Van Morrison: your views please

If you repeat this often and loud enough, you might transform the second side of Moondance into the near-genius of the first

First side is genius. Second side is near-genius.

THEM and only THEM. Sorry, garage rock purist here.

heh, fair enough. it is interesting that Van never really returned to that garage rock sound, after having helped invent quite a fair bit of it.

acid is a two edged sword

but speaking of THEM, the version of "Friday's Child" on that bootleg I posted up above is sweeeeeeet.

man this is really swinging man....it's far out!

for THEM completists: be sure to add "Might Like a Rose" from Backtrackin', the only cut I can see that didn't make it onto that 2CD comp of complete Them recordings....any others?

This thread inspired me to listen to Tupelo Honey (the album) today. Lots of good stuff on there.

...listening to the 1971 boot, many thanks tylerw. Spectacular. Friday's Child / Hound Dog / Ballerina is a fantastic sequence.

Nothing else on HNTH quite lives up to "Snow in San Anselmo" but it's still good.

yeah thanks for pointing this boot out. very good

my pleasure -- anyone who's into Van should hear it, I think. His vocals are stunning -- he's just floating above the band.

Holy shit the "Just Like a Woman" on that boot..

Yeah, this boot is great! And it inspired me to listen through a whole bunch of Van's work, thus confirming that I really don't care for Hard Nose The Highway and need to spend a lot of time with Veedon Fleece because it is great.

"you don't pull no punches, but you don't push the river"
always wished there was more astral weekly stuff like this later on

You Don't Pull No Punches is the dope, more Astral than Astral. His voice does incredible, unexpected things. Every single Van song since is an anticlimax as far as his tenor is concerned. "Get down to the real soul!"

suggest astral weekly as title for that zine scott steward's been talking about

I heard You Don't Pull No Punches on the radio a few days ago in the middle of the afternoon, on the Current, which usually plays nothing but the hottest indie singles of the moment.

Veedon Fleece's rep is definitely on the rise lately.

My favorite has always been Saint Dominic's Preview, the best merger of his Domino-style hits and Astral Weeks-ish long pieces.

Check this out clip from 1974 before the Van police pull it down.

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

th new album sounds pretty great to these ears. jazzy, relaxing, flowing nicely, his voice is still tops. and i never realy got into astral weeks...

looking forward to it on Tuesday - I think later Van is pretty badly underpraised. Pay the Devil is pretty great, The Waiting Game has some stone classics on it ("Rough God Goes Riding" especially to my ears)

his new albums have sold modestly but consistently well for twenty years and they each sport at least one gem

yeah i don't keep up w/ the new stuff too much, but i'm always pleasantly surprised when i hear one of them. he can still sing.

I love a lot of the early stuff, especially the Them era. & Astral Weeks.
Also Veedon Fleece, It's Too Late To Stop Now and other bits of the Caledonia Soul Orchestra.

Not listened to him much after about '74 though I do have Common one somewhere and the video of the live set from the collaboration with the Chieftains.

I was just looking at the list of supposedly essential lps by him in the current Mojo this morning and thinking there were a couple of things I'd think of as necessary such as the Too late set.
Also that I should have the Chieftains studio lp, just managed to get the video thing from the tv around the time that was released.

Irish Heartbeat is one of his best albums for sure. "Raglan Road" is incredible.

here is the stream

i was listening to these songs a LOT in 1987. and doing lots of drugs. people forget how psychedelic the 80's were. unless they were psychedelic in the 80's. a lotta 80's revivalists miss that part of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8Cnh7uD0b4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijIPY-MTClI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oISucGq5dsk

(also i just love that van album a lot. very inspiring to me.)

A lot of his eighties are sharp! "Cleaning Windows," "Did Ya Get Healed," "Someone Like You" -- lovely.

"dweller on the threshold" is another great 80's Van track

one irish rover from no guru is another great one. the production on the album track is a little cheese-o, this version kinda improves on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC14pZQ2nyA

So glad to see No Guru, No Method, No Teacher is getting some love! I saw Van on the tour for this album and was floored by several of the then-new songs, which I'd never heard at that point. The album's midsection - "Foreign Window", "A Town Called Paradise", "In The Garden", "Tir Na Nog" - is an amazing, trancelike four-song sequence.

I was going to ask for guidance into eighties Van. I own Beautiful Vision ("Cleaning Windows" is one of his best imo) but dat's dat.

listening to the new one - so smooth and pleasant, which I think is probably a mark against it in a lot of people's books but not in mine. Relaxed little horn section, Van with his grumpy observations...it's like...kind of boring, that can't be denied, it doesn't grab you, but I really really like it. I don't know, I expect to play it a lot more than more exciting stuff

Pretty good too;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderful_Remark

^ easily my fave van morrison track of the past 30 years and reading that i apparently really need to get the philosopher's stone.

Philosopher's Stone has a fair amount of good stuff on it but don't go looking for higher peaks than "Wonderful Remark" - "Wonderful Remark" is an all-time jam. "Bright Side of the Road" is great but isn't there a version of that on Into the Music too?

this thing from philosopher's stone is all time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkAT7muk5Ec

and this!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrSn1QhN1lE

yeah yr right esp re steppin out queen, God damn

yeah i've always wondered if that song is just straight up improv on van's part or what. barely a song but holy shit!

yeah 'bright side of the road' was on into the music, pretty easily the best post-peak run van album (xgau says best post-moondance, and he may be right). apparently shakira performed it at the obama inauguration!

Into The Music a fine piece of work but hardly the best since Moondance

I prefer it to Moondance. I prefer St Dominic's Preview to Moondance. I prefer Tupelo Honey to Moondance.

see a trend?

"Full Force Gale" is mighty

holy shit steppin' out queen - i just went fucking ham

how did i not know about this philosopher's stone thing??????

fuckin' a

YOU GONNA PROMENADE!
A LITTLE HIP ACTION!

seems like that release was kinda under the radar (at least I didn't really pay attention to it when it came out). but it's essential imo. van really needs like a comprehensive box set, but maybe he's been on too many different labels for that to happen?

yeah label thing is a huge obstacle, even the comps, as solid as they are, are hurt by this i think. really wish his 80s onward stuff was on spotify, totally the kind of thing that service is best for.