Donovan is a Bob Dylan wannabee....discuss

[HEyHEY]

I like Donovan either way so...

[Kahuna]

1. Oh Hell no! Donovan can actually sing...

Don't even try it. :P

[HEyHEY]

3. yeah but Dylan has a nice voice check out Nashville Skyline

He just chose not to sing

[Fenris]

2. Yeah, but the sound is different

He may have been a bit of a brown-noser, but Donovan's sound was unique.

[ronzo]

4. Hey, I wanna be Dylan in the early 1960s.

Who doesn't?

[regnaD kciN]

24. Donovan started out as a 60s folksinger...

...like only about several million others. The sound was pretty much similar to Dylan: guitar, harmonica, songs about social consciousness. Criticizing Donovan for sounding too much like Dylan is like criticizing virtually every "British invasion"-era band for sounding like the Beatles, or most 50s rock'n'rollers for sounding like Elvis -- it was the accepted style of the time. Donovan just did a better job at it than most others.

Of course, as the folk era drew to a close, paths diverged. Dylan turned electric, then toward country-rock. Donovan moved in the direction of the "flower child" ethos of hippiedom and Eastern spirituality. By the time Dylan was releasing John Wesley Harding and Donovan was putting out A Gift from a Flower to a Garden, there was virtually no commonality between the two in terms of musical style.

[JackSwift]

5. Bob Dylan is a Woody Guthrie wannabe.

Disgust.

[HEyHEY]

7. oooooooo

A new fighter has enter the ring...the referee doesn't see him!

[JackSwift]

8. Ewwww! Hah duz it feel!

Tu B on yer phone!
With know durecshun home
A puzitshun prone
Dog wit a bone!


Picked up Slow Train Coming and Freewheeling on SACD the other night. Ah, the memories!

[HEyHEY]

9. vinyl?

[JackSwift]

10. Its the new digital format

or rather, one of two. Sony and Philips developed SACD and everyone else developed DVD-Audio. Both are quite nice when compared to vinyl or CD. The new formats (with a THX system) are what CDs were originall promised to be. Very musical.

[Red_Storm]

26. he was for a minute...............

then he evolved...........done pretty good since.......

[NaMeaHou]

6. Nah

Donovan talked and sang about personal things while that other guy sang about bigger, societal issues.

[Kenneth ken]

13. Bah!

It doesn't get bigger or more societal than Atlantis!

[Kat 333]

19. Or ... The Intergalactic Laxative

I was impressed like everyone when man began to fly
out of earthly regions to planets in the sky
with total media coverage we watched the heroes land
as ceremoniously they disturbed the cosmic sand

I awe with admiration we listened to the talk
such pride felt they, such joy to be upon the moon to walk
my romantic vision shattered when it was explained to me
spacemen wear old diapers in which they shit and pee

[Swede]

11. Apples and oranges.

I like both.

[pink_poodle]

12. Nope. Other way around. Donovan is not only way cuter...........

but he could really sing good too. None of that nasal, whiney crap that Dylan did!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

14. Actually Donovan and Dylan came on the scene at nearly the same

time. Dylan didn't quite garner the admiration then that he has today. Donovan wrote some GREAT stuff and used a lot more sophisticated arpeggios and chord changes than Dylan did back then. Listen to the arpeggios in the breaks on WEAR YOUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN. To this day, that is STILL one of me favorite songs..it is in the disc changer in the car at least once a week.

[Susang]

21. Did you read the book "Positively 4th Street"?

There's lots of stuff in there about Dylan and Donovan. Dylan was quite rude to Donovan and was somewhat jealous of his looks. Donovan thought Dylan was the greatest and only wanted to hang out with him when he was in England. It was kind of sad really, Dylan treated almost everybody he came into contact with rather poorly.

[mitchum]

15. No doubt about it...

but Donovan was a better guitarplayer

[JVS]

16. Bob Dylan sings in a garbled manner because he's hiding something

a Minnesotan accent.

[HEyHEY]

17. I'm tellin ya he can sing

But it has a lot of "dontcha knows" in it..explains that

[Digger]

22. Back in days of yore

when Dylan first entered the picture (1961-62) there were some who would make fun of his voice. These were the ones who had no clue to what he was doing. Dylan was a bard, he was the real deal, his writing was pure genius and his funky voice was the delivery system. Listening to Dylan was the complete experience. These were magical times. Anyone who was alive back then, and I mean ALIVE not just living, will know what I mean.

[David Zephyr]

18. I Like Donovan, But Love Dylan.

There's a wonderful live track of Donovan doing The Hurdy Gurdy Man and he coyly asks the audience, "Anyone want to hear the long, lost verse that George Harrison wrote" for the Hurdy Gurdy Man?

And Donovan plays it and then impishly confesses "...but I never recorded it".

Hail Atlantis!

[Dr Fate]

20. Donovan's more popular Psychedelic offerings were nothing like Dylan

Like "Sunshine Superman" "The Trip" "Mountain Song" or "Hurdy Gurdy Man" or "Season of the Witch"

Sure, mabey his first couple of folk records were in the Dylan vien, but he became his own artist...

[NightTrain]

23. Donovan was a marketer

When his Woody Guthrie wannabe persona failed to sell millions of records, Donovan turned to aping Dylan. That brought the young Scotsman some initial success, but after a couple of years the record-buying public grew weary of his second-rate attempts at copying Dylan's genius. At which point, Donovan became a flower child and turned to psychedelia, man.

Suffice it to say, I was quite glad when Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell included Donovan's "greatest hits" LP in their 1991 book, THE WORST ROCK AND ROLL RECORDS OF ALL TIME.

"First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." Just fucking brilliant, Donovan! :puke:

[Screaming Lord Byron]

25. His brother still runs a carpet shop in Glasgow, I believe.

His psychedelic stuff is marvellous, Belle and Sebastian 30 years earlier.

[johnnie]

27. Don't look back

The scene with Dylan and Donovan is classic.
I know this isn't a big deal, but to me it was. My friend works for a security company here in Cleveland, and he found out he was doing a Dylan show at Kent State last Nov. He got me on the staff and I had to be the "guard" at the entrance of the stage. I'm not one to get star struck, but Bob walked past me and to be within 3 feet of him kind of blew my mind. When he got off the stage he looked over at me and winced..LOL. I thought...at least I got in the mind of Bob. Cheap thrill, but it was Bob Dylan for God's sake.