If you haven’t already read it elsewhere, 2007 marks the 40th anniversary of the so-called “Summer Of Love.” Knowing what I do about Jann Wenner, I’m sure that Rolling Stone will be all over the occasion like a junebug on a pile o’ dung this summer. For those of you too young to remember and those of you that weren’t born yet, a lot of stuff happened in 1967…especially, if you pay attention to the aging hippies that look back upon that particular equinox with some wistfulness, in San Francisco.

Yeah, yeah so the summer of ’67 was all peace and love as the disenchanted youth of the time made their way to the S.F. Bay area and hung around like so many filthy loiterers in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Love beads and long hair were everywhere, drugs were passed around like so many colorful candy Skittles™, sex was guilt-free and HIV, herpes and other genital nasties were still a couple of decades in the future. Best of all, the positive vibes of all this youthful energy was going to be used to stop the war in Viet Nam…and it did, kind of, almost eight years later!

Now the Reverend has nothing against the whole “hippie” thing although, like Frank Zappa once said, I was always more of a “freak” myself. I was a mere ten-years-old at the time, watching Ghoulardi on Cleveland TV and listening to the Four Seasons on the radio. But the flower children that I’ve met since the ‘60s have always been a little dense between the ears, somewhat loose with personal hygiene and, well, not really grounded in the real world, if you know what I mean (and I think that you do). But then, I was always more tuned into the more aggressive, high energy vibe of Rust Belt bands like the MC5 and the Stooges.

A lot of cool music came out of the San Francisco area before, during and after the “Summer Of Love,” however, including Country Joe & the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Moby Grape, among many others. So much music came out of the area that, much like Seattle in the ‘90s, it became known as the “San Francisco Sound.” The summer in question began with an incendiary Monterey Pop Festival in June that included memorable performances by Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. Outside of the music, however, it seems to me that the whole “Summer Of Love” thing has been exaggerated, blown out of proportion by a lot of people looking through rose-colored glasses.

Regardless, the city of San Francisco will be celebrating its summer of infamy come September 2nd when a citywide celebration will be held in Golden Gate Park. The 40th Anniversary Summer of Love Free Concert will
take place in the park’s Speedway Meadows between 10:00 AM and 6:00 PM. The concert will feature a veritable “who’s who” of San Francisco musical history, including Country Joe McDonald, Taj Mahal, New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Nick Gravenites Band, Dickie Peterson of Blue Cheer, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, Essra Mohawk, Merl Saunders and Leigh Stephens, also of Blue Cheer. Other special guests will include beat poets Ruth Weiss and Lenore Kandel and ‘60s icon Wavy Gravy.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary celebration, a series of 26 posters done in vintage ‘60s style have been created by a variety of artists and a webcast of the day’s musical performances will be streamed across the ‘net. Drop by if you’re in the neighborhood, or in cyberspace check out www.2b1records.com/summeroflove40th.