Donovan - Sand and Foam - 1967

The following does not fall into any of the normal coulda/woulda/shoulda categories we deal in around here. This a mixtape I made in the mid 80s but has its inspiration from an earlier time. Think of it as more of a memory soundtrack. The story goes like this.

Back in the late 70s when I was just a teenager exploring music and finding out what I liked and didn't a friend of mine had Donovan's Mellow Yellow album. He played it a lot except he would never play the record past the title song which opened the album. He was stuck on that one song. I loved the song too and bought the album myself and continued his practice of only listening to the song Mellow Yellow.

One day I was cleaning my room. As always I had music playing while I cleaned. I put on the Mellow Yellow album and listened to the first track then started the song over and continued with my tasks. I got caught up in what I was doing and let the album play for the first time and I was blown away by what I heard. I stopped cleaning and sat enraptured in front of my speakers. What I heard was not your ordinary psychedelic music but an amalgam of musical styles and textures that was unlike anything I had ever heard before. I couldn't stop listening.

I checked out the Sunshine Superman album and found more of the same although there were a few more "hits" on that album. So fast forward back to the mid 80s I made a mixtape using a 100 minute tape. On one side was a mix of Richie Havens favorites and on the other was this. For every one time I listened to the Richie side I played the Donovan side at least three. This became an album to me and an important one that I would revisit often. When someone mentions Donovan this is what I hear in my head.

01 Writer In The Sun
02 Sand and Foam
03 Three King Fishers
04 The Observation
05 Bleak City Woman
06 Ferris Wheel
07 House of Jansch
08 Bert's Blues
09 Young Girl Blues
10 Museum
11 Guinevere
12 Hamstead Incident
13 Sunny South Kensington
14 Celeste

Reality Notes

This is basically a mashup of two albums (Mellow Yellow and Sunshine Superman) with all of the better known and longer songs removed. What we end up with is a collection of songs that blends many different styles and genres not only from song to song but from within each song. You hear dixie brass alongside sitars alongside mod drumming and electric guitars all underlain with superb Bert Jansch style fingerstyle acoustic guitar. Yet, throughout this diversity is a cohesive whole unified by the songs themselves. World music long before the term was even hinted at.

This collection demonstrates two things. One, not all psychedelia is created equal and two, sometimes mixtapes can have more influence on the psyche than the albums the songs came from. There may be more projects like this in the future.

1967-68 was a strange and wonderful time for music. With the release of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper album the LP suddenly became more than just a distribution vehicle, it became an artistic medium. More and more artists were, with varying success, delving into the studio craft and releasing ambitious projects that would take months to record where the norm was weeks. What I think sets Donovan apart from most is his straight forward simplistic approach to his arrangements in opposition to the densely layered and complex arrangements found on albums from other acts of the time. Donovan's work here transcends the psychedelia tag that gets placed on it.

There is only a small handful of albums that have and still really transport me to somewhere else and this is one of them. Among the others are Michael Hedges Live On The Double Planet (his final album Torched is very close behind), Ravi Shankar's Genius and Unicorn by Tyrannosaurus Rex. I like sparse instrumentation. I prefer string quartets over full orchestras. I prefer "live in the studio" recordings over densely layered productions. There are exceptions of course but mostly I like things simple.

For the cover I wanted to emulate the art nouveau themes of the Mellow Yellow and Sunshine Superman covers. I like how, from further away, the curve of the text around the picture forms an eye.