It’s been unseasonably warm the last couple of days, and as I was driving through congested traffic yesterday I found a old song going through my head…and suddenly I realized that I’d been there before, and not just once but probably every time I’m stuck in heavy traffic in hot weather.
It all started on a hot summer day about forty years ago, as I was driving my tired Oldsmobile through heavy traffic. The jam of cars was nearly intractable and I was late for an important meeting. I was sweating and sticking to the seat, and as time crawled I kept nervously eyeing the rising temperature gauge because the Olds was prone to overheating. In the midst of all that, I strangely found myself obsessively and repeatedly singing, “Hot town. Summer in the city…” as the dial climbed higher and higher.
It would probably be a better story if I’d had a breakdown, but I made it through the traffic that day. However, the experience was unsettling enough that the memory has stayed with me all these years, and that song – “Summer In The City”, by the Lovin’ Spoonful – became a sort of old, familiar friend. To this day, it still seems to magically appear in my head whenever I’m in heavy traffic on a hot day. I don’t know if that’s part of the usual definition of “a song for the ages”, but it certainly seems to be that for me.
The Lovin’ Spoonful was another of those genre-bending groups from the sixties, with some similarities to the Mamas and Papas, the subject of one of my earlier posts. In fact, members from both groups were originally part of the Mugwumps, an earlier folk-rock combo.
In the early sixties, John Sebastian formed the Lovin’ Spoonful with Zal Yanovsky, Joe Butler, and Steve Boone, and for a few years they flourished, with a number of top ten hits. These included their biggest, “Summer In The City”, which was probably also the hardest-edged — especially for the era, when the pop charts were dominated by mostly softer sounds. However, they played to that audience too with hits like “Do You Believe In Magic” and “Daydream”, and occasionally ventured into other areas too. A lot of their music had a country flavor – more later about that – and they even had an acquaintance with blues. (In fact, the name of the group was taken from an old Mississippi John Hurt song.)
As was the case with a lot of sixties groups, they had their share of ups and downs and didn’t stay together long, and Sebastian went on to an uneven solo career. But for a time in the sixties, everything was rosy for the Lovin’ Spoonful.
Geezer Music Club 