Doors..."Strange Days"

i know, but listen.



for years i conscientiously abstained from listening to the doors, as my tolerance for the hagiography and hero-worship around morrison was skeletal and bare. ugh, especially those ubiquitous posters where his arms are outstretched and he's wearing that repugnant glare like a party mask. i've heard "roadhouse blues" enough to congeal six consecutive lifespans, etc. however, i watched "apocalypse now" over a year ago, and something about hearing "the end" while marlon brando is hacked apart with extreme prejudice...something just sent up the flagpole for me, and since then i've been listening to the doors after years of utter refusal. primarily, i've been listening to this album - aside from "horse latitudes," which is unintentionally hilarious, this is nearly perfect, entirely of its own. aside from "love me two times" and "people are strange" these songs have been nowhere near radio frequencies for the better part of four decades; absolute shame. i'm enamored of the guitar tone on these songs, especially "unhappy girl" and "moonlight drive." the arrangements are delirious, and no matter how overplayed "people are strange" may be, that carnivalesque, brechtian piano romp towards the end of the song will always act as a great sound of conveyance, transportive in a sense that is delirious and rightly strange. i care a great deal for the majority of their debut album and their third, "waiting for the sun." after that it's somewhat sporadic and prone to mediocrity, but "strange days" is the perect embodiment of what the doors' music was intended to be, fortunately avoiding the pratfalls and pretenses that such ambitions might bring. quite good, evocative - to be listened to exclusively during the late hours of the night.



download:

http://www.mediafire.com/?2xi4bmjedyn

DONOVAN..."HURDY GURDY MAN"

"hurdy gurdy man" is one of donovan's strangest releases and possibly my favorite, as it takes the formula of "sunshine superman" and develops songs that employ a textural drone (in "peregrine," "river song" and "tangier"), as well as featuring his obligatory paisley pop whimsy in songs like "jennifer juniper." the album also displayed mangled folk songs with a palpably dark influence as in the title track and "get thy bearings," which utilizes a rambling saxophone (that literally effervesces out of nowhere). sadly, none of those tracks are found on youtube, so the two singles from this album shall have to suffice for the time being. anyway, definitely worth hearing as it expands the dimensions and dynamic of donovan's music. after a string of four terrific albums in "sunshine superman," "mellow yellow," "gift from a flower to a garden," and "hurdy gurdy man," he would begin to scale back his productions and gravitate towards a sparer sound.




i'm having trouble uploading this to mediafire, so here's a link from "psych spaniolos" blog

http://rapidshare.com/files/99056338/Donovan_-_The_Hurdy_Gurdy_Man.rar.html

DONOVAN..."SUNSHINE SUPERMAN"

and yet another donovan album (because i'm verging on proselytism). "sunshine superman" was donovan's first album to escape the foul cloud of accusations that he was a talentless, desalinated dylan imitator. it is pronouncedly more psychedelic than either the beatles or dylan, more inflected with the spell of eastern ragas and ascending sitars than harrison's compositions for "revolver." obviously the title track is the most well-known of nearly all donovan's wonderful songs, and i can't dispute nor mitigate its perfection; fortunately he's written songs that actually surpass "sunshine superman," and several of them appear on this album.



"season of the witch," much like most of donovan's songs, is irremediably strange and possessed of a rather pliant meaning - as to what it or anything else here or elsewhere means, i have no idea; "season of the witch" has a terrifically bare atmosphere that seems to swell from the its interior, bursting like a collapsed star.

here's my favorite song from the album:



download "sunshine superman"

http://www.sendspace.com/file/0e1stv

DONOVAN..."A GIFT FROM A FLOWER TO A GARDEN"

in the unlikely event there was any lingering doubt, donovan leitch is among the higher echelons of singer/songwriters from the 60s, an insuperable presence whose work is largely left to fritter to waste in the dustbins and gutters of history, generally written off as a novelty with songs like "mellow yellow" and "sunshine superman."



today is reserved for the preservation and laurels of donovan, whose career and legacy have been stigmatized by the "dylan-lite" tag that followed him throughout the 60s. there is a tremendous line of demarcation between dylan and donovan, and the existent dissimilarities are so obvious as to seem self-evident; dylan's music is substantially void of whimsy, noticeably more rife with political and literary allusions, and his instrumentation is much more deeply rooted in old black music, rock and roll, etc. dylan electrified and personalized his own kind of rock and roll, mercifully brought surrealism to popular lyricism, but never strayed too deeply from his musical influences. donovan's music is exceptionally more trippy, more aesthetically psychedelic and otherworldly (though never forsaking his childish impulses).



the first album that's posted here is "a gift from a flower to a garden," a double album that is obscured by donovan's hit singles that preceded and succeeded this effort. the record is split into two distinct halves, with the first album ("wear your love like heaven") more musically built around electric instrumentation, organs and percussion. the second part of the album is more sparingly composed, relying entirely on acoustic guitars and a few intermittent flutes. the second portion of the double-set is intended to be a children's record of some kind, though it does retain appeal for adults who aren't impossibly jaded as well.



of the two i'm more closely aligned with the first record, but its counterpart doesn't disappoint, necessarily, it's just different from the more trippy, pop-oriented approach of the first.


download donovan's "gift from a flower to a garden"

http://www.zshare.net/download/5316215817afe9e7/

DOLLY MIXTURE..."DEMONSTRATION TAPES"

have you no heart?



this is a quick post primarily for people who love the marine girls, the raincoats and the television personalities. dolly mixture was an all-female group that formed in the 70s during the punk explosion in london, and though they have few sonic resemblances to much of that music (especially the inherent hostility to which english punk was prone), they made lovely, passionate little songs that seem almost manufactured for the sole purpose of elevating your philosophical outlook. they released a few singles here and there, sadly disbanding in 1983 after recording their double album "demonstration tapes." i don't know if it's physically possible to dislike this music, but you're more than welcome to disprove that notion.




download dolly mixture "demonstration tapes"

http://www.mediafire.com/?cj0zjpeytls

WENDY & BONNIE..."GENESIS"

yet another sorely neglected and lost 60s masterpiece that's been circulating pretty widely the past year. lamentably, my favorite song from the album - "i realized you" - is unavailable on youtube for consumption or purposes of preview.



these "lost 60's masterpieces" generally fall into two easily designated categories; either it's complete shit that's being fobbed off as an unappreciated gem, that is far too typical and mired in the shortcomings and studio tricks of its own time to be anything worth hearing, or it is - in the case of wendy and bonnie's "genesis" - a verifiable oddity, a truly wonderful and unique album that was simply misplaced amongst all the other amazing works of the time (usually due to inadequate distribution). this is easily as good as the millenium's "begin" and susan christie's "paint a lady" as far as expectations go; granted, with all the incessant talk of lost 60s relics one is obliged to ask, "is this really as good as the united states of americas' record, 'odessey and oracle,' 'electrical storm' by white noise or 'forever changes?'"



"genesis" doesn't quite hit the pinnacle of any of the aforementioned pieces, but its strength comes from its disarming simplicity and the honesty and beauty that is conveyed by the female vocalists - who, it bears mentioning, are 13 and 17 year old sisters. its stunning that their age doesn't imbue this music with an puerile primitivism or confused enthusiasm (like god's forgotten but blessed children, the shaggs), and that the sonority and richness of their voices betrays their actual age. i'm guessing this is one of the albums that stereolab decoded and tossed into its musical vault. (tangentially, it seems funny to me how more and more these obscure 60s and 70s releases are emerging that reveal so greatly the pattern of stereolab's music and from where it derives, and how oddly stale they begin to seem by comparison...i'm trying not to be such a bitch, so i'll say something nice as penitence...that broadcast is a far, far better revivalist, archivalist, futurist, whatever-the-hell band). putting aside the petty pugilism, this is a damn fine way to spend your evening, and an even greater way to feel invalidated and inadequate (given the age at which these two young females achieved this kind of magic).



download "genesis" by wendy and bonnie

http://www.mediafire.com/?hugg2mmguy2

nods to chasm filler