John B Sebastian
I have a near-forty-year old memory of seeing John Sebastian on a glorious summer day at a Cambridge Folk Festival–I think the 16th. He was playing good acoustic guitar and singing an assortment of Loving Spoonful and solo songs. I knew the Spoonful tunes, but not the solo material.
Years later I used to enjoy a VHS recording I made off air of Sebastian and David Bromberg swapping tunes and stories. As far as I can see that show isn’t on YouTube, and I no longer have the wherewithal to play VHS.
19 January 1970 was the US release date for Sebastian’s first solo album after the Spoonful broke up. It’s an eclectic selection of songs, perhaps too eclectic for it’s own good. I don’t think there’s a bad song on the album (a couple of them were in his impromptu set at Woodstock), but I also don’t think it hangs together as a coherent whole. Rather like Family’s A Song For Me, it fells like a disparate collection of material that veers from one style to another without quite gelling. It’s almost like a collection of well-produced demos of material for other singers to pick up.
I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m criticising the material or the performances; there’s good stuff here. As usual, it’s all on Spotify.
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