Top of my bucket list of artists I love but haven’t yet seen is Stevie Wonder. The pioneer and living legend (not hyperbole, ladies and gentlemen) with a back catalogue to rival anything throughout the history of pop rolls up to the Hydro in Glasgow (Wednesday 11 November). He’s celebrating 50 years of his extraordinary Songs In The Key Of Life album, a genuine 20th-century masterpiece. Will he play it in full from start to end? Or play other gems from his outstanding oeuvre? I for one will be begging, borrowing or blagging a ticket to find out.

Billed as ‘Dundee’s most stubborn indie rock musicians’, the triple threat of post-hardcore, emo and victory rock in the form of Avast!, Cruise Elroy and Little Anchors play the city’s Hidden venue (Friday 13 November), proving that DIY underground still packs a punch. Carving out their own idiosyncratic niche, these acts are as worthy of your attention as anyone playing larger venues or surfing the zeitgeist. I saw Avast! and Cruise Elroy last year and it was a soul-enriching night of community spirit and unbridled rifferama. Step up, Dundee!

The ‘Bard Of Salford’, Dr John Cooper Clarke returns to Edinburgh for a spot of pithy punk poetry at Queen’s Hall (Friday 27 November). Expect belly laughs and withering pathos, often within the same sentence, from a true original. He famously influenced Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, but every Northern wordsmith of the last 50 years has torn out a leaf from his book. He celebrates half a century in the game soon and isn’t slowing down. He might sneer, but the term ‘national treasure’ comes to mind. 

My old mucker James Yorkston celebrates 25 years at Domino Records this year and has an excellent compilation, La Magnifica, out soon to prove it. Hear his own wry, pastoral, acoustic songs and selected traditional influences at the Pleasance Cabaret Bar in Edinburgh (Friday 27 November) and Dunkeld’s Birnam Arts (Saturday 28 November). A man as at ease writing novels as songs, Yorkston has done it his way: raw, unadorned and uncompromising.

Listen to Vic Galloway every Monday night on BBC Radio Scotland, or anytime on BBC Sounds; he co-hosts the Scottish Album Of The Year Award ceremony at Caird Hall, Dundee on Thursday 5 November; main picture: Olof Grind.

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