned-on crowd of hippies, he flounced onstage looking like a creature from Lux Interior's wildest dreams—with a ten-foot-tall fright wig, silver flares, a shirt made of disco ball mirrors, a pencil-thin mustache, sweat pouring off every inch of his exposed flesh, and the craziest, wildest eyes you've seen outside of Charlie Manson. First thing he does is order the stage lights turned off, so his mirrorball shirt reflects the light like shards of cracked diamond. Following behind him is a crack band of blues cats wearing matching powder-blue jackets, content to play in the pitch darkness, bashing out volcanic, one-chord proto-rockabilly blues. And then it really gets crazy.
 

In spirit, duration, and form, Live at the Toronto Peace Festival 1969 reminds me of none other than the Cramps' seminal Live at Napa State Mental Hospital. Edgy rock iconoclast wades headlong into a potentially hostile audience and, next thing you know, has them eating out of his hand. Little Richard played a 20-minute set, with most songs played twice in a row at breakneck speeds—which is genius. Every song, and I mean this in the best way, sounds exactly the same. Little Richard pounds on his piano over the same chord progression like a manic child and shouts out the few lyrics of each song before bringing it to an abrupt close with some wordless scream. In that 20 minutes he manages to: stage a dance contest, get so carried away he strips off most of his stage outfit, throwing it to the crowd, repeatedly taunt the crowd with, "Do you like it? Do you really like it?," and dance unselfconsciously atop his piano like a hybrid of Tina Turner and Pee Wee Herman. Good vibes, nothing—it sure sounds to me like he came perilously close to inventing punk rock that night.

Surprisingly, director D.A. Pennebakker's gritty verite camera work suits Little Richard's performance, giving it an otherworldly air and ultimately making this video seem more like rare, accidental footage of some improbability like the Sasquatch or a flying saucer than just another boring, slick rock-band video. Mercy!