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/