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When you get a massive ten disc collection of CDs that represent an era, it’s hard to find fault with it.  Each disc has so many great hits on it that putting in any disc is sure to please.  Flower Power is an excellent collection of 60’s music comprising different aspects of the age of love.  My idealizing the hippie movement days of free love and drugs are way behind me, but great songs stand the test of time. 

Each disc has two CDs and a booklet giving some perspective on the song selections.  The discs are broken down as Age of Aquarius, Time of the Season, Groovin’, Born to be Wild and Summer of Love.  Age of Aquarius captures the naivety and idealistic notions of the time.  From Janis Joplin to The 5th Dimension to Bob Dylan to Donovan, the disc covers a lot ground.  It’s great to have “Piece of My Heart” and “American Woman” on the same disc.  Then you get “Spinning Wheel” and “All the Young Dudes” on the second and it’s just a great collection.  However, getting Jose Feliciano’s cover of “Light My Fire” is a bit of a let down.

Time of the Season forgoes the ideology of the summer of love and presents the revolutionary aspect.  This rocks out focusing on the blues and folk music from the time. Brewer & Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line”, Cannibal and the Headhunters’ “Land of 1000 Dances”, The Band’s “Up on Cripple Creek” and Joan Baez “We Shall Overcome” make up part of this two disc collection.  This CD is more rock centered than the free lovin’ experience of Aquarius.  Again the inclusion of Aretha Franklin’s cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is bit of a let down.  Not that gospel inspired version isn’t great, it’s just not Simon & Garfunkel. 

If Age of Aquarius covers the free love and Time of the Season embraces the revolution, Groovin’ is all about the road trip and token up.  Laid back and relaxed, potheads of the world can kick back and burn a fattie while thinking about better days.  “In-a-gadda-da-vida” by Iron Butterfly should is a pothead anthem.  The trippy pseudo-Christian “Spirit in the Sky” and “Daydream Believer” by the Monkees add to the feel good vibe. 

You can rock out to the high octane Born to be Wild.  Born to be Wild has all the furor and anger of the time from civil rights to the Vietnam War.  Of course you’ll find both the Steppenwolf classics “Born to be Wild” and “Magic Carpet Ride” on here but you’ll also hear “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas & the Papas, “With a Little Help from My Friends” by Joe Cocker, “Inner City Blues” by Marvin Gaye and “Reach Our of the Darkness” by Friend and Lover.  This isn’t my favorite of the batch but it’s not a bad collection at all.

Finally, there is Summer of Love: The Hits of 1967.  Even though the collection covers 1965 to 1975, 1967 is the launching of the “Flower Power” movement.  Why 1967?  It was the first year of the Monterey Pop Festival.  It’s the year that The Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and others came together to create one huge festival and change the face of music forever.  There are lots of bands you might not know the name of but you know their music.  Bands with names like Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Grass Roots, Spanky and Our Gang, Procol Harum and Blues Magoo all appear along with more familiar acts like The Turtles, The Spencer Davis Group, The Beach Boys, Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Byrds and others.  From “Season of the Witch” to “Brown Eyed Girl”, 1967 was a great year for music.

Flower Power is an incredible collection of music from one of the most turbulent times in America.  In the ten years that the collection represents, Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK and RFK were assassinated, race riots broke out nationwide, Nixon was impeached and the Vietnam War was in full swing.  It was a rough time in American history.  Flower Power does a tremendous job of capturing the feel and sound of that era and presents it to a modern audience so that we might better understand what’s come before.

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