Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth by Kim Cooper

More importantly, the band’s name perfectly encapsulated the bubblegum aesthetic you blow bubbles and they pop, and wholesome family values still meant something to the preteens of that era. I suspect it came down to the fact that Cooper co-edited the anthology and could do whatever the hell she wanted. What Kim Cooper’s essay on The Poppy Family, which was really just a front for husband and wife team Susan and Terry Jacks, is doing in this anthology is just as great a mystery as why if you licked The Archies flexi disc on a box of Honeycomb it tasted suspiciously like the Monkees flexi disc on a box of Raisin Bran. Instead they were dark vignettes of existential despair which, strung from end to end, would make for a sturdy Juicy Fruit noose. Their songs lacked bubblegum’s sunny sound and infectious choruses. In fact they were an anti-bubblegum band. Edited by Kim Cooper and David Smay, the book is the Rosetta Gumball of preteen pop, including as it does essays on the machinations of record label svengalis like Don Kirshner, behind the scenes super-producers such as Kasenetz-Katz, here-and-gone-in-a-45rpm- flash record labels like Colgem Records, cartoon groups from Fat Albert and The Cosby Kids to The Beagles, and most importantly bands you’ve probably never heard of, like Salt Water Taffy, The Yummies, and Professor Morrison’s Lollipop.Īmidst such obscurities the group that most piqued my interest was The Poppy Family, because they weren’t really a bubblegum band at all. I’m reading 2001’s Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth, The Dark History of Prepubescent Pop, From The Banana Splits to Britney Spears.

Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth by Kim Cooper