{"id":40675,"date":"2007-12-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-donovan-concert-live-in-l-a\/"},"modified":"2007-12-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-29T00:00:00","slug":"the-donovan-concert-live-in-l-a","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-donovan-concert-live-in-l-a\/","title":{"rendered":"The Donovan Concert: Live In L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Watching this concert is like being caught in a time warp, or at least an episode of the original <i>Star Trek<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><i>David: <\/i>Scotty, beam me up! I\u2019m caught in the flower-power 60s!<br \/><i>Scotty: <\/i>Captain, we&#8217;ve lost main power. It&#8217;ll be an hour before we can get the transporter back online!<br \/><st1:city><st1:place><i>David<\/i><\/st1:place><\/st1:city><i>:<\/i> That\u2019s about all the Donovan I can take. Help! <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Some artists produce music that is eternal and remains relevant and listenable as the years pass. Donovan does not fit into that category. His classic songs are products of their time and remain artifacts of the era. What seemed creative and interesting 40 years ago is now quaint. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><i>Donovan Concert: Live In <\/i><st1:city><st1:place><i>L.A.<\/i><\/st1:place><\/st1:city><i> <\/i>was recorded <st1:date year=\"2007\" day=\"21\" month=\"1\">January 21, 2007<\/st1:date> at the Kodiak Theatre in <st1:city><st1:place>Hollywood<\/st1:place><\/st1:city>. Proceeds from this DVD of the concert are being donated to the David Lynch Foundation for consciousness-based education and world peace. In short, the foundation establishes stress reduction transcendental meditation programs for inner city youth at risk. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Donovan strums his acoustic guitar throughout the performance and is backed by bass and percussion. Donovan also keeps up a constant patter between songs that ranges from historically interesting to self serving. The self-serving part is especially true when talking about transcendental meditation with the Beatles, in what seems like an attempt to make Donovan seem more relevant and cool than he actually is.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\u201cCatch The Wind,\u201d \u201cColours\u201d and Universal Soldier\u201d are performed well. The lyrics are straightforward, unlike some Donovan material. His themes of love and protest can still strike a receptive chord today. These songs are re-produced just about note for note and word for word live and are pleasant reminders of a bygone era.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But the psychedelic stuff comes off poorly. A lack of instrumental backups hurts, but the worst part is the lyrical content; what sounded profound in the 60s seems awfully quaint and makes little sense today. As such, formerly decent songs like \u201cJennifer Juniper,\u201d \u201cHurdy Gurdy Man\u201d and \u201cSunshine Superman\u201d are poorly done and just don\u2019t matter anymore. The only redeeming song from this part of the concert is a folkish rendition of \u201cSeason Of The Witch.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">For the encore (yes, there is one), Donovan brings out Mike Love of the Beach Boys to sing \u201cMellow Yellow\u201d with him. Love looks good but apparently doesn\u2019t know the words \u2026and so he stands there for several minutes looking embarrassed and a little foolish. As would anyone in line at Best Buy with this DVD in hand, I might add.<\/p>\n<p>    <i>Scotty: <\/i>Captain Dave, the transporter is fixed. Ready to beam you back to the present. <br \/><i>David:<\/i> Roger, Scotty. On my count. (Whew!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":29145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8120],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-40675","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-donovan","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40675"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}