Friday Night Record Party : Donovan: The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Donovan: The Hurdy Gurdy Man

1968

Epic Records

Format I Own it on: Vinyl

1. The Hurdy Gurdy Man 2. Peregrine 3. The Entertaining of a Shy Girl 4. As I Recall It 5. Get Thy Bearings 6. Hi It's Been a Long Time 7. West Indian Lady 8. Jennifer Juniper 9. The River Song 10. Tangier 11. A Sunny Day 12. The Sun Is a Very Magic Fellow 13. Teas

Welcome back to Old Hippie Theater...Now we return to our program, already in progress...

"Sometimes I miss the 60's...Those were different times...Remember, when we saw the Dead jam for 18 hours at the Winterland, and then those two groovy chicks took us back to their agricultural commune and proceeded to blow our minds? Free love, man...Kids these days have to worry about AIDS and stuff...Not us...At worst, our dicks would turn green and kinda fall off for a couple months...Kids today, they'll never understand..."

"You had to be there, man..."

"We used to not even wear shoes or socks...We'd just walk the streets of San Francisco in our bare feet...Stepping on broken glass, dog shit, rusty nails...You name it...We didn't care...Everything was cool back then..."

"You had to be there, man..."

"And remember that time when we both popped six tabs of "Sunshine Batman" and the UFO came and picked us up and took us to planet Bloinkadoink and we spent ten years wandering the barren wastelands, making love to the tribe of wild women who ruled the dunes?

"You had to be there, man..."

Thus endeth "Old Hippie Theater"...Join us next time for "Days of Orange Sunshine and Rose-Color Sores on our Dicks"...

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I'm very ambivalent about hippies...

Pros: They protested pointless wars, fought for civil rights, shot highly experimental psychedelic music to the the top of the charts, valued innovation in music, waged cultural war on squares and prudes...

Cons: The Grateful Dead, patchouli oil, the hippie twirl, infinite noodling, tie-dye, sandals, every single one of them claims to have gone to Woodstock...

So, on one hand I'm like, "Groovy," yet there's undeniably a part of me going, "I 'ate bleedin' 'ippies."...Yet, I gladly and openly listen to Donovan, who produced some of the hippiest, dippiest music known to man...It's all here: Drones reflecting his recent interest in Eastern religion ("Peregrine"), garden party psychedelia ("Hi It's Been a Long Time"), and dewey-eyed guilelessness (you can easily imagine "The Sun is a Very Magic Fellow" playing on an episode of Sesame Street). I can see how anybody the least bit hardened or cynical would hate the living shit out of this, but I get a kick out of it...

Musically, it's mostly folk rock with heavy Celtic and Eastern overtones...There's a few diversions, such as the harder psychedelic style of the title track or the jazz-pop "As I Recall It" (it was the late 60's after all, eclecticism was practically mandatory at that point)...The title track is really where it's at...I remember hearing it on oldies radio as a kid and was fascinated by how weird it was...It was so peaceful and introspective that it seemed almost ominous and frightening...God, I was probably the only person on planet Earth that found Donovan scary...I wondered forever who did the song and then somewhere in the early 90's I was checking out the latest Butthole Surfers album and there it was! And they didn't even attempt to weird it up...Playing it straightforward is disorienting enough....

Oh yea, there's ongoing confusion about who actually plays on "The Hurdy Gurdy Man," John Paul Jones and John Bonham are definitely there, but is Jimmy Page there too? He's listed on some releases as being the guitarist, but John Paul Jones, says, "No." But Jimmy Page says, "Yes." And Donovan has said both "Yes" and "No"...Still, the speculation is enough to make us ponder an alternate universe where Donovan fronted Led Zeppelin...Singing songs like, "Epistle to (Roy) Harper," "The Crunge is a Very Magic Fellow" and "Squeeze my Lemon Like Heaven"...