Sand and Foam

Last week while in Vegas I went to Donovan Leitch's website like I usually do hoping that he'll be playing some shows in my vicinity soon. For the last few months they had old shows listed in the UK, but this time they had one in San Juan Capistrano, CA. I bought six tickets, he's my favorite human being. So Mike and I went with some friends tonight for what was one of the best nights of my life.

The venue was super small which added to the amazingness of the night. If you don't know who Donovan is, he's a sixties folk rock star (he prefers Celtec Rock). Gigi's song in Optimistic was Donovan's 'Season of the Witch'.

I've seen Paul McCartney, Simon and Garfunkel, Michael Jackson, The Monkees, The Who, Ten Years After, The Rolling Stones (Nima and I snuck into the Hollywood Bowl for that one), but I've never felt as strongly about every single song played as I did with Donovan. It was insane.

My friend Kenny and I have pretty much the exact same music taste and 'Sand and Foam' is both of our favorite Donovan song. It's not one of his hits so we didn't expect Donovan to sing it tonight, but I kept badgering Kenny to yell for it. The above clip is Donovan singing 'Sand and Foam', that scream you hear at the beginning is Kenny freaking.

George Harrison wrote a verse for 'Hurdy Gurdy Man', Jimmy Page played on the recording and Donovan opted for more Jimmy Page guitar so George's verse never made the cut, here is George's lost verse from 'Hurdy Gurdy Man'.

Donovan stayed after to sign autographs. Mike had him sign the Ashbury 'Loner' shirt which is a drawing that Mike did of Donovan. Mike's girlfriend Jacqui pointed this out to Donovan and he was super into it. He asked Mike to email him so that we could send him the shirt in a Large! Yeah... Donovan wants an Ashbury shirt.