Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0081227998301
Format: Box set
Label: Rhino Records
Manufacturer: Rhino Records
MPN: 165564
Number Of Discs: 4
Publisher: Rhino Records
Release Date: 2007-09-18
Studio: Rhino Records

Rhino's Love Is The Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970 4-CD Box Set Celebrates The 40th Anniversary Of "The Summer Of Love" Forty years ago the world turned its ears toward San Francisco as a wave of talented bands gave birth to the American counterculture. On August 27, Rhino remembers that magical confluence of time and place with LOVE IS THE SONG WE SING: SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS 1965-1970, a 4-CD box set of classics and rarities from the golden age of Golden State rock. SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS is the last word on one of popular music's defining regional scenes -- though as scenes go, the music it produced is remarkably diverse. The 77 tracks heard here share little beyond an artistic adventurousness long encouraged in the City by the Bay (which was a magnet for free thinkers from the days of the Beats. Seismic Rumbles, as the first CD of SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS is subtitled, maps the fault lines separating the pop sounds of the early 1960s from more adventurous rock inspired by the arrival of The Beatles and Bob Dylan. By mid-decade, most of the pieces were in place for what would soon be called "The San Francisco Sound," and Disc 1 features the pre-Grateful Dead group The Warlocks, the original line-up of the Jefferson Airplane, a pre-hit Grass Roots, influential existentialists The Charlatans, and Country Joe & The Fish posing that timeless question "And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?"
It wasn't all peace, love, and drugs that made San Francisco the fulcrum of the burgeoning hippie scene in the mid '60s. According to this sprawling 77-track, four-disc set--the third in Rhino's ongoing Nuggets series--it was the music that nurtured and helped create Haight-Ashbury. This expansive package succeeds in presenting the disparate acts involved in that cultural revolution through a detailed aural exploration. Sure, the usual suspects like the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Janis Joplin are here, but it's the obscurities and oddities--some never previously available and many more extremely difficult to find--that provide intimate glimpses into the crevices, building blocks, and influences of what was later dubbed the "San Francisco Sound." The platters are broken down into rough category/chronological groupings, with disc three focusing on 1967, the Summer of Love whose 40th anniversary this box's release celebrates. Even there, acts such as the Ace of Cups, the Mystery Trend, and the Loading Zone fly way below the radar. There's lots to absorb, even for genre enthusiasts, but compiler Alex Palao's extensive, track-specific liner notes provide concise yet vital contextual background to guide the listener through a wildly diverse landscape that runs from the British Invasion-styled pop of the Beau Brummels and the soft folk of the Youngbloods to the furious garage psychedelia of the Count Five and the eardrum-bursting, proto-metal power rock of Blue Cheer. --Hal Horowitz

Customer Rating:
Summary: Everybody get Together, gotta Love one Another , right now
Comment: This little package is well worth the money for two reasons, in my humble opinion.

Firstly for the pictures. I love some of the photographs contained within the book. My two favourites are the bands at the start of the book, together, including the Dead and the Airplane. My other personal favourite is the beautiful photograph of Grace Slick and Janis Joplin together. Wonderful.

The other significant reason for liking this compndium is the musical collection. Some may argue about the tracks and the bands and we all have our own personal demands. Some may argue about the songs, or the versions but hey. You know what. My CD collection has the vast majority of the tracks already but here, in four majickal CDs is the almost complete Bay Area Multiverse, something Time Life will never understand. Where else can you hear all of these wonderful musicians playing their music in the sun.

This collection is attractive to anyone wanting to know more about the scene, or to people who have discovered the groove already but it is the icing on the cake. The cake is the albums that people should search out and listen to and add to their collections and they will discover the true nature of the San Francisco musical diaspora.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Real Time Machine!!!
Comment: My wife purchased this wonderful box set for me as a gift - considering that she always refers to me as an "aging hippie" and an afficiando of the Psychedelic Sound from the 60's, she could not have given me anything better than this box set!

Sandwiched between the musical bookends of "Let's Get Together" performed by Dino Valenti (erstwhile vocalist of Quicksilver Messenger Service) and "Get Together" by the Youngbloods, these 4 amazing CDs contain such gems by Moby Grape, Sly and the Family Stone, Grateful Dead, The Charlatans, Blue Cheer, Ace of Cups, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, The Count Five, some lesser known bands of that time period, and soooooo much more - not to mention the really interesting and informative book that accompanies the CDs (or is it the CDs that accompany the book? Now that's an interesting thing to groove on when listening). Read it while the songs are playing - there are notes on each artist in order of the songs on each CD as you can journey through them one by one.

I play these CDs over and over in my office - and I've had this "collection" by Rhino for nearly a year now, and I have not gotten tired of listening to the tunes that this wonderful box set provides. The CDs are the best ear candy I have listened to, and the book the best eye candy I've seen on this very magical period of rock music that ever existed or ever will exist.

If you are a fan of that time and age, and even if you remember those times (or don't!), this is the quintessinal gift to ask for - or if you know someone who is "stuck in the psychedelic sixties" then it's the quintessinal gift for him or her.

Incredible stuff - it was like going back in time in your own personal time machine - I could have sworn that the memories, smells, feelings, and overall atmosphere of the times were captured with the CDs and the book itself better than any other media I've seen or heard regarding that special time in the history of rock n roll!

Hats off to Rhino for a great job well done!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Package
Comment: The 120 page hardcover book that encloses the CDs is alone worth the money. Knowledgeable (& sometimes critical) liner notes give good background of the groups & scene & music. Too many pics of Grace Slick for my taste, but there are a couple of Signe Anderson (the original female singer in the Jefferson Airplane) as well, which is nice to see. Great early photos of Country Joe/Fish (some even before Chicken Hirsch joined). The song I most wanted to hear in this set was "Let's Get Together," as performed by it's writer, Dino Valenti (AKA Chet Powers). It was great to hear it as a simple acoustic guitar accompanied folk song; the set also includes the Youngbloods cover version for the sake of comparison, so you can hear what the Youngbloods arrangement/ production added to this beautiful song. I'm not a collector of San Francisco music, per se, so most of these songs were new to me. I especially enjoyed the Great! Society's (the Slick family's group) original version of "Somebody to Love." Other great photos/songs by Janis in Big Brother, Grateful Dead (young!), as well as many obscure groups like The People (I thought they were called "The Magic People," but I guess not). A terrific all-around package!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: If you hear the song I sing, you must understand.
Comment: This box set is devoted to the San Francisco rock music scene of the second half of the 1960s. It comes in a hardcover book filled with lots of information, plus beautiful photographs of the performers. The four CDs feature music by performers both well known (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane) and obscure (Public Nuisance, The Ace of Cups). The vast majority of the songs featured here will be unknown to most listeners. Not every song is great, but most of them are quite enjoyable. This set is well worth getting for fans of '60s rock music.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Rhino Captures Another Era and Time
Comment: Rhino Records does it again. This 4 C.D. box set captures the San Fransisco, West Coast Sound of the mid to late sixties. If you lived in the Bay Area at that time, I highly recommend this box set. I was living in Hawaii at the time and i remember a lot of these tunes, which i haven't heard since that time. I feel that they could have added another disc of the really commercial stuff that we are all familiar with, but i guess with licensing problems and such. The folks who will appreciate this set the most will be the baby boomers. You know the sole suvivors of that great time in music.

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