Donovan

Donovan is a bit of a surprise highlight, playing songs that seem perfectly suited to our time still, strong anti war songs and feel good hippy tunes to warble along to in the hot summer sun.

He’s all smiles and looks well as he opens with ‘Catch The wind’ and that distinct style of singing isn’t as bad live as I had anticipated in fact it makes it easy to sing along to. ‘Colours’ has us all singing along and not even hamming it up too much. Well done fellow audience members.

Some things never change do they? ‘Universal Soldier’ could have been written this morning, and despite being written by Canadian singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, Donovan has made it his own for over forty years. This leads to us trying to remember if Donovan played the great Woodstock festival but I’m fairly sure he didn’t.

The hippy ideal is then embellished with Donovan’s ‘The Little White Road’ a romantic number with a lovely feel to it and lyrics about settling down after a life of wandering. The music really suits the heat and makes the day more bearable, anything heavier and the oppressive temperatures would have surely had us seek other acts, but you can’t beat summer folk on a sunny day it seems.

‘Josie’ has a sun drenched feel to it and is the first of the songs with girls names that girls with those names really hate, ‘Jennifer Juniper’ closely follows it with ‘Goldwatch Blues’ crammed between them.

But now the hits come thick and fast, ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ and ‘Lalena’ and then ‘Sunshine Superman’ and somehow this old guy on stage is making a great sound that’s actually rather pleasant and magical. Donovan’s clearly reading my mind and dedicates ‘Season of the Witch’ to all the witches in the audience. Before concluding with ‘Mellow Yellow’ another song any girls called Saffron probably hate too.

That’s it I’ve now seen the English Bob Dylan, a very decent performer who has more tunes that I know than I thought. Neither he nor his music sounds as dusty as the air which is making my eyes water!

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