Music Extra: Summer Songs...

As I wrote here the other day, spring fever has set in around here in a big way. Only, it isn't quite spring yet even though the temperatures we've seen here locally have seemed more like summer. Well, early summer, since in the middle of summer it isn't unusual for this region to see temperatures past 100 degrees F. The last couple of days it has been in the mid-80s F, which can on occasion be the low temperature at the height of summer. But, when it's been in the 50s F for highs as recently as a couple of weeks ago, mid-80s feel like summer. We've even been running the air conditioner.

Now, it would be nice if I could give in to my spring fever, but with volunteer work, looking for a real job, and working on writing a book, I've been more than busy - as my sporadic posting here this week has indicated. So, I've been resisting the lure of sitting outside in the warmth with a good book and a glass of lemonade and getting on with the things I need to do. This hasn't been as difficult as it might seem, though, since the warm weather also means that things are blooming - with a vengeance - and that means the onset of allergy season. Since I'm allergic to multiple things that grow around here, every time I stepped outside yesterday I started either coughing or sneezing or both.

At any rate, I thought that before I have to go back out into the warmth and the allergens later today to go to a meeting at CVP, I would share a few songs that resonate with the apparent season around here.

First of all, here is George Harrison singing "Here Comes the Sun" at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. It seems an appropriate song since even though it hasn't rained as much as it should here locally over the winter, it has been cloudy a lot, and it is nice to see the sun:



This kind of weather is baseball weather, and the season is coming soon. So there's this song, "Swing", by Trace Adkins, which is about baseball, and also about striking out or not in that other spring pastime - love, lust, and romance:



That isn't exactly a traditional baseball song. For that, there's John Fogerty's "Centerfield":



There are a lot of songs about summer. Some of them are just about summer, and some of them are about, well, more. One of these is "The Boys of Summer", by Don Henley. It's too nice a day to engage in serious analysis, however, and so I'll just leave this here for you:



An older summer song, "Summer in the City" (1966), by The Lovin' Spoonful, contrasts summer days and summer nights:



It's possible that where you are reading this from, summer weather hasn't arrived yet, or is just going away if you happen to be in the Southern Hemisphere. But, is there really a bad time for a summer song? As far as I'm concerned, summer is a state of mind as much as it is a season. Then again, I grew up in Southern California, where you can have summer-like weather on any given day of the year, so my perceptions on the subject might be slightly skewed.

Music Sunday: Summer Edition

It's summertime in the Northern Hemisphere. With a vengeance, at least here. It was 110 degrees F here yesterday and it is forecast to be 109 F today. That's just too hot as far as I'm concerned.

But, the heat and the crappy air, the winding down of the Summer Olympics, and the fact that here in my community summer vacation is ending for all the kids (and adults) who will be going back to school in the next couple of weeks, all have me thinking about "summer" songs. And there are a lot of them. But, because there are so many of them, I decided, for the purposes of this blog post, to stick with songs that actually have the words "summer" or "summertime" in the title.

First up, this is "Summer in the City", by The Lovin' Spoonful, from 1966, with a lead vocal (and bonus mid-60s sideburns) from John Sebastian. Sidewalks "hotter than a match-head" indeed, or at least it felt like that when I was outside yesterday:



"Summertime Blues" was first recorded by Eddie Cochran in 1958, but arguably the best-known cover of the song is by The Who, although it has been recorded by artists as diverse as Blue Cheer, The Beach Boys, Alan Jackson, and Olivia Newton-John. This is a live performance by The Who, at the Monterey Pop Festival, in 1967:



And then there's "Summertime". This song, which originated as an aria in "Porgy & Bess", by George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward in 1935, is one of the most covered songs in recording history, with one source claiming that there are over 33,000 covers of the song in existence. Well, I don't know about that, but I do know that I can't decide which of my two favorite covers of the song to post here, so I'm going to post both of them. First is Billie Holiday's cover:



I also love Janis Joplin's cover of "Summertime", here from a live performance in Stockholm in 1969:



I hope it isn't as hot where you are as it is here. If it is, try to stay cool. If it isn't, just know how jealous I am that you're there and I'm here.