Ten Favorite Steve Miller Band Songs: Seasons (#6)

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It's time for another song from the Steve Miller Band from my list of ten favorites. Miller had two pretty distinctive careers: the "underground FM rock" era, where he was part of the "San Francisco" music scene (the same scene that gave us acts as diverse as the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and the Jefferson Airplane!); and the "commercially successful" era from 1974-82, where he had three #1 songs and five platinum albums. Which do I like better? Well, there's good and bad in both eras....and for today's song, I'm going back to the first era. #6: Seasons There's a lot of things from the late 60s that just sounds weird now. In fact, I'm guessing it sounded weird then, either with or without the drugs that were synonymous with the time (they called it "psychedelic" music for a reason). Steve Miller certainly was no exception. On his first album he had a song called "The Beauty of Time is That It's Snowing (Psychedelic BB)." Now, reportedly, Miller never was into the drugs in the scene, so I don't know what we're gonna blame that on. By the third album Boz Scaggs and Jim Peterman left the Steve Miller Band, leaving just Miller, bassist Lonnie Turner, and drummer Tim Davis. Ben Sirdan, who's now a respected jazz keyboardist, joined the band "unofficially" (he didn't get pictured on the album covers) and co-wrote songs with Miller. That includes this one, a gorgeous ballad that opens side two of the album (not that I ever had the album or anything ). It's placed right before the far better-known song from this album, "Space Cowboy." While I like "Space Cowboy," "Seasons" is the song that sent me into orbit from this album. And now, some trivia: the final song on the album is called "My Dark Hour," which featured a hack drummer/bassist and singer named Paul Ramon doing the music and singing with Miller. Paul Ramon is better known as Sir Paul McCartney. (Oh, and the opening riff of "My Dark Hour"? It showed up later as the opening riff of "Fly Like an Eagle.") Seasons Written by Steve Miller and Ben Sidran From Brave New World, 1969 And so it goes as the wind blows: