Sunday morning music

 

I've found that a lot of young people today have never heard of, or listened to the music of, many of the great names of the early days of pop and rock music.  They don't even seem curious about it.  I suppose it's for them like it was for me in my youth, being told about the music of the 1920's and 1930's - it was meaningless to me, something I didn't enjoy much.  (I've since learned to listen more attentively to the music of earlier generations, but as a teenager one doesn't bother about that - one's too wrapped up in one's own certainties.)

Be that as it may, I was still surprised to come across a couple who've never heard of the British musician known as Donovan.  He's as iconic a representative of the 1960's as the Beatles, or Simon and Garfunkel, or the Rolling Stones, and was certainly as popular as any of them in Europe (perhaps less so in the USA).  I'd say he's more emblematic of the drug-using, feel-good "hippie generation" and the "turn on, tune in and drop out" movement than any of them (not to mention the influence of Zen Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation, very big as they were in that period).  Still, his music isn't played nearly as much in America as it is in his own country, so I suppose there's some excuse for them never having heard of him.

At any rate, I thought I'd remedy that by putting up half a dozen of his best-known songs.  You'll find many more on YouTube if you look for them.  In no particular order, here we go.

How many of you were having flashbacks to your misspent youth as you heard those songs?  I certainly was . . .

Peter