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Well, here's a blast from the past... I've owned the original album for many years (since it came out in 1966, in fact), so was intrigued with the opportunity to pick up a sonically cleaned-up version with no fewer than seven bonus tracks. I still think it's a great work. 'Season of the Witch' is one of the 60s' defining tracks, 'Sunshine Superman' still holds its own as a pop track, and all the rest continue to shine as an ensemble showing the way toward myth-, lore-, and jazz-influenced pop. This was actually quite a creative album, mostly recorded in late 1965 and early 1966 just before similar explorations by the Beatles and others. I've always been a Donovan fan, and this is arguably his best album (and also his most commercially successful, I think). One of the least noticed things about Donovan's music from this period is how he integrated a blues and jazz sound into many of his compositions--this is more evident on "Mellow Yellow", the next issue, but even here one can strongly feel those influences having been absorbed on 'The Trip,' 'Bert's Blues' and 'Three Kingfishers.'
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I've been listening to this record for 40 years now. It is an amazing, piece of music. I'm glad to see that others have enjoyed it as much as I.
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Other reviewers have delineated the technical brilliance of this album. I would not have much to add or subtract from their observations, except to affirm that the clarity of the mix enabled me to hear things I had never heard before, which injected new life into some well-worn tracks. The rest of my comments will be unapologetically subjective, possibly because Donovan has an odd way of reaching each individual at a personal level, though his stance is usually an acerbic but kindly, somewhat detached observer. In the musical firmament of the '60s, Donovan was the Pleiades, the mystic purple star system where faerie visions came and went, suggesting spiritual and sensual doings of an evanescent and yet intense character. No one else was even close. "Purple Haze" was the pile driver version of the grail at the end of that quest. "Sunshine Superman" was the lyrical version. Funny thing is, Donovan's songs still take you there, if you let them. I grew up in the SF Bay Area, and the Flower Power movement (if you could call it a "movement") emerged about the time I got my driver's license. I went in search of it, borrowing my parents' car. (Incidentally, the term "Flower Power" was coined by a reviewer of a Donovan concert who noted the flowers he tossed to the audience.) Maybe I found a little piece of the dream one fine day with a girl who seemed to know the power of silence, but for the most part it was illusion. I wanted to believe, but reality kept conflicting. Then I attended a Donovan concert at the Fillmore. For that two-hour moment, which was actually of infinite duration, it all came true. Like the gateway to the Pied Piper's Kingdom, the door is now nothing but a rock wall, but it is hard to forget having been among the elves for a moment, and the one who played the pipes that transported me there. Donovan's music suggested the beauty possible in a '60s mindset, and no album suggests it better than "Sunshine Superman." Think what a miracle it was to hear so much groundbreaking, diverse, and original music exploding all at once, and here was this guy singing songs that fitted it all perfectly, and yet didn't belong in any one stylistic camp or category at all. This quality of poetic vison and independence from convention still comes through today, surprisingly. Donovan's music brushes off the dust that tried to collect on its robes, and keeps on walkin', shimmering and catching the dreamlight. There is no absolute definitive interpretation of any of the songs. I think that's what you'll like about them. They're like kaleidoscope images that attract different parts of your soul on different days. Some of it is silly, and yet overall there's something profound about it. There are classics on this CD, such as "Sunshine Superman" and "Season of the Witch." But there are some underrated wonders here, too, such as "Bert's Blues," which is kind of a jazz/pop soliloquy on the "To Be or Not To Be" question. I will always be nostalgic for a belief in Peace and Love, even if the dream is deader than JFK, RFK, and MLK. But maybe another place and time? If you were there, you know what I mean. If you weren't, this might be your ticket. And if this isn't a five-star experience, then what is?
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I note that this has been remastered and has additional songs, but the original vinyl of Donovan's 'Sunshine Superman' is one of the most enjoyable listening experiences in my collection. Donovan was an original, and yet you hear elements of the Beatles and Harry Nilsson in his music as well. It would be classified as psychedilic folk/rock. Yes, the songs play like one long drug trip, but the imagery is extraordinary and allows the listener to legally and vicariously see what some of these sixties musicians saw when they were stoned out of their minds. I really enjoy the Tolkein-esque imagery of the songs and the whimsical, child-like nature of the lyrics. The instrumentation includes all kinds of instruments one found in the late sixties on experimental rock albums, such as sitars and oboes and strings. The resulting sound is lush and accomplished. This is a great album, and though I don't know how the CD versions stack up, the vinyl is awesome and clear.
Rating:  -
I bought this album because I remembered it as one of my favorites when I owned it on vinyl... a long time ago. Listening to it again after all these years, though, was not entirely a happy homecoming. Several of the songs ("Sunshine Superman", "Season of the Witch", and "Bert's Blues", among others) really stood the test of time for me and remain classics of the genre, while others just seemed to drag on and on in a fog of monotony. The "unicorns and fairies" flavor of some of the songs, which seemed enchanting and new on the original release, suffer now from decades of plastic figurines and tacky posters in cheap mall stores; it's really impossible to hear them without that filter of kitsch at this point.
Perhaps my least favorite feature of the album, however, is the group of "bonus tracks" at the end; suffice it to say that it's easy to see why these weren't included on the original release. I think the bad taste left in my mouth at the end of the album is in large part due to these cuts, and I probably would have had a much more positive review overall even with the caveats of the first paragraph if not for this feature. In fact, I'm thinking of taking the trouble to burn a copy of the album that ends where the original one did, so that I don't have to remember to turn it off there manually.
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