Donovan's Atlantis (and Greg Dulli too)
Greg Dulli of Afghan Whigs/Twilight Singers/Gutter Twins fame just released a fantastic album, Live At Triple Door, which includes a phenomenal cover of George Harrison's "Isn't It A Pity?" with a coda of Donovan's "Atlantis." After listening to that track (about five times in a row), I sought out the original Donovan tune on YouTube. Lo and behold, here is Donovan doing "Atlantis" backed up by the Smothers Brothers, Peter, Paul, & Mary, Jennifer Warnes, and Mort Sahl. This version, too, is amazing.
Previously on BB:
• Greg Dulli sings Sam Cooke
• Gutter Twins music video: explosion porn
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one of the greatest prog-rock songs, evar!
Great song. I love not only how long it takes to get to the chorus, but how it only realy needs those two lines repeated over and over and over to be awesome.
Be sure to check out the bit with Donovan and this song in the Futurama episode "The Deep South".
what year is this from? so blissful and so hippy... I wonder if this country/world could be headed (beheaded?!) towards this kind of hopeful, populist, tolerant, creative environment after all of the recent despair. I sure hope so.
Haha... This song will FOREVER remind me of Billy Bats getting whacked in Goodfellas. Robert DeNiro doing that wind-up, kicking in the face thing. This song is certainly a classic.
Back at you with Cass Elliot singing California Earthquake on the Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour.
Atlantis will rise
Sunset Boulevard will fall
glug glug glug glug
About two weeks ago I was at Galaxy Diner in Flagstaff (one of those restaurants that thinks retro means throwing up as many pictures as possible of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Elvis, and Humphrey Bogart).
Atlantis played on the Jukebox as I was leaving. I went right home and downloaded the MP3 single from Amazon.com.
As great as this song is, I can't stop wondering how many people--apart from me at age 6--took this song as history lesson based in accepted fact.
BTW: Here is Donovan with No Angels in the 2001 Disney remake video.
The commentary on the Futurama episode THE DEEP SOUTH discusses the Atlantis song quite a bit because they hired in Donovan to actually sing their version of it for the show called "Atlanta". Here it is at Comedy Central's site: tinyurl.com/6g5nqn
Just out of curiosity... who was the Jennifer (No last name) who was introduced after Mort Sahl?
This just made my day (or evening). I love this song! The lips are a bit out of sync with the words though.
This is bloody awful. Also, Donovan has one of those Scottish Accents that nobody from Scotland can recognise. I kept expecting him to end with '..and then they all went to live in Brigadoon'.
"Jennifer" (standing with Mort Sahl) is Jennifer Warnes. She's wonderful! I hope someone reads this and adds her to the Boing Boing text that accompanies this video...
speaking as a life-long donovan fan (seriousy!), i've always hated this song. SO syrupy and over the top, imho. giimme 'hurdy gurdy man', 'first there is a mountain', or 'mellow yellow' any day over this song.
"And oh how they danced
The little children of Stonehenge ..."
All hail Atlantis. This was one of my favorite songs when I was a kid. I've thought of this one recently because the American city that reminds me the most of 'Atlantis' is my hometown, Seattle. Seattle is the modern Atlantis, a magical technological wonder, a very happy modern city state, and like Atlantis she will fall, fall, fall into the ocean some sad day.
...The sad part about this version is that Donovan clipped the prose intro quite a bit, and the song just starts off "wrong". That and Mort was off-key :-)
Excellent, considering the awesome version he did for the Futurama episode, "THE DEEP SOUTH."
Man, that Donovan cat's got him some tiny legs. And Peter and Paul are just all a'twitch, ain't they?
Its too bad the Greg Dulli is mp3 only. Not for me.
Donovan's responsible for my favorite all-time song title: 'Superlungs, My Supergirl'(songs not bad either).
If you look closely at about 2:05 - 2:07, young, mod Eli Manning appears to be participating in the sing-along.
"…The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture.
The antediluvian kings colonised the world…"
Haha, what a ridiculous song.
I like it. Songs are allowed to be ridiculous and great at the same time.
See : "Louie Louie", also "Whiter Shade of Pale".
Thanks for posting this! Donovan is so amazing...