This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of
Love, and there have been no shortage or reverent, historically conscious books
to commemorate the Aquarian age. Groovy
is the first one I’ve read that actually captures the full flowering fun of
that period. I love, love, love the fact that Voger makes room for the things
Jann Wenner types consciously leave out of the discussion. Our author betrays
no snobbery, placing the perennial critical darlings beside the less revered
but no less lovable sorts. So in this lively, ping-ponging survey of the late
sixties and early seventies, there are places for The Buckinghams next to The Beatles, The Guess Who next to The Who, The Cowsills next to The
Beach Boys, Tommy James next to Dylan, and Tiny Tim next to Hendrix. A lot of
these folks stop in to gab with Voger too, and the book is liberally seasoned
with recent and less recent interviews with fab folks such as Donovan, Maureen
McCormick, the Smothers Brothers, Brian Wilson, Ruth Buzzi, Mick Taylor, Paul
Kantner, Shirley Jones, Bill Wyman, John Entwistle, Lily Tomlin, Roger McGuinn, all four
Monkess, and many others. What a gas! However, Groovy’s grooviest feature may be its acid-cartoon design, which
explodes with colorful portraits, period art, album jackets, and memorabilia
galore.
Mark Voger is also the author of Monster Mash, a book about the Monster Kid phenomenon I gushed over
a couple of years ago. I can’t help but think that with his wonderfully definitive
volumes on classic monsters and now the psychedelic age, Voger has managed to
distill everything I’ve attempted to do with Psychobabble over the past decade
in just a couple of handy, dandy hardcovers. He’s a true kindred spirit,
Psychobabblers, and judging from his personal, humorous, self-effacing, fun-loving
prose, a pretty groovy cat himself.
