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Donovan book signing, Foyles, London

3rd October 2005

Tonight I was back at Foyles to see one of my current favourite musicians, Donovan. This was part of a tour along with Gypsy Dave to promote his new book, The Hurdy Gurdy Man.

I think these Foyles events are pretty new (correct me if I'm wrong); tonight's seemed far more organised than last week's signing by Cynthia, with separate orderly queues for ticket collection and ticket holders -- and wine being distributed in little plastic tumblers rather than glasses this time. There was still small amount of chaos (without which a signing just wouldn't be a signing) and the staff had managed to lose several people's tickets which, as one lady was telling the staff and anyone else who cared to listen, was "completely outrageous!". We queued to the sounds of Donovan sound-checking -- a few chords of Jennifer Juniper and everyone was feeling excited.

As I said already, Donovan is one of my current favourites. While Mum says she wasn't influenced by the song when they picked my name (which song? If you don't already know then I'll leave you guessing), she admits she always liked it and used to sing it to me all the time when I was a teeny kid. It wasn't until quite recently that I actually heard the record and fell in love with it. I like to think that maybe it was a little bit of an influence there.

Anyway, the evening. He was awesome. I can't remember the entire set (why am I so hopeless at remembering set lists?) but he played acoustic for half an hour or so, a set which included Colours, Sunshine superman, Ballad of Geraldine, Hurdy gurdy man, Universal soldier and Mellow yellow. I loved the way he hardly ever seemed to stop playing his guitar ("Kelly") -- when he was talking between songs, about his past or about other stories in the book, he was talking in a wonderful lilting kind of way over a freeform/looping of the introduction to the next song on his guitar. I loved hearing him talking about his Bohemia, about the beat cafes and poets and celtic mythology and politics and everything.

After the music, Donovan took questions and then it was the signing. I'm really not keen on that kind of signing -- it's all so conveyor-belt like (I hardly managed to say a word to Cynthia last week) -- but often it's the only possible way of getting to meet someone or getting something personalised. I guess I've just been unusually lucky in meeting the people I admire recently, like when I got to have a proper chat with Bob Whitaker in the Mathew Street Gallery in August, so I have become spoiled. Anyway, Donovan was pretty awesome, I did actually get to speak to him a bit and when I told him something he took hold of my hand and didn't let go for ages and was completely lovely. He wrote in my book and wrote down his website address on a post-it for me because of something I was asking after.

I nearly cried when I left Foyles, I was so happy and a little bit over-awed. I was grinning all the way to Oxford Circus. People must've thought I was a nutcase. They're probably not wrong.

[Donovan]
Donovan playing Colours at the start of his set.

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