Folk Explosion No. 2: The Lovin' Spoonful: "Daydream"

And now we are in New York City with its folk rock heroes, The Lovin' Spoonful. There is something utterly American about this - the slackerly speed, the whistling, the idea that if you want to just zone out on somebody's lawn, hey, go ahead - you'll either be with someone you love or dreaming about him/her, and the experience may lead to you dreaming "for a thousand years". Time itself becomes flexible in this song, incidental really, as the dreaming takes hold...yes there are dues to pay, but that is for tomorrow, man. What matters is now.

I don't know if this is the first 'drug' song I've written about here, but it certainly points to that state of mind drugs create, that warm safe feeling that nothing bad can happen and what do you know, maybe something will happen - something in fact that only could happen to you in an altered state. The anguish of "Bang Bang" - a distressed lasagna of a song - is far away, as this is more an amble down to a peaceful spot, even if it's your neighbor's backyard. It's a beautiful day...why not?

I remember such a day in Kingston, Ontario in the late summer of '93 and walking right by Chez Piggy, which was Zal Yanovsky's restaurant - he who was the Lovin' Spoonful's co-founder along with John Sebastian. He was caught in a marijuana possession dilemma in '67 about either being deported back to Canada (he was born in Toronto) or ratting out his dealer...and since he ratted out his dealer, that made him MOST uncool and he ended up going back to Canada anyway. Considering some foods are practically drugs in and of themselves, this makes perfect sense; the sweet sensuality of this song can from a contented stomach as much as a elevated mind, after all.

The next entry here is the other side of joy, folk taken to another level altogether - the intensity of the Sixties comes to its next peak, unexpectedly.