Atlanta Hippies loved Underground Comics! Mr. Natural was Keepin’ on Truckin’ everywhere. The Celestial Omnibus sported Mr. Natural. Atlanta also had its own underground comics. Here are the few I have. Anyone have more to share?
Skip Williamson was one of the original underground comic artists.
Skiprevealed he had done ad work in Chicago while LSD was still legal and used to inspire ad art. He came up with a sun that wants to be a raisin.
That commercial inspired the sun I have used as a logo ever since.
Here’s Skip’s view of Decatur.
Before there was an internet, people had to scour old books to find skills and items abandoned to time. The movement to do it yourself extended to urban and communal living. Stewart Brand recognized this need for information and created the Whole Earth Catalog, access to Tools. It fed your head with ideas and tools with which to accomplish dreams. Stewart was part of the early silicon valley modem bulletin board that connected major universities with Darpa connections and became the progenitor of the web.
By the way the committee to set standards to ease communications that became the internet WAS chaired by Al Gore.
Light shows and concerts advanced the technology of live performances with items like monitors (Thanks to Owsley) and better amplification.
Hippies loved novelty and new toys, but had a love-hate relationship with technology, fearing the plastic disposable society would make them Plastic People. Some turned their back on all technology and moved to rural communes that ran like the 19th century or earlier.
But others gathered in grarages to make screens that showed colors in response to music, or made blueboxes to defeat long-distance charges and went on to found Apple Computer.
Carter Tomassi joined the Great Speckled Bird as a photographer simply because since he first arrived in Atlanta he had been on the scene taking pictures of everything. And Carter was a very good photographer. Jan Jackson was an Earth Mother I first met at Oxford College. She moved to Atlanta where she and husband Tom Jones moved into what they helped become The Zoo on 8th at Penn. She befriended Carter at Piedmont Park one Mescaline Sunday and he became a fixture at The Zoo and concerts.
Now Carter maintains a website to show his pictures of Atlanta’s hip community and musical events. His pictures of Byron Pop Festival are the best.
Here is his site www.messyoptics.com
Drop by, say hello from The Strip project and enjoy the views.
For myself and many other of counter culture, This book was the only reason I could afford to keep transportation running.
I am forever in debt. Zen Dharma meditation beneath.
I learned so much beneath the Celestial Omnibus staring up and reading this book.
The Now Explosion went on the air in Atlanta, GA, in April, 1970. Since Ted Turner’s station was new he filled the late nights and weekends with The Now Explosion. Like MTV 10 years later, the show was programmed to stay on the air for hours at a time. In Atlanta, The Now Explosion was on the air 28 hours each weekend. In an age when TV became ancient grainy movies after midnight, this was a life saver for people too altered to go out or go to sleep. It was also very imaginative for the time. “Did the TV really just do that? or is it my mind??”
Production of music videos was often done after midnight at channel 36 where many Atlanta residents performed in synch with top forty songs. Some music videos were shot on film in Atlanta and suburbs. Later, when the program was syndicated nationally the videos made in Atlanta were seen across the country in cities such as San Francisco, CA, Washington DC, Sacramento, CA and Boston. In New York City, it ran for hours with high ratings before and after Yankee baseball games.After thirteen weeks, in Atlanta, The Now Explosion was picked up by Ted Turner, and was seen on his Atlanta and Charlotte TV Stations for an additional 13 weeks.
Freaks. That was what hippies called themselves since each usually was considered a freak in their locale. So Jefferson Airplane sings ”…and all the other freaks will share my cares” . San Franciscan hippies partly looked so flamboyant because a hundred year old opera house had sold off their costumes in late 1966.
During the late 60s just getting dressed could be a political statement.
In 1967 Georgia there were no shops selling hippie clothing like you saw in the magazines and on TV. Even bell bottoms were usually only available as Navy surplus. Since Freaks followed a do your own thing ethic TO CREATE THE MOST ORGANIC CLOTHING POSSIBLE. people sewed a strip into the bottom of a pants leg to bell the bottom. People sewed their own clothes or altered what they purchased secondhand. And people began to embroider and paint their clothes. Tye-Dye was in and everyone thought they knew how. Even scout troops and church groups tried their hand. Freaks tye-dyed most anything available when the dye was ready.
Freak Clothing was fun and costumey or back-to-the-earth simple. People mainly divided into two groups. One only had a few possessions. Another had enough clothes to fill an apartment and thus last between monthly commandeering of a laundromat. Beloved jeans became souvenirs of the road and were patched and repatched onto works of art.
Most have vanished to recycling or trash, but a few beloved items are stashed away. We would like to collect a picture of your freak finery and urge you to consider donating it to the Atlanta History Museum or a like institution.
We are actively seeking a broader base to help with collecting artifacts, pictures, snapshots, and hippie stories. To preserve our collective history consider donating or bequeathing items through us to the Atlanta History Center. Bequest your stuff to the best preservation available where their significance will be honored and appreciated into the future.
Can you contribute your part?
