Top Ten Steve Goodman Songs: Spoon River (#8)

Tweet

I hope I remember to do everything this weekend. Our first golf tournament of the year is this weekend...and, as usual, it's going to be unseasonably cool. Two years ago our first golf tournament (second weekend in May, where you think everything will be safe) was marred by sleet before we began Saturday! Oh, well. Here's the next Goodman favorite. #8: Spoon River One of Steve Goodman's best friends was a songwriter by the name of Michael Smith -- Michael Peter Smith, so as not to be confused with the contemporary Christian singer Michael W. Smith. No, this Mike Smith wrote a great song called "The Wonderful World of Sex," so he won't be accidentally invited to any praise and worship services! He wrote with Goodman ("Vegamatic," the previously-reviewed "Talk Backwards") and wrote songs on his own that Goodman loved and recorded (one of his songs will pop up later in the countdown). Here Goodman gives a wonderful version of a song about a town coming back together after the Civil War. A soldier returns to Spoon River and reunites with a love ("come to the dance, Mary Perkins, I like you quite well"). He echoes something that most soldiers have probably thought at one time or another: "there must be a heaven, the lord knows I've seen mostly hell." Spoon River Written by Mike Smith From Jessie's Jig and Other Favorites, 1975