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The Real Donovan (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The Real Donovan
  • Artist name: Donovan
  • Year: 1966
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Hickory Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “GESSNER” written on the LP, indicating that my father owned it
  • Buy it on Amazon: $24.95

The Real Donovan

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never heard this record before and don’t think I know any of Donovan’s music, but I have heard that he may have been more than a little bit inspired by Bob Dylan.

What I expected

Folk and folk rock.

What it was actually like

There was not a single moment on this record that didn’t sound like it was an imitation of Bob Dylan’s music from the same era. Donovan did not have quite the same voice as Dylan had, but it sounded about as close as he could get it without falling over himself.

And do you know how Dylan would sometimes sing a verse and then blow out a long chord on the harmonica? I don’t know that I had ever heard anyone else doing that until Donovan. Maybe Donovan did it first, though?

At any rate, I would not say that it’s fair to discount Donovan and his music. Even if he were literally playing covers of Dylan songs, he would still have had talent and he would still have been making music of some quality. He just was not the songwriter that Dylan was, and lots of artists and groups channel Dylan – because he’s such a great canvas.

The most interesting song on the record was Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness), which had a guitar riff that sounded pretty blues-influenced, and also sounded like it anticipated Led Zeppelin, and eventually heavy metal.

The War Drags On, starting with its opening line “Let me tell you the story of a…,” struck me as highly cynical, though he was able to get a pretty nice wah wah sound out of his acoustic guitar.

Having listened, I can completely understand why Donovan wasn’t played on classic rock radio, even though he was objectively talented and his songs were good, and why my parents never played him in the car: a lot of this music does have pop sensibilities, but not in the way that doo wop or Motown did, and on the other hand, whether fair or not, it was quite easy to discard him as a knockoff.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

Evening of the Magician by Randy Burns (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Evening of the Magician
  • Artist name: Randy Burns
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: ESP-Disk
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $120.00

Evening of the Magician by Randy Burns

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never listened to this record before, but it will be the fourth by Randy Burns that I’ve reviewed. The previous three were:

What I expected

Folk rock.

What it was actually like

This was, like his other records, folk rock.

Some of the songs, like Evening Magician, were pretty simple and stripped down, with not a lot of instrumentation.

Others had a more layered and complex sound. Ron’s Song was more upbeat than the rest, and had more of a country rock sound, with a second vocal part, and Rainy Day Children also had a more intricate sound, with harmonica.

Echoes of Mary’s Song used a flute very extensively, but it added very little. My flute test, from my review of Loggins and Messina (1972) goes like this:

I’m maybe slightly more forgiving of flute being used in rock music [than the saxophone], if only because it’s so uncommon, but there’s a simple standard that I would apply: are you Jethro Tull? Are you better than Jethro Tull, or engaged in a serious attempt to do something that Jethro Tull hasn’t done or can’t do? If you answer no to all of those questions, then you probably should leave the flute out of your rock song.

Springtime Song also had the flute, but it was not as distracting[1].

Much of this record was totally fine, but a bit mumbly, and it was not always easy to follow what Burns was singing, so I thought it was apt that he included this on the back of the album:

(ESPERANTO) Mendu tiun diskon ĉe via loka diskvendejo aǔ rekte de ESP. Eksterlanda prezo: $4.98. Pagu per internacia poŝtmandato.

I could totally see him as an Esperanto nerd.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References

References
↑1 Also, I did eventually review Aqualung (1971).

Leftover Wine by Melanie (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Leftover Wine
  • Artist name: Melanie
  • Year: 1970
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Buddah Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: RMP / ΤΕΦ is written on the album sleeve[1]
  • Buy it on Amazon: $39.97

Leftover Wine by Melanie

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this record, but I’ve previously reviewed two others by Melanie:

What I expected

The album cover says, “Recorded live at Margie’s birthday party.” I don’t know who Margie was (or is), but I guess that means it will be Melanie doing folk rock in concert.

What it was actually like

Based on the song Happy Birthday, it seems that Margie’s name is pronounced with a hard G, which is clearly psychopathic. Also, I hope Margie was not upset with this performance, since most of the songs seemed pretty serious for a birthday party: the style was quite spare, with just guitar and voice.

Anyway, Melanie’s voice still reminded me of Joanna Newsom’s, but at other times it really soared, like in The Saddest Thing and the title track Leftover Wine. I also did not know until listening to Leftover Wine that Melanie’s speaking voice had a rather strong Queens accent!

When reviewing Affectionately Melanie I wrote:

Beautiful People is the song that Melanie got famous for performing at Woodstock, and I thought it was fine, but I’m not such a fan of it.

It was still fine, as was Uptown Down, also from that record.

Her line in Animal Crackers about eating the animal crackers so that children would not starve in Europe was so fascinating to me because, when I was growing up, it was the children in Africa who could be protected from starvation only if I finished my meal, and I knew it had been the children in either China or India, or both, at other times (Melanie was born in 1947, so when she was growing up, starvation in Europe was still a very real threat).

Animal Crackers also had a cute Alice’s Restaurant shoutout, and I took note because I had already noted that she and Arlo Guthrie had both performed at Woodstock.

I Don’t Eat Animals was the most obnoxious song. Even 50 years ago (and even 100 years ago), those people had that reputation.

The song Psychotherapy was definitely the weirdest song on the record by far, and one of the weirder songs out of the 306 records that I’ve reviewed to date. It was an ode to Freud, but sung to the melody of Battle Hymn of the Republic (which itself is sung to the melody of John Brown’s Body), some of the creepiest and most disturbing music ever to become popular, and it immediately brought me back to that morning in March 2019 when I visited the largest electronics store in the world, Yodobashi in Akihabara, Tokyo, and realized that
its theme song was sung to the very same melody (in that context, I described it as “both disorienting and highly charming”).

The final song Peace Will Come (According to Plan) was a studio recording with vocal effects, percussion and a bit of organ, and was the most out of place with the whole rest of the record.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References

References
↑1 ΤΕΦ was my father’s college fraternity (his copy of Beggars Banquet is also marked with the ΤΕΦ symbol) and “RMP” means that the album belonged to Richard Pearlstein.

Patterns Of Reality by Andy Robinson (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Patterns Of Reality
  • Artist name: Andy Robinson
  • Year: 1968
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Philips
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Distinguishing characteristics: “Brenner” written on lower right of album cover, indicating that my mother owned it
  • Buy the CD on Amazon: $27.42

Patterns Of Reality by Andy Robinson

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I am not familiar at all with Andy Robinson or with this record.

What I expected

Folk rock.

What it was actually like

One of the things that I sometimes dislike about some folk and folk rock music is that it can be a real drag to listen to it, partly because of its lyrical self-importance and also partly because music is supposed to be fun, and a lot of times it just isn’t (that’s often what I mean when I describe something as slow and boring). Fortunately, this record wasn’t like that for the most part, with just a couple of exceptions: Time For Decision, which might have been more boring than the rest, but still not bad, and the title track Patterns Of Reality, which had the most sad violin and piano.

Mostly, though, this was lively and interesting folk rock, often with an organ, that did not run from extensive percussion when necessary, and occasionally used an echo effect on the vocals that reminded me of Pearls Before Swine. This is the sort of music that I might have thought my father would have preferred; I was at least a little bit impressed that my mother owned it[1].

Much of the record walked a line between sounding partly earnest and even naive in that early to mid 1960s way (like The Monkees, a little), and also partly psychedelic and transgressive in that late 1960s way. To Tell You The Truth was a good example of both in one song, but a lot of songs sounded like that.

I was also fond of the organ in The Exhibition and Absolutely The End, that helped to put a psychedelic twist on the folk sound. Are You Sleeping? also had an extensive organ (or keyboard) solo.

Ballad Of A Summer Girl was the only song that sounded a little bit country, with a subtle country-sounding rhythm guitar, but I thought it was great.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

References

References
↑1 Technically, “Brenner” on the album might have meant that her younger sister, or even her younger brother, owned it, but I assume it was hers. I have reviewed one record that belonged to my aunt, and it had “Annie” written on James Taylor’s head.

Second Album by Roy Buchanan (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Second Album
  • Artist name: Roy Buchanan
  • Year: 1973
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Polydor
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $79.99

Second Album by Roy Buchanan

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never heard this record before, but I listened to Roy Buchanan (1972) last fall and loved it.

What I expected

More electric blues and psychedelic rock with very good guitar.

What it was actually like

Like the previous Roy Buchanan record, this one was an outstanding display of electric blues guitar mastery, with some piano backing and vocals, and I was consistently amazed that he could pull so many different kinds of sounds out of his guitar.

The guitar repeatedly sang like a real person singing, and on multiple songs, such as Filthy Teddy, it sounded like a saxophone or a trumpet.

Five String Blues was much slower than I preferred, and its vocal part was totally unnecessary, but I was still awed at what he could do, and even its piano solo was wild.

Like John’s Blues on the previous record, Treat Her Right on this one was much more of a rock song, and I thought it was great, though not exactly the most consistent with the rest of the record. My favorite, though, was Tribute To Elmore James, which may have been exactly why the electric blues was invented in the first place.

She Once Lived Here was more of a country song, and slower, but still great.

The only song that I did not really enjoy was Thank You Lord, which was kind of a waste of a track, with very little to it and no searing, singing guitar like the others had.

Grade

5/5: love it