by Gary Peterson

It didn’t smell like Belmont.

The Launch Party for the Summer of Love’s 40th
Anniversary at 2B1 Records in the Mission in San
Francisco seemed more like the last Lynyrd Skynyrd
concert I attended.

Before I could even enter the statium I got a contact
high even though the band was playing “That Smell.”

No stadium here but a large two story rocking
warehouse with a stage, a light show, myriads of
hippies of all ages, movers, shakers, also rans and
more than a few folks checking out the surroundings.

Was I one of the artists purveying posters for the
Sept. 2 Free Concert in Golden Gate Park? No, I’m a
writer I replied causing them to quickly lose
interest.

But the food was good; I hadn’t had supper and I knew
Mike Wilhelm was gonna show.

So I sat down, parked my cane, took notes and listed
the many wonders before me:

There was a dog, a definite sign or intelligence; a
cowgirl in a cowgirl hat; lots of bearded men; strobe
lights and a guy in a Fillmore jacket. At least it
didn’t also say: “Clear Channel.”

My doctor, the former soundman for Blue Cheer, who
retired last year, wasn’t there. Al Kooper, who just
spent a week in SF being driven around by Roy
Blumenfeld (of the Blues Project and Sea Train) when
he wasn’t attending MacFest, was back in Boston. Roy
and his cohorts in the new Hot Club of Sackatomatoes
(my title) – with David LaFlamme of It’s A Beautiful
Day and Nick Gravenites of The Electric Flag and
Chicago Blues Reunion; were working musicians that
night doing a gig which is what working musicians
do.Roy does that alot too with the (Here Come Da
Judge) Barry “The Fish” Melton Band.

I recalled that Harvey Brooks – bassist for The
Electrid Flag, Dylan on “Highway 61,” and on “Super
Session” is currently playing in a band at a
retirement home in Arizona.

Do say.

I had treked to the Launch Party myself from the place
where I now lived, Bonnie Brae, the senior center in
Belmont that put the Norovirus in the news last
December.

The band on stage sang “Summertime.” The Doc Craft
Band wasn’t Janis Joplin. She’s in rock ‘n’ roll
heaven with the pieces of her heart. But they got
better and better as the evening wore on and they
finally stopped announcing how awed they were to be
playing for thia crowd.

Hey guys, Famous Long Ago, like Raymond Mungo; we put
our pants on one leg at a time too.

Pictures of St. George Harrison and Layla on Haight
Street danced in my head as a little girl in a Moby
Grape “Hey Grandma” dress took to the floor to dance
with her parents. She slipped and slided and minded
her own business, it being 40 years later and the song
now tranmogrified to “Hey Grandkid!”

She was the star of the night.

There were women there who looked like they might have
actually been at the original Summer of Love but how
could that be? More likely, as one wag commented on
the knockout ladies at 2005’s Chet Helms Memorial
Concert, also held in Golden Gate Park: “The women in
the woods were as beautiful as they were at Woodstock;
but they had cell phones.”

Didn’t see any cell phones. A few afros here and there
and my fave rave of the night, a sort of gangsta
hippie with what had to be the biggest, heaviest,
metal peace sign I ever saw cradled around his neck
like a burden he just couldn’t lay down.

I thought he was going to lay down instead but somehow
the dude could still sorta walk.

Me, I came with a matching ensemble – the traditional
peace sign button and another now rusty one from
February of 2003. It just said: “No War On Iraq!”

It still says that as I write this.

And listen to three incredible CDs Mike Wilhelm, the
greatest unsung guitarist of his generation, gave me.
He was there in his Charlatans hat, the same one he
left in a restaurant I went to once with him and his
lovely wife, Ana Marie.

Her name is etched on his guitar for some reason. I
think I know why.

Diamond Dave, the real Diamond Dave, Dylan’s friend
from the old days in the City of the Purple One “way
up nort” worked the crowd. (Not that idiot who used to
be lead singer for Van Halen.) The authentic Diamond
Dave always makes me want to smile and maybe read
another poem on his Enemy Combatant Radio show. I read
one at his Poems Under The Dome Event at SF’s City
Hall last April and was physically pulled offstage by
a group of my fellow poets. It’s on video tape, or, at
least, was.

Herman Privette, still the photog for Marinscope
Newspapers where I once edited The Mill Valley Herald,
was there; taking pictures, of all things.

He looked great. Photographers are always cool. He
even took my picture so I re-introduced myself.

There were lots of people I didn’t know; some I wish I
did and the usual meaningless faces in the crowd. A
few like Wilhelm still had that 1967 glow in their
eyes. Mike always does.

But, like those old Johnny Cash songs, usually the
B-sides of the JC hits, he loves to perform, “I Still
Missed Someone.”

So I sat there and thought about her, dancing in
Riverside Park in Milwaukee the first night we took
acid.

“My” Brown Eyed Girl.