Flip’s Groovy Guide to the Groops!: Antidote to cultural provincialism
FLIP’s GROOVY GUIDE TO THE GROOPS! happened because you asked for it.
It’s an outasite one-of-a-kind book!
FLIP’s entire staff in New York, London and Hollywood contributed to this book, but two people must be especially mentioned. Carol Deck, FLIP’s Hollywood Editor, served as the book’s supervising editor, and Tracy Thomas spent weeks tracking down most of the groups for the last and largest section of the book—the Groovy Groups.
And you had the most important part of all: You told us which 100 great groups to squeeze into the 240 picture-popping pages of this boss book!
STEPHEN KAHN
Publisher
FLIP Magazine
Some will think that featuring a “groovy” book from 1968 is some sort of nostalgia trip. It is anything but.
Cultural perspective has two dimensions, breadth and depth. Broad, as in covering more than a little piece of your world. Deep, as in covering time before the time you were born or just a few years before that.
At college, I often researched at a huge university library. This was before digital conversion, so the stacks were overstuffed with bound volumes of newspapers and magazines that went far back into the previous century. I wasn’t “nostalgic” for cultural items from decades earlier. I was, and still am, trying to gain perspective on how things were, how we got here, and where we might go.
Jimmy Kimmel features a segment where people walking down Hollywood Boulevard, young and old, are asked basic questions about current events, geography, history, etc. Some might shake their head and laugh at ridiculous responses, maybe calling some of these people ignorant.
I prefer thinking of them as culturally provincial, with knowledge and perspective narrowing more and more into a small circle and the last thing that happened.
That’s why Flip’s Groovy Guide and other artifacts from different times and different places are so important, as an antidote to cultural provincialism. Plus, a lot of fun!
One more thing.
If you think this book reflects a frivolous time, here are other books that were advertised on the back page:
THE NEW YORK TIMES ELECTION HANDBOOK, 1968 edited by Harold Faber.
The political experts of The New York Times provide an authoritative, informative manual designed to help the public sort out the facts at work in a controversial election.
HOW TO GET OUT OF VIETNAM: A Workable Solution to the Worst Problem of Our Time by John Kenneth Galbraith.
The distinguished economist, political theorist, and bestselling author offers a practical plan for U. S. withdrawal from “a war we cannot win, should not wish to win, are not winning, and which our people do not support.”
THE HIPPIES by Burton Wolfe. At once highly critical and deeply sympathetic, this is an in-depth examination of the hippie kingdom—its “government,” its organizing principle, its leaders and members, the drug scene, the communes, the poverty, the disease.
BEST CAMPUS HUMOR OF THE SWINGING 60’s edited by Bill Adler.
A unique tribute to the freshness and diversity of college humor, ranging in subject from Vietnam to college exams, from LSD to campus sex.
THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: ARMING FOR ARMAGEDDON by Garry Wills.
An eye-witness account of the explosive racial crises that occurred in New York, Albany, and Detroit dur ing the summer of 1967.
THE HIPPIE PAPERS edited by Jerry Hopkins.
An eye-opening collection of outspoken articles from the nation’s underground press on subjects ranging from LSD to free love, from Vietnam to police brutality.
Bob Schwartz 