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>> Sophie Auclair's Popaganda is mod to the max by RUPERT BOTTENBERG When you see the word "sixties," there's a good chance that images of naked hippies chugging bongwater at a be-in spring to mind. Suppress your shudder of disgust for a moment, though. You'll be happy to know that Montrealer Sophie Auclair has taken the time to resurrect an alternate zeitgeist of the overhyped decade. "To me," she says, "the spirit of the '60s was really in Swinging London and the mod scene that was happening there at the time." The first issue of Popaganda, Auclair's self-published "journal of pop and politics," is a smorgasbord of mod mania and cool counterculture. Topics range from the Who to spy movie soundtracks, from Anita Pallenberg to Jean-Luc Godard's flirtations with leftist extremism. There's also an analysis of taboo-breaking underground comix and a lament for the disappearance of crazed and out-of-control radio DJs, such as Wolfman Jack.
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Pop go the '60s
Auclair, who edits the magazine under the pseudonym Françoise Faithfull (taken from the names of two of the era's grooviest songbirds), promises that there's not a hippie to be found on Popaganda's slick and stylishly designed pages. "I'm not interested in the rural counterculture, communes and all that," says Auclair/Faithfull. "To me, that's not changing the world, it's just giving up. I'm interested in the people who wanted to change the urban environment, the place where we all live. Mod means modernism, after all."