Love is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970

But none of this is to say the San Francisco scene lacked hit-making potential. Love Is The Song We Sing is an impressive testament to the scene’s depth of talent and unfulfilled potential for commercial success. Why does a song like People’s “I Love You,” which contains such obvious hit potential, languish in obscurity, yet a song like the Zombies “Time of the Season” goes all the way to No. 3 on the singles charts? Or why does a groundbreaking country/rock album like The Beau Brummel’s Bradley’s Barn receive precious little attention at a time when albums like Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, The Band’s Music From Big Pink and The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo are all the rage in critical circles? When all else is equal, it has to come down to some indefinable quality, in terms of sound or image, or some mystical juxtaposition of time and place, or perhaps a lack of proper marketing push, that makes a difference between what sells and what doesn’t.

But measuring the success of the San Francisco music scene in terms of immediate record sales is somewhat shortsighted. One has to look no further than the eventual long-term success of the Grateful Dead to see the lasting influence of the scene. Even then, one has to ponder what it is exactly about the Dead that eventually separated them from the pack in such a dramatic fashion.

Prior to hooking up with songwriter Robert Hunter and producing classic records like Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, the Dead were no better in the songwriting department than Quicksilver Messenger Service, for example. Both groups, however, featured superb musicianship and a hotshot guitar player, and both were prone to extended improvisation. So what made the Dead so special when, at the time, Quicksilver were so similar? Again, the demarcation between greatness and near-obscurity is conspicuously ill-defined.

Fortunately, the issue of popularity and record sales within a band’s lifetime doesn’t affect our enjoyment of their music years later. We can consider ourselves lucky to have such a wonderfully rich and diverse package of past musical treasures as this.

It’s likely America will never again experience such a confluence of cultural and musical change as the one that occured during the 1960s. And during that time, there was certainly no other scene as vibrant and influential as San Francisco. Odds are no other scene will ever come close.