Let me preface by saying I’m old. Not only am I nearing 50, but all my sisters were into music, and are all older than me. So I cut my musical teeth on music older than me. My oldest sister (13 years my senior) was a Beatle’s fan. Next sister in line (10 years older than me) was a “hippie”: Joan Baez, Dylan, John Denver, protest songs. Next in line (seven years older), bubblegum pop (if that phrase was used then): Gary Lewis and the Playboys; Tommy Roe; Kenny Rogers and the First Edition; and of course Mamas and Papas and Lovin’ Spoonful; my sister who is only two years older than me introduced me to Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody, specifically), and Cheech and Chong.
To this day, when I need a hit of “feel good” music, Lovin’ Spoonful, Carpenters, Mamas and Papas, Jim Croce, are all go-to stuff.
When I’ve got Lovin’ Spoonful’s Greatest Hits in the player, whatever I’m doing when Nashville Cats comes on, everything stops, so I can just kind of get into it.
Feel free to take pokes at my musical taste! I feel pretty damned good.
Well, I was going to pop in and say how much I liked “Nashville Cats,” but you beat me to it.
John Sebastian’s “Daydream” sparked McCartney’s “Good Day Sunshine,” and also --according to a McCartney bio I just finished-- a slew of other similar songs… which I can just sorta remember. “Lazy Day?” “Saturday In the Park?”
I like that “Younger Girl.”
I like that “Make Up Your Mind.”
When my older two daughters (now 22 and 18) were little, Summer in the City was their favorite Spoonful song.
I got “voice time” on the local radio station once when they were doing an “all-request hour”, but the song you requested had to mention a season. I called and asked for Summer in the City, and they not only played my request, but they put my voice on the air.
OK, so it wasn’t 15 minutes of fame. It was more like 3 seconds of fame. Still. . .
Why in the world would it be uncool to like the Lovin’ Spoonful? Why in the world would you pay any attention to the kind of chucklehead who thinks it’s uncool to like the Lovin’ Spoonful?
If you almost 50 (you youngster, you) then it’s way past time for you to stop caring about what anyone thinks is cool or uncool and just care about what you like. What you like is good. And so are the Spoonful.
Well, I’m gonna take this and run with it. That’s it: next up in my CD player: Barry Manilow. Take that, whippersnappers, then get the hell off my lawn!
True, but to me, music (well, pop songs, anyway) are a kind of fiction; it’s not about what’s real, it’s about how it makes you feel when you’re in the moment.
Oh, yeah. “Darling Be Home Soon” is one of the few true love songs in rock. 99% of the rest are really lust songs. Not hardly the same. That Sebastian wrote such a mature song in his 20s is simply amazing.
I’m disappointed that the Tennessee Titans were not named the Nashville Cats. They could have bought the rights from whatever minor league/low rent team had the name.
I’ll pretend that your sentence ended right there.
“And now, a quarter of my life has almost past
I think I’ve come to see myself at last
And I see that the time spent confused
Was the time that I spent without you
And I feel myself in bloom”
I haven’t seen that dreadful Paul Simon movie “One Trick Pony” since it came out (I couldn’t even remember the title until I looked it up). But it did have the last appearance of the original members of the Spoonful and they were great! Maybe I should netflix it just to see them again.
