Donovan — “The Land of Doesn’t Have to Be”: Brace for the Obscure (60s rock)! — July 30, 2023

THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD

908) Donovan — “The Land of Doesn’t Have to Be”

This “brilliant” (Diego Olivas, https://peanutbutterpope.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/special-review-26-a-gift-from-a-flower-to-a-garden-donovan/), “dreamy and whimsical” (Lorne Murdoch, Donovan: Breezes of Patchouli: His Studio Recordings: 1966-1969) song comes from “Donovan’s 1967 hippie epic ‘A Gift From a Flower to a Garden’. . . . [which finds him] writing and singing about love, the sun, making wishes, tinkers, hermits, starfishes and more, and it’s pretty damn great.” (Peanut Butter Pope, https://peanutbutterpope.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/special-review-26-a-gift-from-a-flower-to-a-garden-donovan/) What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, the sun, making wishes, tinkers, hermits, and starfishes?!

Perhaps because GFFTG yielded only one minor hit in the U.S. (“Wear Your Love Like Heaven” reaching #23) and none in the UK, the album has been unfairly overlooked.

Bruce Eder writes of the album that:

Rock music’s first two-LP box set, A Gift from a Flower to a Garden overcomes its original shortcomings and stands out as a prime artifact of the flower-power era that produced it. The music still seems a bit fey, and overall more spacey than the average Moody Blues album of this era, but the sheer range of subjects and influences make this a surprisingly rewarding work. Essentially two albums recorded simultaneously in the summer of 1967, the electric tracks include Jack Bruce among the session players. The acoustic tracks represent an attempt by Donovan to get back to his old sound and depart from the heavily electric singles (“Sunshine Superman,” etc.) and albums he’d been doing — it is folkier and bluesier (in an English folk sense) than much of his recent work.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-gift-from-a-flower-to-a-garden-mw0000691015

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