Flower Power or Little Shop of Horrors?

"So, Grandpa, what WAS this thing called FLOWER POWER? Are you going on this CRUISE?"

"No, CHESHIRE, I am NOT going on that cruise. I'm as anti-social NOW as I was THEN. IF I'M BEING HONEST, "Flower Power" was just a commercial phrase created to sell shit. Oh, and to maybe get laid. It wasn't a real political movement or philosophy. Go watch "I Love You Alice B. Toklas" starring Peter Sellers. That film was about a guy fascinated by a fad.

Selers played a neurotic idiot trying to fuck a hippie chick. "Flower power" was what stupid hippie chicks believed in and guys went along if there was a possibility of "Free Love." Which, usually, there was not. So guys spent a lot of time touching bra straps and listening to "flower power" bullshit, whether it was off a Rod McKuen book or a Majarishi pamphlet or Kahlil Gibran or Desiderata record album, only to be rebuffed in mid-erection with some inane idea like "Let me put this avocado pit in some water and maybe it'll start sprouting in a week..."

Right, the fucking "Summer of Love" that George Harrison detested.

Yes, Georgie and his pals were partly responsible, since "Yellow Submarine" (the cartoon movie) was loaded with flowers blooming. But it was the lesser assholes like The Lovin' Spoonful and Fifth Dimension and Spanky & Our Gang that showed off the dopey gear. "Flower Power" was mostly about hair spray and silly clothing aimed mostly at TEENAGERS.

SPANKY AND OUR GANG was on the covers of many teen mags of the day.

For some reason, I remember these clowns as among the most popular "Flower Power" idiots. First off, they had such mindless songs as "Lazy Day," and they even put on pseudo-choir white smocks for "Give A Damn." They were "safe" and family friendly, so they were on all the variety shows.

The Mamas and Papas were a little more dangerous. While Mama Cass made the band a joke, but Michelle was skinny and slutty. She wore jeans. And didn't she fuck BOTH Denny and Papa John? That "California Dreaming" thing was a little too creepy to really be "Flower Power."

"Flower Power" was the sanitized drug world as put together by ad agencies and "The Ed Sullivan Show." When jerks like The Byrds turned up on Ed's show, they'd wear the tinted granny glasses, and maybe colorful shirts with puffy sleeves. That kind of shit. 16 year-old girls were told to buy rose-scented douche. Meanwhile John Lennon very quickly groused, "OK, Flower Power didn't work, we'll try something else."

"Flower Power" was what...idiots slogging around in the mud at Woodstock? Trying to impress a chick by handing her some daisies? Annoying cops and teachers with a peace symbol and an apple? "Here...I'm non violent. I'm Mr. Natural. I use Herbal Essence Shampoo from Clairol!"

Watta crock. It was a novelty. It was a fad. It was about buying apple wine and garish shirts and dopey sunglasses. It was about combing your hair so you looked like a mushroom. It was about pretending to like "Mellow Yellow" and "Up Up and Away."

Now it's STILL being used for commercial purposes. It's being used to get morons to spend thousands of dollars to go on a hipper version of a Carnival Cruise. Come on, who is falling for that, except the same lamebrains who DID buy bell-bottom jeans, incense and peppermints, and flowery shirts with giant collars.

No, the "Flower Power" cruise acts are mostly just mild psych bands. There was nothing sweet or sunshiny about Vanilla Fudge, fer Chrissake. They were a depressed, alienated bunch of Long Island clods. One album interspersed those silly putty drawn out pseudo-soul things ("Ticket to Ride" for about 12 minutes) with creepy kiddie nursery rhyme organ music. Right, blame it on childhood.

"Three Dog Night" and "The Monkees" and Chad and Jeremy and most of the others were just pop variations on The Beatles. "Oh, aren't they CUTE and HARMLESS." Chad and Jeremy turned up on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" as sort of half-the-Beatles, trying to hide from screaming teen fans. Teen girls. Ones being sold flowered knickers and scented douche.

Why have nostalgia for that nonsense? Better to hide any photo where you were trying to be Chad or Jeremy or Peter Noone (or, for the girls, Lord knows, Nancy Sinatra or Lesley Gore or whoever else was on "Shindig" and "Hullabaloo.") Later, the idea was to be Sonny or Cher. Comb your hair down like Sonny and put on a fuzzy vest, and bell bottoms, and you might impress a laconic gypsy-Indian twig. Maybe. Probably not. No, definitely not, and don't ask me how I know.

I prefer, when it comes to "Flower Power," the man-eating plant of "Little Shop of Horrors." First off, that original movie came out during the beatnik era. The musical referenced 1962 approximately, and most definitely was more inspired by doo-wop music and maybe Petula Clark's "Downtown" than anything after. A plant that swallows up gullible morons; definitely my idea of Flower Power.

If Lennon was around he'd scoff at idiotic "Flower Power" cruises and such blatant rip-off cash-in nostalgia. Put it this way, I think Jimmy Webb actually wrote some very good songs, even if some of them are a bit dated. But "Up Up and Away" is NOT one of them.