The hit numbers come from Crewe and/or Gaudio, though. "Bye Bye Baby (Baby Goodbye)" is a slick dramatic monologue told from the PoV of a married man attempting to break off a relationship with the one he really loves ("Can't put it off any longer," Valli pouts, and, though you really don't wanna, you can't help empathizing with his reluctance), while Gaudio's "Big Man in Town" is a strikingly delivered opus of class-based yearning which opens with harmonica that might've been left over from Born to Wander. In his lyrical acknowledgment of class differences, Gaudio was way ahead of most of his teen-pop peers. You just know that Jersey youngster Bruce Springsteen was paying close attention to the words, however.

Of the three sixties sets to come out of this crop of reissues, though, the soundest has to be the twosome featuring 1966's Working My Way Back to You and 1968's The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette. The latter platter, while hit-free, is a small period gem: an attempt by the gang (collaborating with folk-singer Jake Holmes) at creating the Seasons' own big concept album á la Sgt. Pepper. Though the album proved a commercial failure (in part, one suspects, because few in '68 were prepped to make enough of a paradigm shift for these guys to play in the Sophisticated Rockers Band), in execution, Gazetteholds its own against many of the era's better known concept pieces.

It has everything you'd look for in a Big Statement LP: grand orchestral statements ("American Crucifixion Crusade"), snippets of musical whimsy ("Mrs. Stately's Garden," "Idaho"), arty lyrics (w./ more than a trace of Van Dyke Parksiness), social commentary ("Wall Street Village Day," the folk-garagey title song) and "She's Leaving Home" generation-gapped poignancy ("Saturday's Father"). Since Valli's trademark falsetto was then out-of-favor (i.e., not cool enough for the late sixties), the vocal emphasis is on Valli's tenor croon and Pet Sounds type harmony. Each track is gorgeously performed – but given that even the Wilson fam was struggling to hold onto their audience in '68, the change probably wasn't enough for the era's audience. Still, a track like "Wonder What You'll Be" could've easily been slipped into Pet Sounds and not sounded out-of-place.

Though two singles were released from Gazette (the campily old-fashioned "Idaho" and "Saturday's Father"), neither went very far. (To my 21st century ears, the track to've pushed is the engagingly poppy "Something on Her Mind.") Perhaps another factor contributing to the LP's failure to catch a late sixties audience was its unabashed Catholic nature; where all the hip bands were venturing into Eastern philosophy, the Seasons held onto the religious imagery of their youth, centering their six-minute-plus opener around the "Prince of Peace." Three years before such savior-centric works as Godspell and Jesus Christ, Superstar, the results appeared disastrously out of step. Heard today, however, Gazette (which this writer first bought as an LP cut-out back in 1970) deserves to be rediscovered: just to hear Frankie asking us to "look at her/she's groovy" on record finale "Soul of A Woman" is an unabashed pleasure.

Working My Way Back to You is almost as wonder-packed: the prime stumbling block toward making it an undisputed k.o. is the inclusion of three songs from Entertain You, a vestige of the days when record companies still largely thought of long-players as patched-together assemblages of tracks, their teenaged audience possessing the long-term memory of a fruit fly. Still, even the familiar tracks fit within this package, and the newer cuts are even better. Aside from the classic Motown-steeped "Working" (also a major hit for the Spinners), the disc features the debut of "Can't Get Enough of You" (variously covered by ? and the Mysterians, Color Field and Smashmouth). Both tracks were composed by Sandy Linzer & Denny Randell, also responsible for the Seasons' hit "Let's Hang On!" They definitely did good for the boys.

But the new songs by Gaudio and/or Crew are plenty fine, too. Only clunker in the bunch is Gaudio's misfired attempt at an anti-protestor screed, "Beggars Parade." It isn't the worst attempt by a bunch of pop fogies to waggle their fingers at Kids Today (that would have to be Mike Love's "Student Demonstration Time," which unsuccessfully tried to graft its scolding lyrics over Lieber & Stoller's "Riot in Cell Block 9"), but it comes darn close. Measurably superior are the Crewe-credited "I Woke Up" (great use of the goup's trademark clappin' rhythm here), Gaudio/Crewe's "Too Many Memories," plus two slices of hardscrabble lyricism ("Comin' Up in the World," "Everybody Knows My Name"). Bob Gaudio's "Name" is especially intriguing, the song of a guy who has spent so much time working to "climb the ladder of success" that he's missed out on home and family. Unlike "Parade," the song's unapologetically square plaint works – in large part because Gaudio puts it in the mouth of a believably inhabited Valli character, delivering Gaudio's plainspoken lyrics with an effective Sonny Bono whine. If most of the '66 pop audience never bothered to listen that carefully, well, that was their big loss . . .

Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is the Comics & Graphic Novels review editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy size acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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