In came the man for the watering can

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

16/06/68 : A Gift From A Flower To A Garden - Donovan

I'm aware of Donovan but believe I find his music to be a bit fey, without being entirely sure that's actually the case - this will be a perfect opportunity for him to cement his position in my opinion.

Hmmm - well some of it's fey, some of it's got a bit more too it and some of it doesn't even have a hint of enough of a backbone to qualify as fey.  It's all most peculiar because it's a double album which is really two albums.  The first one is hippy-dippy flower-power stuff which is OK, I guess and very much of its time - but fine if you like that sort of thing I guess (although "Mad John's Escape" is somewhat bizarre).  The second one is allegedly kid's songs but there's just nothing to them - I struggle to imagine too many kids appreciating them, certainly not these days.  All in all, it's a very odd album/pair of albums - one half is dated now, and the other half must have been dated back then.  There was one lyric that caught my attention though - "On a windy Saturday, St. Alban's market day" - and it still is!

We're at #13 in the charts this week on his seventh week of a fourteen week run - this was as high as it got and it also spent its last three weeks at #40, which is an impressive effort.  The top five this week were Otis, Andy Scott, TSOM and Bob, the highest new entry was Chicken Shack (#37) and there were no new women in the charts.

Wikipedia has way more than I was expecting on the album, but if you read it, there's really very little there.  Interestingly, it claims that it was one of first box sets in pop music - I think the difference between a box set and a double album is that the separate discs were also released separately.  Apparently, in the liner notes, he denounces drugs, which must have been a surprise to some of his fans, but he told them to try meditation instead (I suspect he probably didn't have 100% take-up for that suggestion).  The album was well received critically ("a prime artifact of the flower-power era that produced it") and surprisingly well received commercially - it spent 22 weeks in the US charts, peaking at #19.  Wikipedia Donovan rabbit-hole fact - one of his daughters is married to Shaun Ryder.

"Customers also listened to" Country Joe and The Fish, Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane and Fairport Convention - I'm sure they were all big fans of meditation as well.  I like bits of this album more than I was expecting but even if you consider it as two separate albums, it's still a very odd kettle of fish - however, I will approach his next album with slightly less trepidation, so I guess it's done at least part of its job.

09/06/68 - Much better than I was expecting
23/06/68 - Certainly, errr, something