Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Country Joe & the Fish, Quicksilver Messenger Service - all were bands that formed as a natural extension of the bohemian communities in the Haight-Ashbury and elsewhere in the Bay Area, often living and playing not far from the San Francisco branch of Amoeba Music. Those were the bands, more than any other, that captured the international imagination as youth looked toward the Haight as a beacon of sorts for a new, more compassionate, more creative lifestyle. Other star acts would follow that put different, equally thrilling spins on the San Francisco sound, whether via the psychedelic soul of Sly & the Family Stone, the Latin-blues-jazz-rock fusion of Santana, or the seamlessly high-spirited roots rock of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

  It's hard to believe that forty years have passed since the San Francisco rock scene exploded into a supernova in the wake of the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, which ushered in the fabled Summer of Love. In some ways, the world in which we now live is unrecognizable; the Internet, hip-hop, cell phones, and global warming would have been impossible to envision back in '67. In some ways, though, the best qualities of that time are still with us. Hippies still pretty much have the run of Haight Street and nearby Golden Gate Park, which still holds its share of free concerts. The San Francisco Bay Area remains a magnet for artistic Americans working to change the world for the better. And San Francisco remains the best place to buy recorded music, whatever your taste (and, for that matter, tie-dye T-shirts, which Amoeba, SF itself is selling this summer).

      Of course, the great records that epitomized the Summer of Love spirit, like Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and Big Brother's Cheap Thrills, have never been hard to find. What's mindblowing is how much great Bay Area rock from the mid-to-late-'60s remains virtually unknown. The mesmerizing Great Society, featuring a pre-Airplane Grace Slick; the Beau Brummels, who pioneered folk-rock for years after their sole pair of big hit singles; Skip Spence, the ex-Airplaner/Moby Graper who made astonishingly weird and wonderful psychedelic folk-rock on his only solo album -- all made terrific, rarely heard records. CDs, LPs, and DVDs by those artists and many more, fortunately, can still be found new and used on any day of the week right on Haight Street at Amoeba (see the store's free Summer of Love brochure and display of staff recommendations for a handy guide to many of the best), helping to make the music of the Summer of Love a living, breathing force, not just a nostalgic relic.

       But it's not just in the CD, LP, and even DVD racks where the Summer of Love lives. Many of the stately homes in which the greatest musicians and characters of the time resided are still standing within walking distance, if much less affordable now than then. While some of those legendary figures have sadly passed away, many are, happily, still with us, touring the world and playing locally -- some of them, indeed, playing in-stores at Amoeba this very summer. The Summer of Love, 1967 version, might indeed have been a supernova that burned brightly and, commercially at least, relatively briefly. But its warm glow continues to fire the Bay Area music and cultural scene, which now as then defines itself by a restless eclecticism, a refusal to conform, and an insatiable hunger to make, as Country Joe & the Fish titled their first album, Electric Music for the Mind and Body.