For those of you with kids, who’s the one performer from your youth that your children cannot bear to listen to?
This mild mannered Scot drove my two children bonkers. His name is Donovan Leitch but in the mid sixties and early seventies he was known merely as Donovan. His song, “The Tinker and the Crab” gave me the idea for this blog’s tagline “Saying Nothing in Particular.”
On the windy beach the sun is shining through with
Weather fair
White horses riding on the seas pasture onto the
Sand
Over the Dunes came a travelling man
Sack on back
Wild flowers in his hand
Old rusty cans, pebbles ‘bedded in the sand stand
And stare
Scratching his beard through the grass he steered
His sandy shoe
Disappearing in the dips pondering and wandering
Along
Nice as you please comes the travelling man
Drinking a bottle of milk in his hand
Speaking to no one in particular but happily
Down where young gulls dance driftwood lying drying
For the fire
Yellow beak and sleek now the gulls are crying
Flying higher
Out from the sea came a little green Crab
Taking the Sun the morning being very drab
Old rusty cans, pebbles ‘bedded in the sand stand
And stare
The Tinker and the Crab
In the days of superstar rock performers with their entourages and groupies, Donovan seemed downright approachable. The shy boy in class who wrote poetry and played the flute. Indeed, he once stopped a concert to kiss a shy, awkward teen who was a friend of mine. It was the thrill of her lifetime.
His songs often didn’t make a lot of sense. They were strings of images which many critics felt contained an undercurrent of weirdness. Ancient civilizations rising from the bottom of the ocean, witches taking over the streets, hurdy gurdy men selling their deadly wares. Perhaps that’s why my children threatened to jump from the back seat of the car to their deaths if I played one of his CDs.
But I loved the other worlds he created on his self-described quest. Especially when he teamed up with another writer of weirdness, Edgar Allan Poe.
Enjoy! Unless, like my children, you find Donovan a bit too weird!