Customer Reviews

Essential Donovan

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While it is incredibly good news that Donovan--who has always been under rated--is being included in the "Essential" series, the compilation itself is a disappointment. All of the tracks included here, and one other as well, can be found on the expanded version of Donovan's Greatest Hits released last year. The album notes and the sound quality on "Greatest Hits" are also superior. Unless you are a Donovan completist (and I admit that I am), I would strongly suggest "Greatest Hits" instead of "The Essential."

After checking out Epic/Legacy's latest repackaging of Donovan's Sixties material, one has to wonder if they had been smoking those banana skins referenced in "Mellow Yellow." Yes, this single-disc collection includes all twelve of Donovan's Top 40 hits [plus "Colours" (No. 61) and "Season of the Witch" (not released as a single)], but so does 1999's expanded GREATEST HITS, which also included 1970's "Riki Tiki Tavi" (No. 55).

So if you're looking for a top notch single-disc collection, I'd recommend GREATEST HITS. [I first bought it on vinyl when it was originally released in 1969.] If that isn't enough to satisfy your appetitie for the music of this folkie-turned-hippie flower child, 1992's 45-track TROUBADOUR should satisfy even the most die-hard fan.

Bottom line? This is a terrific collection, but there's nothing new here to justify its release.

During the "Sixties," I was not particularly a fan of Donovan. I thought he was a bit soft. But about three months ago, I heard him interviewed on the NPR program "Fresh Air." I was impressed by how intelligent and articulate he is, and the excertps from his songs stuck me as wonderfully fresh and engaging. So I bought "The Essential Donovan" and have been playing it continually, enjoying it more and more.

For Donovan to have moved from a ballad like "Colours" to "Sunshine Superman," with its surrealistic poetry and multi-colored orchestration, in only a few months, is a real artistic advance. At that time, 1966, Donovan was twenty, and he was consistently writing better songs -- with more imaginative lyrics and more sophisticated rhythms -- that did either The Beatles or Bob Dylan at the same age.

I've since explored more Donovan albums. I am increasingly impressed by the abundance of his imagination, and I find it dismaying that he is so little remembered, especially considering that he is one of the truly emblematic figures of the age and was, at the time, almost as famous as The Beatles.

I call this the best of Donovan anthologies because the versions of "Catch the Wind" and "Colours" are the clean and simple ones, without backup strings and vocals; because the version of "Sunshine Superman" is the long one; and, most importantly, because the songs are presented in chronological sequence.

The insert notes about original release dates and popular chart success are a welcome addition.

I purchased this CD to replace my vinyl copy of "Donovan"s Greatest Hits" that was originally released back in 1969. That collection had a couple of major flaws. First, there were absolutely no liner notes offered. More importantly, "Catch The Wind" and "Colours" were re-recordings and not the original hits that appeared in the U.S. on Nashville's Hickory Records.
While under no circumstances would I ever consider Donovan to be a five star performer, this recently released CD gives me just what I am looking for. All 14 tracks are indeed the original recordings and the disc also includes three tunes not included on the original Epic "Greatest Hits" package. They are "To Susan On The West Coast Waiting", the Top Ten hit "Atlantis" and finally a song I had not heard in years (somehow I survived the trauma) "Goo Goo Barabajagal" which Donovan recorded with the Jeff Beck Group. Donovan proved to be equally popular on both sides of the Atlantic, achieving approximately the same chart success is Britain as he did here in the States. He had a considerable amount of success on the Billboard Hot 100 Album charts as well. In the early 1970's Donovan walked away from it all. According to the liner notes "Six years of fame was enough. I had done everything. It was extraordinary; you couldn't get any more famous and any more successful." In the early 1990's, my wife and I saw Donovan perform in a local park about a mile from our home. It was just him, his guitar and a microphone. He clearly was enjoying himself and the crowd loved him.
One final note--the remastering job on this CD is first rate. Combine that with the aforementioned liner notes and a great price and you have pretty good bang for your buck.

Forget all the other reviews here.This CD is the FIRST to include the TRUE STEREO versions of almost all of Donovan's hits.If you own a home STEREO and not a home mono or if your car has a STEREO and not a mono,BUY THIS CD!I REPEAT!!!!!! BUY THIS CD!!!!!

I guess this would be essential if you didn't have the "Greatest Hits" already, otherwise it's about the same thing. Of course what's here is all great folk-rock. Everything I know of his is here, including "Mellow Yellow", "Wear Your Love Like Heaven", "Hurdy Gurdy Man", "Jennifer Juniper", and the excellent "Colours". The only difference between this and "Greatest Hits", is just a song or two. Maybe the cheaper one would be the better collection?

I do have this disc and I play it quite a bit, because of the excellent job Sony did remastering it. However since they'd already gone and remastered the "Greatest Hits" that came out on Epic all those years ago, plus added extra songs, there is really no reason to buy this disc, as good as it is, because the set list, though ordered differently (this disc has the songs ordered by when they were originally recorded) is exactly the same and you get one more song, the great "Riki, Tiki, Tavi" on the GH version. One does wonder, just how many ways can they repackage this man's stuff. Are the same people buying it over and over? However, the songs are outstanding, the recording is too, so five stars, even though it was redundant as soon as Sony put it out.

I bought this because it said "Remastered" on it. NOT! Well, maybe it was remastered from one of the old four-track or eight-track car stereo cartridges we used to play his music from when it first came out. Surprised that my fiftysomething ears could actually hear the distortion, I loaded "Atlantis" into my WAV editor (Audition) so I could map the waveform. The second portion of "Atlantis" has more clipping than a late-model Tom Waits album. At least I can picture Waits having a reason for introducing this much distortion into his songs. The only thing I can think of for Donovan is that it's a way subtile of dropping hints about the nature of the claims on the album cover about this CD being remastered.

What a wonderful collection. I spent a few minutes bouncing around trying to find out if I'd be better off with this or the greatest hits package, and I finally gave up and picked this instead. Sound is crisp, quality is pure Mr. Leitch. Everything sounds better than I remembered, and I finally forgave myself to getting rid of the vinyl during some move over the years. There is a wonderful cd I found in the local department store 3.99 cd bin that is a greatest hits live--I can't figure out if it's a legitimate release or not, but it's the only Donovan collection that beats this one.

and do not have any of Donovan on CD, this is a good choice. I always liked his folky early songs better than the later psychedelic tunes, and this disc has more of the latter and only two of the former. I wish "Universal Soldier" had been included after "Catch the Wind" and "Colours" at a minimum. However, if your taste runs to the acid/hippy phase of Donovan's brief career near the top of the charts, tracks three through 14 will satisfy your longing. Some earlier reviewers think the remastering here was not entirely successful compared to his "Greatest Hits" LP transfer of some years back. I have not heard that, so I have no comment except that one prior critic clearly says he likes this new disc better. Donovan proved to be Dylan light, and his choice to progress from folk-protest to mellow, spiritual, hallucinogenic songs instead of to rock and roll, Dylan's own choice, put him in a narrow box by the end of the sixties. But he is hard to dislike, and I enjoy "Catch the Wind" and "Colours" no matter how many times I hear them, so for nostalgia's sake, at least, I am pleased to own this.