Groovy: When Flower Power Bloomed in Pop Culture

Raleigh, North Carolina specialty publisher TwoMorrows Publishing regularly issues well-made hardcover books on comic book history, and comic book artists. Now the company branches out into the broader fields of pop culture, and Baby Boomer nostalgia, with the release of ‘Groovy’, and it’s not a bad thing.‘Groovy’ covers the period from 1967 – 1974 when the counterculture, and the Hippie ethos in particular, successfully penetrated mainstream culture. Any Baby Boomer (and I’m one) will have vivid memories of this period in time, when boys began wearing their hair longer, far-out fashion took over the clothing racks, Spencer Gifts was the place everyone visited when they went to the Mall, and listening to rock music became a quasi-religious pastime.Author Mark Voger clearly knows what he is writing about. In his autobiographical Introduction, he recalls how it was to be 12 years old in 1970, and how revelatory it was to visit the head shop at a New Jersey shopping mall……ultimately decorating his bedroom with selected purchases: a skull ashtray, and a black-and-white poster of Raquel Welch in her animal-skin bikini from ‘One Million Years BC ’. He also relates a July, 1969 encounter at the Moorestown Mall in New Jersey with Tiny Tim, who was on a tour to promote his book ‘Beautiful Thoughts’. Voger was a firsthand witness to Tim’s adroit handling of some dismissive ‘mall hoodlums’.Any Baby Boomer reading Voger’s memories of adolescence during the Groovy Era will undoubtedly smile with their own recollections.Within the pages of ‘Groovy’ you will find informative articles about, and interviews with, The Turtles; The Rascals; Mickey Dolenz; Tiny Tim; The Doors; Wild in the Streets; Easy Rider; Steve Ditko; Peter Max; The Who; Wonder Woman; Jesus Christ Superstar; Maureen McCormick; the late David Cassidy; Teen Magazines; The Banana Splits; and H. R. Pufnstuf.The book’s formatting is designed to recall the bright colors and Pop Art presentations of the covered era.Flipping through the pages of ‘Groovy’ will reward the reader with all sorts of little revelations and discoveries………….for example, I had no idea that Barry White (?!) sang lead on a Banana Splits song. Or that The Jefferson Airplane tried to pay artist John Van Hamersveld half a kilo of pot for making the cover art for the ‘Crown of Creation’ album (Van Hamersveld had to go to the Airplane’s record company to recover his $9,000 fee). Or that Frank Zappa (?!) appeared on a 1968 episode of ‘The Monkees’, courtesy of an invitation from Michael Nesmith.Don’t be surprised if reading ‘Groovy’ sends you to Google and YouTube to look up long-forgotten cultural artifacts. For my own part, watching the Banana Splits tour the streets of San Francisco in 1969, while the psychedelic song ‘Wait Till Tomorrow’ plays, is an exercise in genuine surrealism…..the sun is shining, the city looks so clean and livable, the cars don’t have ‘No Valuables Inside’ signs on their dashboard, there are no bums and winos and vagrants on the sidewalks………….a mind-blowing snapshot of what San Fran was like back in its long-ago Golden Age !The only criticism that can be made of ‘Groovy’ is that, at 191 pages, it inevitably has to leave out a lot of worthy content. So……… I’m going to be looking for Mark Voger’s followup volume(s) !

Great book.

See the star rating

Behind a wonderful cover (she’s got the headband, the granny glasses, the beads, the lot) is an interesting read on my personal favorite period of popular culture, the 1960s, or in this case, more accurately 1968 to 1972.What is particularly revealing now that we’re in the 21st century is how aspects and areas of pop culture that would never have attracted the same audience at the time are now all lumped in together as “the Sixties”. Thus, in Groovy, we have Robert Crumb alongside Josie and the Pussycats, the Cowsills and The Brady Bunch in the same book as Arlo Guthrie and Altamont, H.R. Pufnstuf and the Banana Splits with the Rolling Stones, the Partridge Family, Easy Rider and Laugh-in. During the actual Sixties, or indeed the next couple of decades following, none of these would have been seen within miles of each other, and certainly not featured in the same book. Now it’s all a homogenised brew. And what a cauldron it is.Leafing through it before I actually set out to read it, two other observations immediately struck me. Firstly, how much is packed in here, and secondly, how much has been editorially or inadvertently left out. This book covers the late ‘60s, when the party was in full flow, but there’s no Batman, no camp TV until the late ‘60s, other than a brief nod to the ’spy girls’ Emma Peel, April Dancer, and Agent 99 of Get Smart in one tiny picture. David McCallum, the hottest teen idol of the decade, is nowhere to be seen. UNCLE and Batman both did ‘flower power’ episodes, as did many other series of the time. These aren’t mentioned, but many others are fleetingly referred to in a two-page mini-feature, including the Lost in Space and Star Trek hippie debacles. Yet several pages are devoted to Laugh-In and The Brady Bunch, and various music-themed shows like The Monkees and The Partridge Family.A similar single page feature mentions a variety of movies ranging from Barbarella to Performance by name, but then about half a dozen other movies are given individual features. Again, these are all late-‘60s, so there’s no beach party, surfing movies, or Elvis films. Those given star treatment are all duds, but Peter Sellers’ The Party, the ultimate groovy movie, gets half a sentence, and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice isn’t mentioned at all. You wouldn’t expect Bond (who, you’ll recall, listened to the Beatles with earmuffs), but Flint and Helm are nowhere to be seen. It’s all very random and selective.Poster art gets a mention, but pop art itself is completely absent, no Andy Warhol, no Richard Hamilton, just the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Another curious omission is fashion. Don’t look for Mary Quant or Twiggy, the latter mentioned in passing when an unrelated failed TV show is discussed. Vietnam and campus unrest are not covered, and sex and politics almost completely absent (Fritz the Cat and the Smothers Brothers get a nod, so this wasn’t editorial policy, but don’t expect to see any heads being pummelled by “the fuzz”), or any mention of race other than the make-up of The Mod Squad. The gay scene is represented by Tiny Tim! Most conspicuous by its absence for the time (and this probably was a deliberate commercial decision) is any nudity, or mention of it.I don’t mean to carp too much, this is a fun book covering an impossible subject to deal with properly in just under two hundred pages, and I do recommend it. However, it’s less successful than the same author’s ‘60s-dominated Monster Mash, which as far as I could tell, covered everything imaginable, or Michael Eury's glorious Heroes A-Go-Go, which left nothing out from the super-hero side of things.The old cliche goes that if you can remember the ‘60s, you weren’t there. But if you were a kid, you can remember it, and it was great, bright, positive, and optimistic, and free of the fascist diktats of today. You could express an opinion, popular or unpopular, agreeable or disagreeable, rude or polite, without anyone shutting you down because your views were ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unacceptable’, and have a debate, or even a blazing row without sending everyone scurrying to a safe space. (If you were born after 1980, you may not grasp what I’m saying. If you were born after 1980 and you do understand, then there may be hope). Everyone who was there has their own personal 1960s, and it may be dominated by different musical choices, different films or TV shows, different perspectives on sex, drugs, fashion, art, or politics. This is Mark Voger’s ‘60s, a key time in his life, and it’s a limited, personal one. And to be fair, no-one, including the publishers or author, claimed this was the definitive book. There probably can’t be one. It left out things that surprised me, and covered subjects that I wouldn’t have thought to, and any nostalgic look back is obviously going to be governed by the memories and priorities of the author, as it should be. So yes, I recommend it for the pop culture/1960s shelf of your bookcase wholeheartedly. But next to some others.

This book is a fantastic read - I'm a huge fan of Mark Voger's book MONSTER MASH and this man is incredible - he not only writes these books but designs them as well! This book covers nearly everything you need to know about 60's pop culture - the music, the movies, TV shows, and more. I am giving this book 5 stars but I have two criticisms about it - I assume they went with the cover art because the publisher is best known in the comics industry but the cover art makes the book look like it is mainly about the comics instead of the expansive view of the 60's that it is. I feel that this might limit its appeal so if you are reading this review and kind of turned off by what looks like a silly cover about an amazing decade, don't judge a book by it's...ah you know. I'd also liked to have seen a chapter on fashion because as intense as the decade was in the changes in music, it was also marked by an incredible array of fashion and hairstyles. The bands he chose to cover are the right ones -- many are the bands that had one or a few hits that aren't talked about as much in publications like UGLY THINGS. He did great interviews with bands members and their quotes are always interesting. I'd like to see a bigger version of this book with a more sophisticated looking cover and more bands covered, but that probably won't happen because I can only imagine how much hard work Mr. Voger put into this book. If you loved folk rock, Laugh In, The Monkees, psychedelia, Easy Rider, etc. this is a MUST HAVE!

Behind a wonderful cover (she’s got the headband, the granny glasses, the beads, the lot) is an interesting read on my personal favorite period of popular culture, the 1960s, or in this case, more accurately 1968 to 1972.What is particularly revealing now that we’re in the 21st century is how aspects and areas of pop culture that would never have attracted the same audience at the time are now all lumped in together as “the Sixties”. Thus, in Groovy, we have Robert Crumb alongside Josie and the Pussycats, the Cowsills and The Brady Bunch in the same book as Arlo Guthrie and Altamont, H.R. Pufnstuf and the Banana Splits with the Rolling Stones, the Partridge Family, Easy Rider and Laugh-in. During the actual Sixties, or indeed the next couple of decades following, none of these would have been seen within miles of each other, and certainly not featured in the same book. Now it’s all a homogenised brew. And what a cauldron it is.Leafing through it before I actually set out to read it, two other observations immediately struck me. Firstly, how much is packed in here, and secondly, how much has been editorially or inadvertently left out. This book covers the late ‘60s, when the party was in full flow, but there’s no Batman, no camp TV until the late ‘60s, other than a brief nod to the ’spy girls’ Emma Peel, April Dancer, and Agent 99 of Get Smart in one tiny picture. David McCallum, the hottest teen idol of the decade, is nowhere to be seen. UNCLE and Batman both did ‘flower power’ episodes, as did many other series of the time. These aren’t mentioned, but many others are fleetingly referred to in a two-page mini-feature, including the Lost in Space and Star Trek hippie debacles. Yet several pages are devoted to Laugh-In and The Brady Bunch, and various music-themed shows like The Monkees and The Partridge Family.A similar single page feature mentions a variety of movies ranging from Barbarella to Performance by name, but then about half a dozen other movies are given individual features. Again, these are all late-‘60s, so there’s no beach party, surfing movies, or Elvis films. Those given star treatment are all duds, but Peter Sellers’ The Party, the ultimate groovy movie, gets half a sentence, and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice isn’t mentioned at all. You wouldn’t expect Bond (who, you’ll recall, listened to the Beatles with earmuffs), but Flint and Helm are nowhere to be seen. It’s all very random and selective.Poster art gets a mention, but pop art itself is completely absent, no Andy Warhol, no Richard Hamilton, just the Sgt. Pepper album cover. Another curious omission is fashion. Don’t look for Mary Quant or Twiggy, the latter mentioned in passing when an unrelated failed TV show is discussed. Vietnam and campus unrest are not covered, and sex and politics almost completely absent (Fritz the Cat and the Smothers Brothers get a nod, so this wasn’t editorial policy, but don’t expect to see any heads being pummelled by “the fuzz”), or any mention of race other than the make-up of The Mod Squad. The gay scene is represented by Tiny Tim! Most conspicuous by its absence for the time (and this probably was a deliberate commercial decision) is any nudity, or mention of it.I don’t mean to carp too much, this is a fun book covering an impossible subject to deal with properly in just under two hundred pages, and I do recommend it. However, it’s less successful than the same author’s ‘60s-dominated Monster Mash, which as far as I could tell, covered everything imaginable, or Michael Eury's glorious Heroes A-Go-Go, which left nothing out from the super-hero side of things.The old cliche goes that if you can remember the ‘60s, you weren’t there. But if you were a kid, you can remember it, and it was great, bright, positive, and optimistic, and free of the fascist diktats of today. You could express an opinion, popular or unpopular, agreeable or disagreeable, rude or polite, without anyone shutting you down because your views were ‘inappropriate’ or ‘unacceptable’, and have a debate, or even a blazing row without sending everyone scurrying to a safe space. (If you were born after 1980, you may not grasp what I’m saying. If you were born after 1980 and you do understand, then there may be hope). Everyone who was there has their own personal 1960s, and it may be dominated by different musical choices, different films or TV shows, different perspectives on sex, drugs, fashion, art, or politics. This is Mark Voger’s ‘60s, a key time in his life, and it’s a limited, personal one. And to be fair, no-one, including the publishers or author, claimed this was the definitive book. There probably can’t be one. It left out things that surprised me, and covered subjects that I wouldn’t have thought to, and any nostalgic look back is obviously going to be governed by the memories and priorities of the author, as it should be. So yes, I recommend it for the pop culture/1960s shelf of your bookcase wholeheartedly. But next to some others.

Groovt book! Everything 60s.