Presenting the Preservationist Journal of Hick Erotic Folklore
By Mike Kelley. Excerpt from the book ‚Sex to Sexty'
Page [1] [2] [3]
In reality, this presumed ideological marriage of porn culture and counterculture was not exactly true - though this confusion is one of the most interesting aspects of the culture that I, and many others of my generation, grew up in. If I remember correctly, the head shop in question was set on fire by members of a biker gang who did not share the leftist political sentiments of the White Panthers. These bikers would have, more than likely, been readers of Sex to Sexty and not the underground comics and leaflets peddled within the shop.
Sex to Sexty, in its early days, actually did adopt the pose of a youth-culture-oriented publication - at least in its cover graphics, which consisted of "psychedelic" op-art patterns. Mrs. E. Thomas was not quite right in her interpretation that Sex to Sexty was attempting to seduce innocents by posturing as a coloring book (I do, in fact, have a copy of Sex to Sexty in which some of the cartoons have been colored in with crayon - but the coloring stays carefully within the lines of the drawings, revealing the artist to have been an adult). If innocents were being bamboozled, they were not pre-pubescents but "flower children" - for once the psychedelic cover of an early issue of Sex to Sexty was opened a shocked hippie would be faced only with page after page of politically incorrect quips and moronic men's-magazine-style sex gag cartoons (many focusing on hillbilly and farm themes) instead of the expected consciousness-raising material.
Following these first op-art covers, cartoonist Denis Jones took over for a short while. The cover of Sex to Sexty #15 "Laugh Clinic" is a favorite of mine. It pictures a field of biomorphic-modern personified "germs" rendered in a pop-Surrealist '60s cartoon style reminiscent of that found in period youth-culture-oriented publications such as underground comic books. Though this admixture of psychedelia and rural humor might seem a bit strange it should be remembered that this was not so uncommon in America in the '60s. For example, the television music/comedy show Hee Haw (first airing in 1969 and running for an astonishing 22 years) was a country response to the pop-inflected comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. On Hee Haw, hillbilly hotties patterned after Al Capp's Daisy Mae Yokum and Moonbeam McSwine lollygagged on the porches of psychedelic shacks while cornpone stand-up comics like Minnie Pearl pitched one-liners in quick blackout segments. It was like the Grand Ole Opry on acid. At the same time, darlings of the counterculture like the San Francisco-based psychedelic band the Grateful Dead played country-inspired music and postured as dirt farmers.
However, as far as Sex to Sexty magazine goes, such flirtations with pop aesthetics stopped when artist Pierre Davis took over as art director. Starting with issue #19 "True Love," which features a full-color oil painting of two amorous pigs cuddling in a sty, almost every subsequent copy of the magazine features one of his works on the cover. From then on all pretensions were dropped, for Davis's paintings consistently depict a rural lower-class environment. And, unlike most contemporary hick-related humor of the period, Davis's images are not limited to the standard hillbilly clichés - they are contemporary genre paintings. His eye for detail reveals him to be someone who understands, and revels in, the humor of the rural milieu. Davis is a kind of unrepressed Norman Rockwell who is willing, in his bawdy version of Americana, to include bestiality, scatology, voyeurism, melon-fucking, kiddie sex games, and all other manner of "perversions" into the picture.
Page [1] [2] [3]
Page [1] [2] [3]
In reality, this presumed ideological marriage of porn culture and counterculture was not exactly true - though this confusion is one of the most interesting aspects of the culture that I, and many others of my generation, grew up in. If I remember correctly, the head shop in question was set on fire by members of a biker gang who did not share the leftist political sentiments of the White Panthers. These bikers would have, more than likely, been readers of Sex to Sexty and not the underground comics and leaflets peddled within the shop.
Sex to Sexty, in its early days, actually did adopt the pose of a youth-culture-oriented publication - at least in its cover graphics, which consisted of "psychedelic" op-art patterns. Mrs. E. Thomas was not quite right in her interpretation that Sex to Sexty was attempting to seduce innocents by posturing as a coloring book (I do, in fact, have a copy of Sex to Sexty in which some of the cartoons have been colored in with crayon - but the coloring stays carefully within the lines of the drawings, revealing the artist to have been an adult). If innocents were being bamboozled, they were not pre-pubescents but "flower children" - for once the psychedelic cover of an early issue of Sex to Sexty was opened a shocked hippie would be faced only with page after page of politically incorrect quips and moronic men's-magazine-style sex gag cartoons (many focusing on hillbilly and farm themes) instead of the expected consciousness-raising material.
Following these first op-art covers, cartoonist Denis Jones took over for a short while. The cover of Sex to Sexty #15 "Laugh Clinic" is a favorite of mine. It pictures a field of biomorphic-modern personified "germs" rendered in a pop-Surrealist '60s cartoon style reminiscent of that found in period youth-culture-oriented publications such as underground comic books. Though this admixture of psychedelia and rural humor might seem a bit strange it should be remembered that this was not so uncommon in America in the '60s. For example, the television music/comedy show Hee Haw (first airing in 1969 and running for an astonishing 22 years) was a country response to the pop-inflected comedy show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. On Hee Haw, hillbilly hotties patterned after Al Capp's Daisy Mae Yokum and Moonbeam McSwine lollygagged on the porches of psychedelic shacks while cornpone stand-up comics like Minnie Pearl pitched one-liners in quick blackout segments. It was like the Grand Ole Opry on acid. At the same time, darlings of the counterculture like the San Francisco-based psychedelic band the Grateful Dead played country-inspired music and postured as dirt farmers.
However, as far as Sex to Sexty magazine goes, such flirtations with pop aesthetics stopped when artist Pierre Davis took over as art director. Starting with issue #19 "True Love," which features a full-color oil painting of two amorous pigs cuddling in a sty, almost every subsequent copy of the magazine features one of his works on the cover. From then on all pretensions were dropped, for Davis's paintings consistently depict a rural lower-class environment. And, unlike most contemporary hick-related humor of the period, Davis's images are not limited to the standard hillbilly clichés - they are contemporary genre paintings. His eye for detail reveals him to be someone who understands, and revels in, the humor of the rural milieu. Davis is a kind of unrepressed Norman Rockwell who is willing, in his bawdy version of Americana, to include bestiality, scatology, voyeurism, melon-fucking, kiddie sex games, and all other manner of "perversions" into the picture.
Page [1] [2] [3]
Sex to Sexty
Hardcover, 20.5 x 27.8 cm (8.1 x 10.9 in.), 420 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
The ultimate collection of America's most salacious humor launched by the former cult magazine Sex to Sexty
