John Sebastian didn’t take long to establish his solo career after he left the Lovin’ Spoonful in late 1968, and the band fell apart after it released one final Sebastian-less LP. As the leader of the band from 1965 through 1967, Sebastian had a long and successful string of hits with the Spoonful, including "Daydream," "Do You Believe In Magic,” and "You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice.”
This recording from the Bill Graham archives dates back to April…entire summary
John Sebastian - vocals, acoustic guitar
John Sebastian didn’t take long to establish his solo career after he left the Lovin’ Spoonful in late 1968, and the band fell apart after it released one final Sebastian-less LP. As the leader of the band from 1965 through 1967, Sebastian had a long and successful string of hits with the Spoonful, including "Daydream," "Do You Believe In Magic,” and "You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice.”
This recording from the Bill Graham archives dates back to April 1970 and features a mix of material from Sebastian’s first solo album, John B. Sebastian. The album had been released on Warner Brother’s subsidiary, Reprise, but MGM Records (and its subsidiary Kama Sutra) believed Sebastian still owed another album under the deal he signed with the Lovin’ Spoonful. MGM obtained second generation audio tapes of the solo album and released it at the same time as the Reprise LP. When a court ordered MGM to remove its copy of the LP from stores, the label moved in another direction. Pissed that they had lost the court case, they released a bootleg of a Sebastian solo acoustic show that was essentially the same show captured on this website. It didn’t take Reprise long to respond with a legitimate live album that was essentially one step above a bootleg.
In the middle of all this rock ‘n’ roll insanity was John Sebastian, who just wanted to wear tie-dye and denim and sing his innocent folk-pop songs about how groovy life was in the hippie age. Featuring a blend of later Spoonful hits and material from his first solo LP, this performance gives us John Sebastian in a familiar environment: the free-thinking world of Berkeley, California.
Eight months before this show was recorded, Sebastian would agree to do an impromptu solo acoustic performance at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair while the stage was being changed for the next electric act. His timely comments from the stage and his uplifting tunes received worldwide exposure when he became a key performer in the film and on the multi-platinum soundtrack album. This show should take you back to a time when things were certainly more innocent, and in many ways, more progressive.
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