Merriam-Webster defines “Indian Summer” as “a period of warm or mild weather in late autumn or early winter,” or alternately “a happy or flourishing period occurring toward the end of something.” Both of those descriptions are apt when attempting to summarize MGM+’s stunning and heartfelt love letter to the San Francisco music and cultural scene between 1966 and 1976 in the upcoming two-part docuseries San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time.

There’s a lot to unpack in director Alison Ellwood and Anoosh Tertzakian’s new two-part MGM+ documentary San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time, and the good news here is that the contents of this particular set of luggage is all quite sublime. Unlike other chachkies of those turbulent times, the music artistry that sprang forth from the San Francisco scene during the mid-1960s has remained steadfast and evergreen for the very earnestness which has sunk many-a other cause or movement over the ensuing years.

A real love letter not only to that era, but also what San Francisco was at one bright and shining moment and what it could be again if only we’d get out of our own way, San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time opens its doors to viewers with the introduction of well-known psychedelic rock posters and comix artist Victor Moscoso who managed to capture the spirit of the music in his mind-expanding deft and intricate poster art for such bands and artists as Junior Wells and His Chicago Blues Band, The Miller Blues Band Country Joe and the Fish, The Doors and Moby Grape.  More importantly, as far as the world beyond the Golden Gates of San Fran go, Moscoso was able to give substance and life to the burgeoning music and art scene to those folks who lived not just on Haight and Ashbury streets but also (and perhaps more importantly) the average person on Main Street USA.

 Moscoco is one of the main throughlines in this two-parter and as we’re first introduced to the veteran artist as he makes his way to an outbuilding sporting a weathered placard which reads “Studio C” one can’t help but feel that what we’re witnessing and listening to as this great maestro begins to reflect on the San Francisco as it existed during the 1960s is no less of a ghost story for people and places that exist mainly now to the dusty realms of memory and  history books and various and sundry Best Of albums at the local record shop (if you can still locate such a creature in 21st Century America).  It’s as jarring a sensation as is the freshness and vitality and immediacy that these skilled filmmakers then proceed to launch us off into as we begin our bittersweet trip back through the jagged folds of Time and Place.

 And what a trip the journey is in watching long-gone musical friends such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding and Mama Cass return to life through the filmmaker’s use of archival footage, photographs and recordings. It’s the recordings, of course, which really seals the deal and completely envelops watchers in the excitement of creative energy and chutzpah that earmarked the music of San Francisco as eternally relevant, widely popular and incredibly intimate and personal for every listener. Only the coldest of hearts could resist feeling something when Jefferson Airplane introduces their era-transforming ditty White Rabbit, a dynamo Grace Slick helping to lead the way with her powerful and emotive vocals.

 As the first half of the documentary begins to wind down, the image of a city in creative ferment begins to take hold on the imagination and recalls the similar atmosphere and vibe of the New York City of the 1950s and its own intellectual revolution led by the likes of Kerouac and Ginsberg. Already on a downhill slide by the time of the 1967 Summer of Love, Kerouac was largely absent from the San Francisco scene of the mid-60s, but there was his old running pal Alan Ginsburg in the thick of rock and roll, free love and lots of psychedelics, more than pitch-hitting and representing for the Beats.

 A tight-knit musical community from the start, the musicians of the San Francisco scene woke up to the dawn of the 1970s with many of their key players lost to the vagaries of fate and ill-timed decisions. Ever-looming was the Vietnam War, political assassinations, a serial killer that terrorized under the moniker of ‘The Zodiac’, and Kent State. The music altered and shifted under the collective weight of the collective tumult, forever altering the original tone and intent of what had come just a handful of years before. This and more the second-half of San Francisco Sounds covers, with the likes of Moscoso and former Rolling Stone Editor and journalist bar-none Ben Fong-Torres acting as something of a Greek Chorus for the tragedies occurring in those hazy days.

 San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time is a tour de force from start to finish, a project of remarkable undertaking that stands out from the pack as a wistful and thought-provoking love letter to the San Francisco of bygone days. Viewing this accomplishment from start to finish, it’s clear that an Indian Summer overswept and ruled this fair city by the Bay and we as a full and diverse world were made all the better for it. Do yourself a favor and check out one of the very best documentaries to come down the pike in a long time.

San Francisco Sounds: A Place In Time airs on MGM+ this August 20 and 27.