Lyr Add: Younger Generation (John Sebastian)

Subject: Lyr Add: YOUNGER GENERATION (John Sebastian)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 29 Dec 21 - 10:50 AM

I looked around for an appropriate thread to add this to, and I couldn’t find one. I was hoping to find a thread called something like “Songs about parenting.” There were threads about fathers and threads about mothers, but they were all about the children’s point of view.

My transcription. The division into verses is kind of arbitrary here, so I did it according to the rhymes. As you can see, it’s mainly just rhymed couplets with a few extra lines squeezed in. I couldn’t figure out more of a pattern than that. Maybe someone who could work out the chords could do better.


YOUNGER GENERATION
As recorded by John Sebastian on “Cheapo-Cheapo Productions” (1971)

Why must every generation think their folks are square?
And no matter where their heads are, they know Mom’s ain’t there?

‘Cause I swore when I was small that I’d remember when
I knew what’s wrong with them that I was smaller than,

Determined to remember all the cardinal rules,
Like: sun showers are legal grounds for cuttin’ school.

I know I had forgotten maybe one or two,
And I hope that I’ll recall them all before the baby’s due,
And I know he’ll have a question or two,

Like: “Hey, Pop, can I go ride my zoom
That goes two hundred miles an hour suspended on balloons?

“And can I put a droplet of this new stuff on my tongue,
And imagine froth and dragons while you sit an’ wreck your lungs?”

And I must be permissive, understanding of the younger generation,

And then I’ll know that all I’ve learned my kid assumes,
And all my deepest worries must be his cartoons,

And still, I try to tell him all the things I’ve done

Relating to what he can do when he becomes a man,
And still, he’ll stick his fingers in the fan.

And: “Hey, Pop, my girlfriend’s only three.
She’s got her own videophone and she’s a-takin’ LSD,
And now that we’re best friends she wants to give a bit to me,

But what’s the matter, Daddy, how come you’re lookin’ mean?
Could be that you can’t live up to your dreams?”

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Younger Generation (John Sebastian)
From: GUEST,Don Meixner
Date: 29 Dec 21 - 12:10 PM

I followed The Spoonful for years. Even after John Sebastian left the group and went on his own. I do Younger Generation now and then still. I think it is a fine song.

I still chuckle over the fingers in the fan observation. In later years I believe he has changed the line to "...she wants to give a taste to me.."

Don Meixner

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Younger Generation (John Sebastian)
From: GerryM
Date: 29 Dec 21 - 04:55 PM

Songs about parenting? There's Teach Your Children, by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

You, who are on the road
Must have a code
That you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a goodbye

Teach your children well
Their father's hell
Did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by

Don't you ever ask them, "Why?"
If they told you, you would cry
So, just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

And you, of tender years (can you hear and do you care)
Can't know the fears (and can't you see)
That your elders grew by (we must be free)
And, so, please help them with your youth (to teach your children what you believe in)
They seek the truth (make a world that we can live in)
Before they can die

Teach your parents well
Their children's hell
Will slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by

Don't you ever ask them, "Why?"
If they told you, you would cry
So, just look at them and sigh
And know they love you

https://youtu.be/EkaKwXddT_I