The Americana and roots music authority
What started out to be about the Lovin' Spoonful takes a hard turn
Yesterday on Facebook, my friend No Depression posted the usual " it's #twangthursday what are you listening to " post. It seems to capture a lot of interest and I like to see what people come back with 'cause sometimes I find some new things that I missed or old stuff I just forgot about. (Four "I's" in one sentence...wish I had an editor.)
So back to yesterday. I was listening to a track from the Youngblood's "Earth Music" and somehow it started me thinking about other early-Americana artists which led me to the Lovin' Spoonful who I've always loved from their first time on Ed Sullivan's Sunday night show. Trouble with working from home and having three monitors in front of your face and two computers on the desk is that it's pretty easy to get sidetracked, and sure enough I start surfing all over the place and getting an idea that maybe we need to talk about this sixties band again. If the search engine here is correct, there was only one small blip about the band in issue 41 in 2002 which was a reissue review.
So with some sadness, I turned away from that idea and went searching for John Sebastian...Zal passed away in 2002 having spent years running a couple of restaurants in Ontario. I've been tracking Sebastian for years as he went back to his early roots of jug band music and blues. Living not far from Woodstock, he still plays and records, lately (and separately) with Maria Muldaur and David Grisman. He also does commercial work with jingles and such...Coke, Pepsi, Kohls and Gatorade are a few.
Sebastian is all over the film along with many other names you'd know if you recall the early folk scene and like that type of music. His playing of both guitar and harp are probably the best they've even been, as is his voice. The best part of the film is when the band he plays with travels to a jug band music festival in Japan, where it's been embraced and is loved.
This morning as I started to hack away, I got sidetracked in research and I've decided to perhaps come back to Sebastian at another time...and with a more in depth retrospective. Because, while searching around for some information on Greenwich Village where he grew up and started his career, I stumbled upon a release that's a tribute to the neighborhood. It came out a couple weeks ago and I'm not even going to bother to mention the name or artists on it...you reviewers can do that. But it made me think about tribute albums in general...something I know a thing or two about as I used to have a hand in that business.
So here it is....tribute releases can take many forms and some are done lovingly with care and quality, some have great archival value and fan appeal, some are recorded for five hundred bucks in a bedroom and some are just plain commercial rip-offs. If there's any reason to rejoice at the collapse of the music business, it's that we may never again have to see a kazoo tribute to REO Speedwagon at a Tower store. Not that this thing about the Village was like that...there's a Lucinda track I didn't seem to have on there that's pretty good. But there was a cover version of John Sebastian's Darlin' Be Home Soon by a talented artist who just hacked it to death.
And it was enough to take me off topic and wonder...what's the point?
So back to yesterday. I was listening to a track from the Youngblood's "Earth Music" and somehow it started me thinking about other early-Americana artists which led me to the Lovin' Spoonful who I've always loved from their first time on Ed Sullivan's Sunday night show. Trouble with working from home and having three monitors in front of your face and two computers on the desk is that it's pretty easy to get sidetracked, and sure enough I start surfing all over the place and getting an idea that maybe we need to talk about this sixties band again. If the search engine here is correct, there was only one small blip about the band in issue 41 in 2002 which was a reissue review.
So with some sadness, I turned away from that idea and went searching for John Sebastian...Zal passed away in 2002 having spent years running a couple of restaurants in Ontario. I've been tracking Sebastian for years as he went back to his early roots of jug band music and blues. Living not far from Woodstock, he still plays and records, lately (and separately) with Maria Muldaur and David Grisman. He also does commercial work with jingles and such...Coke, Pepsi, Kohls and Gatorade are a few.
Sebastian is all over the film along with many other names you'd know if you recall the early folk scene and like that type of music. His playing of both guitar and harp are probably the best they've even been, as is his voice. The best part of the film is when the band he plays with travels to a jug band music festival in Japan, where it's been embraced and is loved.
This morning as I started to hack away, I got sidetracked in research and I've decided to perhaps come back to Sebastian at another time...and with a more in depth retrospective. Because, while searching around for some information on Greenwich Village where he grew up and started his career, I stumbled upon a release that's a tribute to the neighborhood. It came out a couple weeks ago and I'm not even going to bother to mention the name or artists on it...you reviewers can do that. But it made me think about tribute albums in general...something I know a thing or two about as I used to have a hand in that business.
So here it is....tribute releases can take many forms and some are done lovingly with care and quality, some have great archival value and fan appeal, some are recorded for five hundred bucks in a bedroom and some are just plain commercial rip-offs. If there's any reason to rejoice at the collapse of the music business, it's that we may never again have to see a kazoo tribute to REO Speedwagon at a Tower store. Not that this thing about the Village was like that...there's a Lucinda track I didn't seem to have on there that's pretty good. But there was a cover version of John Sebastian's Darlin' Be Home Soon by a talented artist who just hacked it to death.
And it was enough to take me off topic and wonder...what's the point?
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Comment by Ron Frankl on November 13, 2009 at 2:07pm -
It has long amazed me how completely the Spoonful's reputation has receded into history, without the re-evaluation and rediscovery that many of their contemporaries have enjoyed. Over a period of two years, their work placed them at the forefront of American rock bands, at a time when popular music was becoming more ambitious and creative. Sebastian was one of the most original songwriters of the era, and his work sounds fresher today than most other work from that period. Most significantly, they made the leap from top 40 success to then-emerging FM radio, a transformation that many other acts could not make. They deserve to be more than a footnote, more than the occasional track on an oldies station.
You couldn't be more correct, Ed, that they should be considered one of the forerunners of Americana, as blues, folk and country were all components of their music. They embraced Nashville when it could not have been less cool to do so in rock circles ("Nashville Cats"). Their first three albums were all reissued (with bonus tracks) a few years ago, and they still sound great.
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Comment by denton fabrics on November 13, 2009 at 2:21pm -
I've got about a half-dozen Lovin Spoonful songs on my "mix tape iPod" so one of their toons pops up for me every now and then. It's amazing how realativly fresh some of their songs sound - Nashville Cats still works!
I read a book called California Dreaming which was about the left coast music scene in the late 60s and one of the mentions of the Spoonful was they became outcasts from the scene because supposedly a couple of members of the band narked on a local dealer to save their own asses. Not cool at all.
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Comment by Ron Frankl on November 13, 2009 at 2:25pm
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The story at the time was that it was Zal Yanovsky who was busted and was convinced to nark on his dealer. He left the band at that time.
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Comment by Easy Ed on November 13, 2009 at 2:33pm -
The Lovin' Spoonful were torn asunder by a drug bust in 1967. Boone and Yanovsky were arrested in California for marijuana possession, and evidently got out of trouble by turning in their source. This didn't sit well with the burgeoning counterculture, which called for a boycott of Spoonful product, although the effect on their sales may have been overestimated; most of the people who bought Spoonful records were average teenage Americans, not hippies. Yanovsky left the band in mid-1967, to be replaced by Jerry Yester, former producer of the Association.
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Comment by Amos Perrine on November 13, 2009 at 2:35pm -
Always nice to read your posts. I was a fan of the Spoonful, they were the first "rock" band I ever saw in performance. Before then it was country, bluegrass & folk-- hey, let's open a club and call it CBGF. And then they did the soundtrack to Woody Allen's first movie, so they had to be way hip. And did you know -- or is it just one of those myths that become the truth -- that John was asked to be the 4th member of a group of musicians that had been cast off by. or simply left, their respective bands, let's see it would have been known as CSN&S. And the story goes that John declined as he did not think his voice was the right fit. BTW, in 1999 Astor Place Records released "Bleecker Street: GW in the '60's" that had a pretty nice line-up and included Loudon III & Iris doing R&M Farina's "Pack Up Your Sorrows."
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Comment by Michael on November 13, 2009 at 2:50pm -
Zal's solo album also needs to be checked, real interesting album when it was released
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Comment by Easy Ed on November 13, 2009 at 2:51pm
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Story goes that Crosby and Stills got together first at Sebastian' house, followed by Nash later. CSN and Dallas Taylor played on Sebastian's first solo album and he played harp on "Deja Vu". Somewhere lost in my closet is the Valerie Carter album "Just a Stone's Throw Away" where I think they may all play on as well. She covers Sebastian's Face of Appalachia.
yeah...I got that Bleecker St. tribute and it's one of the good ones.
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Comment by Easy Ed on November 13, 2009 at 2:55pm
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Comment by David Shaw on November 13, 2009 at 6:28pm -
Zal's restaurants are still going strong in Kingston, Ontario ... One is Chez Piggy and I can't remember the name of the other (weird because I was in it about a year ago buying a take out lunch). A former girlfriend of mine lives in Zal's old house (not the one he was living in when he died) and knew Zal and his wife quite well. She was going to introduce me to him but he died shortly after she mentioned that. I still love to hear Nashville Cats and Summer in the City (and have long been scandalized that the rhythm section is touring under the banner of the original group ... same goes for CCR and used to go for the Byrds).
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Comment by David Shaw on November 13, 2009 at 6:32pm
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(Just sent the link for that article on Zal to Susan in Kingston ... she'll love it.)
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