The Lovin’ Spoonful

Spoonful playlist

Contributors: Roger Woods & Merric Davidson

The songs are listed somewhat in order of preference but there’s little between the choices. They’re all outstanding pop songs and there are plenty more equally as delightful as those in this list. You’ll find all the above on the Very Best Of The Lovin’ Spoonful CD at a nice price. Although they recorded a handful of studio albums, the Spoonful were a ‘singles’ group – many of the albums out there are collections and compilations. There are no concept albums. They’d disbanded before pop had evolved into rock with its associated suites of songs on albums. There’s nothing wrong with that; their business was writing and performing good, honest two minute pop songs which were insightful and extremely well written and produced. Listen to the words and the phrasing on Did You Ever have To Make Up Your Mind?, Wild About My Lovin’ or Summer In The City.

Cole Porter had a way with a rhyme, and Noel Coward – and later on Gerry Goffin, Jackie DeShannon, and many more – and John Sebastian should be up there for his brief, but immortal, body of work in that two year period. Perversely, it’s perhaps this ability to fashion a rhyme that failed to bring him the plaudits that he deserved (until much later – see below).

From penning one of the most romantic songs of those times, Darlin’ Be Home Soon …

I couldn’t bear to wait an extra minute if you dawdled …
It’s not just these few hours but I’ve been waiting since I toddled

… to iconic summer sounds such as Summer In The City, the words, although possibly strangled out of the muse, were supreme:

All around people lookin’ half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match-head

Daydream was the song that broke The Lovin’ Spoonful in the UK (No.2 in 1966):

I’m blowing the day to take a walk in the sun
And fall on my face on somebody’s new-mown lawn

And even if time is passing me by a lot
I couldn’t care less about the dues you say I got

Really, the only other John Sebastian song that should go in the selection above (but at the expense of what?) is the gorgeous Six O’Clock (from Everything Playing)

And I could feel I could say what I want
That I could nudge her and call her my confidant

Sebastian was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1968.

There was a two year period, 1966 to 1968, when everybody knew them. That was about the life of many a pop group back then. John Sebastian left in 1968 a year after Canadian guitarist Zal Yanovsky had quit and the force which had been with them had gone. But don’t search for what isn’t there. Just listen and enjoy.

The Lovin’ Spoonful now

John Sebastian official website

The Lovin’ Spoonful biography (Apple Music)

Solo career of John B. Sebastian – any tie-dyed pot-heads out there want to give it a go?

TopperPost #66