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A few days ago visited Ö÷²¥´óÐã Scotland in to record a forthcoming Zone. I took a few photographs of him to promote his new series of Classic Scottish Albums. While taking the shots I asked Davie how they choose the albums, and as it's the 3rd series does it get harder to decide? Cheekily I also asked if he could write something for this blog and that's what we can see below - thanks Davie!

Sunshine Superfan

In PQ today putting the finishing touches to the first of the new series of Classic Scottish Albums. The albums are: , The Crossing, Psychocandy and, wait for it, and Glasvegas. I suspect this last selection might cause controversy, possibly even the odd rumpled nose. This is a good thing and at CSA Central we look forward to all reactions.

Today we had the political editor of the on Psychocandy (how about that for a concept?), Billy Sloan's pin-sharp recollections of the same album and further thoughts on The Crossing. I also recorded links for the Donovan programme, and listening back to the one-on-one interview we had recorded weeks earlier was reminded of being introduced to a genuinely new experience - wishing somebody would stop talking about The Beatles. You see, Donovan was there and can remember it all, which for some means he wasn't there at all. He recorded in alongside the as they carved out history in four-track. He was with them and the in where he taught the fingerpick that ended up as Julia and lord knows what else. Sunshine Superman (the album we were actually there to talk about) is seen spinning on a turntable in a famous film of the Day In The Life orchestra / orgasm session. I once heard a bootleg (I did not own this bootleg Your Honour, I was at someone else's house for tea, the location of which I've since forgotten) of Donovan and apparently writing a song together. Wow. But he did mention the Fabs quite a bit during our interview and I began to worry that we wouldn't get what we were there to get - the inside track on what remains a unique piece of 1960s art-pop. Forget the lame Bob Dylan comparisons - new Classic Scottish Albums producer Victoria McArthur said we should just tell folk to GET OVER IT - and the Beatlechatter; Sunshine Superman more than stands up on its own terms as do most of Don's other 1960s recordings; atmospheric, dark and glittery, delicate and swaggering by turn. It sounds utterly fabulous, jewelled in harpsichord, string quartet, sitar and jazzy upright bass. It's funny too, wise, wide, gallus in its way. You can take the flower child out of Maryhill etc.

I think Donovan is a born entertainer wrapped up in a free-spirited mystic's body. Tell 'em about crystal healing and while you're at it Razzle Dazzle 'em! He wants to give you the Technicolor movie, the titbit you never heard, the colour of the road to Rishikesh. He does all that brilliantly, generously and in doing so somehow undersells his own million-selling records. The natural Celtic warmth of the man is best embodied in the beautiful cadence of his speaking voice and the esteem in which he is clearly still held by the other players in the Sunshine Superman story.

When I was a kid my Mum and Dad bought me a book called The Rock Primer edited by John Collis and published I guess in the late 1970s. A nascent piece of academic rock criticism it is now the first thing I put on reading lists for our music students at UWS. Around the same time I learned to play Donovan's Catch The Wind so I could sneak into the Burns Bar to play a short floor spot (of Catch The Wind) at in return for a half pint of MacLay's 80 Shilling. Leafing through the book for the millionth time I notice a beautiful (and reasonably contemporaneous) paragraph on Sunshine Superman that places the album firmly and shiningly in the panoply of stars without reference to the Fabs, Rishikesh, finger pickin' Johnny Lennon or any of the rest of them. It does go on a wee bit about but hey ho, you can't have it all.

I remain yours, Sunshine Superfan, Davie Scott.