Summer’s End
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On the bounce. After flying into San Francisco from LAX on Thursday, I headed to Monterey on Friday to visit family. On Monday, it’s back to San Fran, and on Tuesday, it’s Los Angeles again – and the marvelous mayhem of the movie biz. But for now, I’m cooling off in Monterey, California – home to the justly celebrated Monterey International Pop Music Festival, the watershed concert event that ran from June 16 to June 18, 1967 and forever changed the world of rock and roll during the now-mythologized Summer of Love.So far, I haven’t been anywhere near the Monterey Fair Grounds, where the big show went down. It all seems so long ago – especially when you watch the phenomenal documentary “Monterey Pop,” available in an extras-laden three-disc DVD set from Criterion. The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Simon & Garfunkel, the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, Big Brother & the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Mamas and the Papas, the Blues Project, etc., at their peaks or getting there, frozen in time, ageless.Considering my interest in cultural history, it’s a little odd (or fortuitous) that I’m not in San Francisco this holiday weekend. The 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love is being marked there by a concert on Sunday afternoon in Golden Gate Park, where the whole crazy thing first ignited with the arty, free-wheeling outdoor gatherings dubbed Be-Ins. This day-long free show will commemorate the anniversary with performances by renowned survivors, such as Country Joe McDonald, Taj Mahal, Jessie Collin Young of the Youngbloods, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks, and reconstituted versions of Moby Grape, Canned Heat, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and Lydia Pense & Cold Blood. Sounds fitting, I guess. But I’m reduced to a state of “who-gives-a-rat’s-ass” by the rivalry that attended the use of the name “Summer of Love” for the tribute show. Yes, the city of San Francisco has declared September 2nd “Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Day.” Meanwhile, there were various promoters who bickered all summer long over who would get to put on the official “Summer of Love” concert, and whether or not anyone could trademark the phrase “Summer of Love.” A petty, vituperative e-mail war on that issue passed in and out of my in-box over the past month, leaving me half-annoyed, half-amused. It’s just as well that I’m in Monterey until Monday.Any way you look at it, summer’s over.I was thinking that a version of Blue Oyster Cult’s “This Ain’t the Summer of Love” would be appropriate here. Then, I thought again. Better to watch The Who, live at Monterey, playing “Summertime Blues”:
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