Summer of Love: 2the Inside Story of LSD, Rock & Roll, Free Love and High Times in the Wild

Selvin ( Monterey Pop ) brings an astonishing amount of anecdotal detail to his history of the late 1960s and early '70s drug and musical scene of hippiedom's hippest city. ``The so-called Summer of Love left San Francisco a mess,'' he notes, but promoter Bill Graham choreographed now-legendary concerts and events there that created a number of stars. For musical acts like the Grateful Dead, success arrived despite the pervasive drug abuse that Selvin describes; the Charlatans and Moby Grape, on the other hand, self-destructed. Selvin's exhaustive supply of anecdotes, however, proves to be his greatest liability, as well as his greatest resource, for he recites every vignette in the same laconic tone, giving his account a plodding pace that contradicts the frenzy of the era. Ultimately, the book, although suffused with a wealth of information, fails to resuscitate its mythic past. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)