I’m participating in a Generation Fabulous bloghop. Our topic for today is “Summer Songs.” Favorite, most memorable, whatever makes it feel like summer every time you hear it.
I knew right away which song I would choose. Out of curiosity, I checked to see when the song first came out.
Why was I so shocked to learn that it was August 1965?? I can do the math, but really?
This song still makes me feel like that goofy young teenage girl I was when I heard it the first time. Did John Sebastian really promise to see me tomorrow, sort of late at night? To go out dancin’?? Yahhhh! Blow your mind!
It’s got all the right words to set a teenage girl into a swooning tailspin: a bunch of adorable guys (I mean, look at Zal with that hair! Too cute! ) singing about a young girl’s heart and feeling happy “like an old time movie.” Yes! That was me. Stuck in my life, looking for escape…and, well, magic. And boys, of course.
And the part about “trying to tell a stranger ’bout-a rock ‘n’ roll”: that was OUR music! You couldn’t explain it to anyone. Did anybody beside us kids get it? No! Did Ed Sullivan, even when he had the Beatles on his show? No. Clueless.
Rock ‘n’ roll did free my soul, but I couldn’t have put those words to it. Luckily, the Spoonful did, and just listening to this song again, I’m wearing a smile that won’t wipe off my face, no matter how hard I try.
(Oh, yeah, that part about the magic’s in the music and the music’s in me? I heard that one from a drummer I dated briefly. Sadly, it wasn’t true.)
But thanks to these boys–and they practically were boys in 1965–I can feel that eager-to-be-grown-up-and-outta-here urgency every time Sebastian strums that autoharp of his.
Yes, I believe.
Do you believe like I believe?
Love the screaming girls and the bored-looking boys in the video.
Kama Sutra Records. Remember?