Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Let's Get Together - Dino Valenti
2. I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag - Country Joe & The Fish
3. You Were On My Mind - We Five
4. Number One - The Charlatans
5. Can't Come Down - The Warlocks
6. Don't Talk to Strangers - The Beau Brummels
7. Anything - The Vejtables
8. It's No Secret - Jefferson Airplane
9. Johnny Was a Good Boy - The Mystery Trend
10. Free Advice - The Great! Society
11. Mr. Jones (A Ballad Of a Thin Man) - The Grass Roots
12. Stranger In a Strange Land - Blackburn & Snow
13. Who Do You Love - Quicksilver Messenger Service
14. She's My Baby - The Mojo Men
15. Coffee Cup - The Wildflower
16. Live Your Own Life - The Family Tree
17. Fat City - The Sons Of Champlin
18. Human Monkey - The Frantics
19. Bye Bye Bye - The Tikis
20. Section 43 - Country Joe & The Fish
21. Hello Hello - The Sopwith 'Camel'

Disc 2:

1. Psychotic Reaction - Count Five
2. Got Love - The Front Line
3. Satisfaction Guaranteed - The Mourning Reign
4. Foolish Woman - The Oxford Circle
5. My Buddy Sin - The Stained Glass
6. Streetcar - The Otherside
7. Suzy Creamcheese - Teedy & His Patches
8. Rubiyat - The Immediate Family
9. Rumors - Syndicate Of Sound
10. Sometimes I Wonder - The Harbinger Complex
11. Want Ad Reader - The New Breed
12. I'm a Good Woman - The Generation
13. No Way Out - The Chocolate Watchband
14. Hey I'm Lost - Butch Engle & The Styx
15. I Love You - People
16. America - Public Nuisance
17. Fly To New York - Country Weather
18. Thing In 'E' - The Savage Resurrection
19. Hearts To Cry - Frumious Bandersnatch

Disc 3:

1. Alabama Bound - The Charlatans
2. Carl Street - The Mystery Trend
3. Somebody To Love - The Great! Society
4. Superbird - Country Joe & The Fish
5. Two Days 'Till Tomorrow - The Beau Brummels
6. Omaha - Moby Grape
7. Up & Down - The Serpent Power
8. The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion) - Grateful Dead
9. Codine - Quicksliver Messenger Service
10. Down On Me - Big Brother & The Holding Company
11. Think Twice - Salvation
12. White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
13. Roll With It - Steve Miller Band
14. Why Did You Put Me On - Notes From The Underground
15. Underdog - Sly & The Family Stone
16. Summertime Blues - Blue Cheer
17. Glue - The Ace Of Cups
18. Soul Sacrifice - Santana
19. The Bells - The Loading Zone

Disc 4:

1. Evil Ways - Santana
2. Red the Sign Post - Fifty Foot Hose
3. Lemonaide Kid - Kak
4. 1982-A - The Sons Of Champlin
5. How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away - Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks
6. Amphetamine Gazelle - Mad River
7. Quicksilver Girls - Steve Miller Band
8. Revolution - Mother Earth
9. Murder In My Heart For the Judge - Moby Grape
10. Light Your Windows - Quicksilver Messenger Service
11. I'm Drowning - Flamin' Grooves
12. Portrait Of the Artists As a Young Lady - Seatrain
13. White Bird - It's A Beautiful Day
14. Dark Star - Grateful Dead
15. Fool - Blue Cheer
16. Mexico - Jefferson Airplane
17. Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
18. Get Together - The Youngbloods

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4914 in Music
• Released on: 2007-09-18
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered

Album Description
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?"

Amazon.com
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 Reviews

Rhino Captures Another Era and Time
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.

FLOWER POWER?..MUSIC POWER!
MAGNIFICA OBRA DE RHINO..COMO NOS TIENE ACOSTUMBRADOS...INSTANTANEA DEL LUGAR EXACTO DONDE EMPIEZA TODO...SEMILLAS QUE GERMINARON EN EL SUBCONSCIENTE DE TODA UNA GENERACION...POLEN QUE AL FINAL FLORECIO EN UNAS POCAS MACETAS PERO QUE EN DETERMINADO MOMENTO ALCANZO LA SENSIBILIDAD SUFICIENTE PARA CAMBIAR EL NEGOCIO DE LA MUSICA POLPULAR PARA SIEMPRE..ACA ESTAN TODOS...DESED IGNOTOS HASTA ESTRELLAS....HERMOSO LIBRO PLAGADO DE FOTOS, HISTORIAS Y TODO LO QUE NECESITAS SABER SOBRE ESTA MUSICA HERMOSA, IRREPETIBLE!!!!!!! MUY MUY RECOMENDABLE.

Soundtrack Of My Childhood
I was immediately attracted to this collection. I was a big fan of the first two Nuggets sets, both for their eclectic track selection and detailed scholarship ( especially when so little was known about some of the more obscure groups.) Even more exciting was the fact that it was the story of the San Francisco music scene; the place where I spent my childhood and the music I listened to. Could they really get this right, I sure hoped so.

Like many great scenes, some of the most definite expressions of this cultural earthquake came early. The Beau Brummels were really the first great San Francisco band. They took the Folk-Rock style so ubiquitious in the mid 60s and fused it with the energy of the English Invasion, very much as their counterparts the Byrds did in Southern California. They were not alone, with other bands like the Mojo Men, the We Five, and the Vejtables bringing a local presence to AM radio, to mix with Motown and Liverpool. The first disc really captures this moment, when the elements combined to bring the message of folk music, the electricity of the Beatles and the awareness of generational change together. Something was definitely happening and even Mr Jones knew it. The Dead were still a bar band named the Warlocks and their great "Can't Come Down" gives you a glimpse of their unique power, before they discovered 30 minute jams. Perhaps the most psychedelic band at this point in time were Country Joe and the Fish whose magnificent original version of "Section 43" is here along with the pre-Grace Airplane led by Marty Balin.

Disc 2 brings us the wider scene, the groups on the penninsula and other parts of the Bay Area that contributed to the tapestry. Most of these groups never found the recognition beyond a fine single or an impossible to find album, and this dic is a great treasure trove for even the most hardcore collectors. The momentum is building, the revolution is almost here.

We arrive at the Haight on disc 3, begining with the best recorded moment by the legendary Charlatans, "Alabama Bound." Moby Grape, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Airplane and Dead in their glory; so much was happening all at once. But we also had the Mystery trend, Serpent Power, Blue Cheer and Sly and the Family Stone. It was not a monolitic sound so much as a diverse embarrassment of riches, elements of R&B, Folk, Pop, Acid Rock and outright weirdness all going on on the same stage and echoing in the ears and often-expanded minds of the locals and runaways that populated the streets.

The final disc covers the aftermath of the explosion, with bands like Santana, It's a Beautiful Day and the Sons of Champlin getting their moment in the fog, if you will. Of all the discs, this one is the most familiar in terms of track selection, the energy diminishes despite the greatness of individual efforts. The Summer is over kids, back to real life.

The packaging is really singular in the history of cd packaging, not a booklet, a bonafide book. Great and previously unseen photos along with the complete backstory on everyone, famous and one-hit wonders alike. I do agree the discs are best removed and stored in jewel cases. This is time travel to a glorious past and history of a turbulant era as well. There is certainly tragedy and wistful sadness here as well as joy and love, but that is what makes it great art as well as cherished memories. They got it right.