Best Van Morrison Song from Astral Weeks thru Saint Dominic's Preview

"Astral Weeks" over "Into The Mystic" and "Domino"...I've blabbered about music & place on this board before but "Astral Weeks" really sunk in on a flight sometime back in college when I ended up in ridiculous tears by the end of the song watching the sun rise out my window, just wanting to be born again.

too bad veedon fleece isn't on this, might've voted "linden arden stole the highlights"

but yeah it's obv but damn "astral weeks" is pretty hard to avoid IMO

"Into the Mystic"

Arbitrary pick from a dozen contenders, but 'Ballerina'.

Astral Weeks - tho' if the TB Sheets versh of Mme George was there we might have a contest.

so many amazing tracks -- these days i might be more in a "Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven When You Smile)" kinda frame of mind. such a perfect pop song. st.dominics might be the van album i've listened to the most.

the only albums I listened to are Astral Weeks and Moondance. I know a few other songs here too (WIld Night, Domino, Jackie Wilson Said)

therefore I feel guilty for voting "And It Stoned Me" but hey, that's life

I need Veedon Fleece first right?

Veedon Fleece is good, but my favorite Van album is Saint Dominic's Preview. IMHO it's the most successful split of the Astral Weeks and Moondance styles.

still dont have that one! got veedon fleece + tupelo honey the other week, love them both

can't really go wrong with any of these albums up through veedon fleece -- tupelo honey might be the one with the most filler, but it's still great.

Get them all, but i'd agree w/ korn that your next acquisition should be St. Dominic's...
Don't nobody forget the greatest live album ever(?): "It's Too Late to Stop Now" f/ '74!!

hell yeah that album is BONKERS

caledonia soul is off the heezy

sorta wanna vote for "Almost Independence Day" just to get the maximum bang for my buck. and cuz probly no one else will.

Love St Dominic's P (title track nearly had my vote), but feel as though the seeds of later rambling Van are in there - slightly bored by Almost Independence Day (ha xp).

going with "into the mystic"

perfect song

hell yeah that album is BONKERS
Cypress Ave gets the audience whipped into a frenzy!
Actually, forget all the rest of Van's catalogue...you all NEED "It's Too Late..."

xxp I think maybe it's cuz I got into VM at a time when I was listening to a lot of jazz, especially like Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane and shit — kind of approached those long-ass irish hippie religious experience jams with that same framework, and they sounded amazing

also I think his album closers are excellent in general — "Slim Slow Slider" is sometimes my fav track on Weeks; at other times tho it's simply a beautiful little gemlike poem of a song

and "Glad Tidings" may be a "Brown-Eyed Girl" ripoff but it's a pretty fun one so w/e

I was more ok with it a few years ago, liked the Celtic visionary stuff in my youth, but it's come to annoy me more and more now, quite impatient with it - think the later stuff has maybe poisoned the better earlier works for me? Like the 80s long'uns w/ iffy synths tested my patience and I'm less likely to trust him to guide me on a mystic journey. Also I smoke less weed.

haha, there are some iffy synths near the end of "Almost Independence Day" actually!!

just realized I've been listening to "Sister Ray" for the last 12 minutes. so I guess maybe I'm just a 'long songs' person/

love that moog on independence day

i know i recc'd it on some other van thread, but the pacific high studios bootleg from 1972 is beyond essential. some of the best van morrison of all time.

what is that (awesome) 70's live boot (on my other computer) with the 'just like a woman' cover and such? was that from yr blog tyler?

oh shit, xp ha

i never put it on my blog, but it should be out there. if anyone can't fid it, maybe i can up it.

can't *find* it

so, so good

yeah, there's stuff on there that is pretty breathtaking. i love it's too late, but pacific high might be better.

Sweet Thing

I'd love to hear that 1972 bootleg. What is your blog?

http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.blogspot.com
i'll try to upload it this week. it must be heard!

xxp I think maybe it's cuz I got into VM at a time when I was listening to a lot of jazz, especially like Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane and shit — kind of approached those long-ass irish hippie religious experience jams with that same framework, and they sounded amazing

― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Thursday, January 6, 2011 11:21 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it hit me once that van's voice usually functions more like a saxophone, musically, than a regular singer

yeah definitely

headphonestonedlistening to "Astral Weeks" (the song),
especially when it gets quiet at the end,
I swear I could perfectly see, in my mind's eye,
how he worked the microphone, that little man,
how tension seized his body like a fever,
and how he drew it back

it hit me once that van's voice usually functions more like a saxophone, musically, than a regular singer

^TOTALLY! one of his most distinctive features imo.

The Way Young Lover's Do or Madam George from this list.
Madam George has a verse where he's stumbling over his words and it breaks your heart.
Had we gone to Veedon Fleece I think You Don't Pull No Punches has the most extraordinary singing he ever did.

WISH VEEDON WAS HERE TOO.
If it was i'd go for Punches or Streets Of Arklow.

As it isn't i'll say The Way Young Lovers Do.

has anyone actually listened to van's live astral weeks from a few year's back? i never did. was a little bit afraid to.

(also seems like there should be a veedon fleece poll?)

I so OD'd on Moondance - my friend's mom played that album like 10x/day while I was living at their house when I was 19 and it's been poisoned forever for me since as the soundtrack to middleclass lefty pretensions to artsiness. Astral Weeks, predictably, is my alltime album & at various points I might have been tempted to rep for "Beside You" or "Cyprus Avenue". "TB Sheets" is also amazing, but it's "Madame George" (in both its 'introverted' [Astral Weeks] and 'extroverted' [Bang Records] versions) that never loses its magic for me. I keep it under a rock for special occasions - probably never listen to either version more than once a year anymore - to protect its aura, tho.

Haven't ventured into too much of his career after Moondance though this thread is piquing my interest & reminding me how great he was when he was great.

Listening to the Bang material and Astral Weeks as Van's working-out of his coming-of-age experiences is an interesting exercise - there's something behind all those songs that remains just out of reach & operates them from behind the scenes.

The live Astral Weeks is execrable. Don't even listen to it in a masochistic spirit - just pretend it never happened.

Looking forward to tyler's blog post & we'll see where it goes from there...

i def prefer the pacific highway set to IT'S TOO LATE TO STOP NOW - i find Van's excessive patois-slippage on the latter to be v offputting, and i don't think the band on that rec is all that hot

xp
kinda know what you mean about moondance, but hopefully you can come around on it again someday -- really some wonderful stuff on there.

yo i wanna give a shout out to van's karate kicks in The Last Waltz and his horrible brown suit

also the first time i heard a non-brown eyed girl van morrison song was when i was a kid and my sister watched this movie all the time on VHS dubbed off of our cousin's HBO:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Dream_a_little_dream.jpg

they sure don't cast movies like that anymore

eeee was just trying to remember who piper laurie was and GIS-ed her -- Carrie's mom! nooooo

i also downloaded from somewhere or other a great four disc set of outtakes, studio rarities etc called 'the real philosopher's stone' - hunt that out, too

yeahhh, that's got the moondance demos on there, which are pretty essential. y'know that philosopher's stone legit release has some great stuff on it too.

people that just go for astral and moondance are definitely missing out on a LOT of his best. I'd say nearly everything up to 1980 is at least great with a lot of the stuff on records like Veedon and Highway being incredible.

into the music has some great stuff on it. i was just laughing with my brother about van naming a record "a period of transition" -- like there may as well be a sticker on it saying "you probably won't like this record."

ITM is basically one long, beautiful reverie in its last fifteen minutes; and "Full Force Gale" is a great single.

According to critics and a bunch of fans i've spoken to, Hard Nose the Highway is meant to be one of his records to avoid. But it starts with this...which is incredible...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akAqMpp-Da0

how are those eighties record released after Beautiful Vision (which I like as a minor work)?

hard nose the highway is about half a masterpiece tbh. some of my favorite van, along with stuff i always skip. "snow in anselmo" is amazing.

sometimes I think that my favorite Van tune is Them's cover of "It's All Over Now Baby Blue"--definitely one of the best Dylan covers.

yeah it's fab, tho i might prefer 13th floor elevators' cover of that tune. if i had to choose.

that's really good too, but I just dig the little bell-like notes that suffuse Them's cover--they're so lovely. Admittedly, my first exposure to those sounds was on Odelay. They're sampled in the song, "Jackass"

Still one of Van's prettiest moments.

hard nose the highway's good! you'd be missing out if you avoided it

great (terrible) cover too

ha, yeah, odelay's where i first heard it too. really is a lovely effect. xp

Me too.

I'm very partial to Bryan Ferry's version.

wow never heard snow in anselmo

how gorgeous

insanely good version of that song here: http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/van-morrison/concerts/orphanage-july-29-1974.html

also check this, which might be an early version of the same song? some similarities anyway, even though completely different lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_YMPV3Y8sk

yeah holy shit at 'snow', jeez

thing is nuts, some of those high notes that he sorta doesn't stick are heavy

Just dug out Tupelo Honey prompted by this, and the back cover photo is hilarious: Van, his Woman and a Horse - but Van is sitting on a fence with his legs wide open, like some rustic porn idyll is about to begin. The horse looks worried to me.

I voted for Madame George but if you haven't heard TB Sheets, please do. It's florid and preposterous,and fantastic. I still can't believe it exists when I listen to it.

Catching up.
The live KSAN performance from 1971 is absolutely stunning. Think it is the same thing as the pacific high studios boot. Must hear for all Van fans. I'd give it the nod over "It's Too Late" though that's fabulous as well.
EDIT: some of the tracks are up on youtube & are titled pacific high studios:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpKAB_6qkM

The Greil Marcus book is not really a conventional biography. More of Greil's reactions to Van's music. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Voted for "Astral Weeks."

Can't resist posting one from this 1974 tv show. It will make Into The Mystic fresh again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpPSBzGEklE

yeah snow in san anselmo is amazing.

IT WAS LAYING ON THE GROUND

love those 70s van performance clips. something amazing about them: from what i know of the guy, he's not the happiest person in the world, but watching stuff like that you can tell that he really does live for the music, like inhabiting those songs is really the only time he feels comfortable in his own skin.

not that he looks happy in the into the mystic clip, haha.

I love snow in San Anselmo. I've also got a soft spot for Wild Children from that album, with its sudden lurch into cocktail jazz

really i like too much of van's stuff to choose. i love "sweet thing" too.

here y'all go
http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/2642433271/nobody-feels-any-pain-van-morrisons-its-too

woah, thanks tylerw, i know what ima listen too shortly!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

On most days I would probably go for "Madam George", but tonight's it's all about "Slim Slow Slider". "I know you're dying, babe.." Jesus.

new Van album out tomorrow!

has he done anything worth hearing recently...or in the last couple decades?

see the last several posts....

nah it was in this thread Van Morrison: your views please

Wavelength is about where I start to get off the wagon, with a temporary rally for Into the Music

man I love No Guru and Irish Heartbeat and The Waiting Game and Pay the Devil....Van is just awesome to me & I love that just keeps going

for kornrulz. listen to the lion, live from '74.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY8T35WsQfU

So Van recorded an interesting outtake in 1970 called "Coming Down to Joy" that didn't really work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abjYPKvgkv4

It was never given an official release and remains in the vault to this day. BUT, turns out he reworked the song for Kenneth Branagh's new film Belfast, and it was just nominated for an Oscar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHc5i1eenAM

I can't say I'm a fan of the movie - the shallow and syrupy depiction of growing up during the Troubles feels like Branagh's crowd-pleasing tendencies at their worst - but Morrison's new rendition of an old song is pretty decent. Too bad he's been a complete ass for the past year.