A Gift From a Flower To a Garden

Phonograph Record / The First

("Wear Your Love Like Heaven")

01 Wear Your Love Like Heaven

02 Mad John's Escape

03 Skip-A-Long Sam

04 Sun

05 There Was A Time

06 Oh Gosh

07 Little Boy In Corduroy

08 Under The Greenwood Tree *

09 The Land Of Doesn't Have To Be

10 Someone Singing

Phonograph Record / The Second

("For Little Ones")

01 Song Of The Naturalist's Wife

02 The Enchanted Gypsy

03 Voyage Of The Golden Screen

04 Isle Of Islay

05 The Mandolin Man And His Secret

06 Lay Of The Last Tinker

07 The Tinker And The Crab

08 Widow With Shawl (A Portrait)

09 The Lullaby Of Spring

10 The Magpie

11 Starfish On The Toast

12 Epistle To Derroll

All songs written by Donovan, except * where he's written the music to the words of William Shakespeare.

Reportedly pop music's first deluxe boxed set, the double album "A Gift From A Flower To A Garden" was released by Epic in the US in early December, 1967 in both stereo and mono. Epic also released the two LPs separately, as "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" and "For Little Ones" – once again, in both stereo and mono. The boxed sets (which charted far better) came with color inserts pasted to the insides of the box, and an "art portfolio" with 12 pages of lyrics from the second of the two albums, printed on textured, colored paper and illustrated (the lyrics for the first album were printed, in small type, on the left hand box insert). The infrared photos needed to be specially printed with six (or perhaps seven) color separations. The original US pressings also came with textured, grey inner sleeves. Surprisingly, Pye Records in the UK also released "Gift" (though not the two separate albums), with much the same packaging and also in both mono and stereo. Interestingly, in the accompanying liner notes Donovan calls (several times!) for "every youth to stop the use of all drugs" (although he later wrote that he wasn't talking about marijuana or mushrooms - so presumably he didn't mean aspirin or Pepto-Bismol either). Needless to say, it didn't work. In the States, "Gift" was in print on vinyl for years (at least into the 1980's), and the boxes can be found covered in either blue and black paper, as well as white or gold lettering on the spine. Epic must have finally run out of old stock of the boxes at some point, because the final issues on vinyl were packaged as a standard gatefold LP.

The first record consists of songs where Donovan is backed up by a band, and kicks off with "Wear Your Love Like Heaven," which was the single from the album (backed with "Oh Gosh," although some US promo 45s paired it with The Hollies' "Dear Eloise"). The second album is often just Donovan and his guitar. Inspired by the birth of his son (who can be heard crying at the beginning of the second LP), Donovan has described this as "an acoustic album of nature songs for children," although none of them are really children's songs, such as we'll hear a couple of years later on "HMS Donovan." Again, I can't say there's a bad song on the entire double album, though I prefer the second LP, which is not only relaxing and musically more coherent, but offers a unique showcase for Donovan's sublime guitarwork. It's notable that, at a time when everyone else's music was getting louder and harder, Donovan was willfully going in the opposite direction.

"A Gift From A Flower To A Garden" has been issued a number of times on CD, in both stereo and mono. Let's take a look them one at a time.

1. Mono

This is a better mix than the stereo and the one that Donovan himself reportedly prefers. It's been issued twice on CD – once by BGO in 1993 and again by The state51 Conspiracy Ltd. in 2021. The former is a needle drop, and they didn't even do that very well. The more recent, 2 CD edition, in spite of the inferior packaging (it seems that every copy comes with the CDs pre-scuffed), purports to be from the original mono master tape and is far superior in sound quality to the BGO CD (it's still not quite as good as the original mono LP, however, which suggests that someone just couldn't resist putting a touch of noise reduction on it). Unfortunately, even though this came out fairly recently, it seems to be unavailable almost everywhere. The record company itself links to a page which purports to have it in stock.

2. Stereo

The 1993 mono BGO CD was quickly deleted and replaced by a stereo version, but that, too, seems to be a vinyl rip. In 1994, Epic / Sony released "Gift" on CD in Japan, but this has had noise reduction applied to it and there's a defect on "Song Of The Naturalist's Wife." In 2000, Collector's Choice issued the first CD of the album in the States - however, only sides 1-3 are in stereo, while side 4 is entirely in mono (so much for quality control). In 2008, EMI put out a stereo CD of the album (EMI 50999 2 6788 9 2) which finally sounds okay – but, for what they claim are "contractual reasons," they've completely replaced the original artwork. The "Breezes of Patchouli" compilation, from 2013, had only to copy the earlier EMI CD, but they failed at that, since the first 38 seconds of the final song, "Epistle To Derroll," are in mono (I guess EMI doesn't know what quality control means, either). In short, that leaves us with only one choice - the 2008 EMI CD, and, as I said, that one's missing the iconic cover art.

Donovan In Concert

01 Intro

02 Isle Of Islay

03 Young Girl Blues

04 There Is A Mountain

05 Poor Cow

06 Celeste

07 The Fat Angel

08 Guinevere

09 Widow With Shawl (A Portrait)

10 Preachin' Love

11 Lullaby Of Spring

12 Writer In The Sun

13 Pebble And The Man (Happiness Runs)

14 Rules And Regulations

15 Mellow Yellow

Donovan In Concert - The Complete 1967 Anaheim Show

Disc 1

01 Intro

02 Isle Of Islay

03 Young Girl Blues

04 There Is A Mountain

05 Poor Cow

06 Sunny Goodge Street

07 Celeste

08 The Fat Angel

09 Guinevere

10 Widow With Shawl (A Portrait)

11 Epistle To Derroll

12 Preachin' Love

Disc 2

01 The Lullaby Of Spring

02 Sand And Foam

03 Hampstead Incident

04 Writer In The Sun

05 To Try For The Sun

06 Someone Singing

07 Pebble And The Man (Happiness Runs)

08 The Tinker And The Crab

09 Rules And Regulations

10 Mellow Yellow

11 Catch The Wind (fragment)

All songs written by Donovan.

"Donovan In Concert" was recorded on November 17th, 1967 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. The accompanying band is generally laid-back – this is not a "rock" concert, and Donovan even brings on a string quartet at one point. An 14-song album of highlights of the concert was released in June, 1968, while all 22 songs (minus part of "Catch The Wind," which was not recorded) were released on CD in 2006 (interestingly, the MC's announcement before the show indicates that Epic had originally planned to issue "Donovan In Concert" as a double album).

The original album was issued in the UK in both stereo and mono (though the mono sounds like a fold-down, to me). It was only issued in the US in stereo, although a mono version was issued as a promo. The stereo version was also released on CD by BGO in 1990, and in 1994 by Epic in Japan.

You can safely ignore all of these, because the aforementioned "Donovan In Concert - The Complete 1967 Anaheim Show" issued on CD by EMI in 2006 is absolutely the one to get – not only being far more complete, but a better sounding mix. This version was re-issued by The state51 Conspiracy in 2022 - though, like their mono version of "A Gift From a Flower To A Garden," seems to only be available directly from the record company. Four of the previously unreleased songs, "Epistle To Derroll," "To Try For The Sun," "Someone's Singing" and "The Tinker And The Crab" appear on the "Try For The Sun" boxed set. There's also a 2 LP colored vinyl version of the complete concert, which looks like a bootleg.

As for the performance itself, it's really very good, capturing Donovan at what was, perhaps, the height of his musical powers. Keep in mind that, when the concert was recorded, "A Gift From A Flower To A Garden" had not yet been released so the audience would have been hearing a half dozen songs they were unfamiliar with. In addition to this, "Poor Cow" wouldn't be available until February, 1968 (as the b-side to "Jennifer Juniper") "Happiness Runs" (here known as "Pebble And The Man") wouldn't be released until "Barabajagal" in August, 1969, and "Rules And Regulations" would never be released at all on another album.

Donovan performs with just as much commitment as he does on his studio recordings, occasionally even improving on the original arrangements (I prefer these versions of "Young Girl Blues," "Preachin' Love" (with sax and drum solos!) and "Sunny Goodge Street," for instance). That, and the general quality of the performance, raises "Donovan In Concert" above your standard "document of an event" type of live album and truly makes it a must-own part of his canon.