van morrison vitals

does seem crazy that astral weeks hasn't been done up in deluxe style ...

i'd imagine outside of that 90s greatest hits, Moondance is his best selling album by a large margin

whoa apparently there *is* an astral weeks expanded reissue coming out in october with these bonus trax:
"Beside You" (Take 1), "Madame George" (Take 4), "Ballerina" (Long Version), "Slim Slow Slider" (Long Version).
crazy.

Wow. I mean, any unreleased AW stuff is an exciting prospect, but it'd be cool if they also included that live version Peter Wolf recorded in '67 or whenever.

ha yeah, i'll believe that when i hear it...

Where's this news about the Astral Weeks thing come from?

saw it on stephen erlewine's facebook (all music editor) -- also a his band and the street choir reissue:
Bonus tracks on Astral Weeks: "Beside You" (Take 1), "Madame George" (Take 4), "Ballerina" (Long Version), "Slim Slow Slider" (Long Version). Bonus tracks on Band: "Call Me Up In Dreamland" (Take 10), "Give Me A Kiss" (Take 3), "Gypsy Queen" (Take 3), "I've Been Working" (alternate), "I'll Be Your Lover Too" (alternate version)

I can't find anything on that so hope it's just early news. Would love a decent copy of AW

right, just found this
http://theseconddisc.com/2015/08/27/breaking-return-to-cypress-avenue-rhino-remasters-expands-van-morrisons-astral-weeks-his-band-and-the-street-choir/

out 30/10/15 apparently.

Hm, there's a whole lot more of his catalog on Spotify than there was last time I checked

After spending most of the morning listening, I gotta say that the 1986-1995 period is hella forgotten. So many good understated gems.

poetic champions compose!

Friday morning fans listen!

Very happy to re-acquire Irish Heartbeat, his 1988 set with the Chieftains.

Looking at all the album covers reminds me that Van looks like he couldn't have cared less about album covers.

since he likes three word titles I can see an album called Couldn't Care Less.

Poetic Champions Compose is great and so is Irish Heartbeat; Avalon Sunset is pretty good or at least has at least a couple of great tunes -- "Whenever God Shines His Light On Me," "When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God." Enlightenment felt pretty hurried to me though "Real Real Gone" is a winner. After that he feels pretty cranky to me until '97 but I really love The Healing Game.

enlightenment also has "avalon of the heart" which i love

i am mostly psyched that the philosopher's stone is widely available again

PCC has the most songs of any '80s albums on the original comp, so even Van liked it.

my memory of albums like Days Like This and Back on Top is of walking into Barnes & Nobles' often impeccable music section and seeing an impressive display (they were also one of the few stores that stocked deep catalog albums).

Is there a reason why they picked Enlightenment as one of the 4 Legacy Deluxe titles? The other 3 are early 70s, 2 classics and Hard Nose.

The Healing Game is such a fantastic album, I don't mean to hype via ranking hyperbole but I guess I only prefer Astral Weeks to it, and it's a very different album...

Rough God Goes Riding, Sometimes We Cry, so many great songs.

And the production value is spectacular!

As I was poking around to see if this stuff was in Spotify yet, I made a playlist of the stuff recommended here:

https://open.spotify.com/user/124420673/playlist/21u6NrVqK5MARcfwwUAPAR

The latest Record Collector, with the Kinks on the cover, has the announcement that there are 33 Legacy expanded editions coming with a lot of unreleased material so does that mean that these things are actually getting physical releases. That News is very late for the streaming/download versions.

I see Rhino is doing 180g vinyl reissues of some of the same titles that Legacy released digitally last year
http://www.rhino.com/article/doing-a-180-van-morrison-common-one-beautiful-vision-inarticulate-speech-of-the-heart?cmpid=rn/2016February12/NewReleases-VanMorrison-right-image-6&eml=2016February12/3159313/6134371&etsubid=34079420
which I find odd because I thought they were different, possibly rival, companies.

I still haven't heard anything about other physical media releases of any of that material that legacy released digitally last August. The only thing I've seen come out since that set of digital releases is the Them 3cd. Even the initial announcement was talking about 4 album titles getting Deluxe treatment apparently on cd.

Has anybody heard anything else new about thsi back catalogue getting cd release?

Has anybody here seen Van live recently? He's coming to Denmark but tickets are v expensive.

This blog writes up all his shows: http://mysticavenueblog.blogspot.com/ The recent ones are supposed to be excellent if you like Van with a jazzy tilt. Sad I missed his January shows in Oakland.

Cool, thanks!

Sir Van!

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03567/Van_3567538b.jpg