Van Morrison: your views please

Former Them frontman takes aim at They.

Curious that Van rhymes "wise/do" and "truth/lies" instead of "wise/lies" and "truth/do", his craftsmanship is slipping.

Tempted to poll Morrissey vs Van Morrison.

Thanks Tom for putting to bed any fears I might of had about ‘who’ controls the media...thought he was going to blame the bloody Swedes....here’s Van being interviewed on the BBC about the new album...apparently it’s all ‘satire’...

https://bbc.in/3nXinGD

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that "Play 'No Good Deed Goes...' on Amazon Music Unlimited" was the actual opening line from a song on this record.

Play 'No Good Deed Goes...'
Play it on Amazon Music Unlimited
Play it for the fat washed up paranoid that wrote it.

this thing is so fucking long

oddly, "Why Are You on Facebook" is the most sprightly number here, kinda catchy

Tempted to poll Morrissey vs Van Morrison.

Was thinking of Morrissey too. For some reason.

I can't stop picturing him hand-writing those lyrics out in a stained notebook, chewing the tip of his pen and adding a new line every so often with a gleeful flourish.

funniest thing to me is "volume 1"

I picture the band vamping and he just riffs and riffs, hours on end.

I saw somewhere that he's already got Volume 2 done and it's supposed to be out before Christmas.

van morrison & (((them)))

If anyone hears the track ‘They Control The Media’ please be kind and let us know who Mr Morrison suspects...

It's the Jews.
It's always the Jews.

Revisiting past glories like the hopefully contract ending stuff he did in the late 60s. Though I think duration of tracks there may have been a bit shorter.

yeah his most concise work

2021, A Year In Rock: Greta Van Morrisey

Made it through, tough sledding

TS: Contractual obligations sessions of '67 vs this record? Anyone?

honestly have had no desire to listen to his music in many many years, but this seems like it would be hilarious… I used to intern for a big shot rock journalist who's devotion to Van (alongside Dylan, Springsteen, Bono) is so total that I would imagine him saying "y'know, he has a point… they DO control the media! I worked for the jews! It's true!!!" and I briefly had the stomach to tune into the Dave Marsh show on Sirius, one of two not devoted to kissing up to the artist who's manager his wife works for, and he played shit tons of Van and would go on and on and on about him… I know that a couple posters here are marsh apologists and may listen to his show, so please let us know if he talks about the record tomorrow…

one thing that is kinda weird about Van is he seems like the kind of singer where he voice should be totally shot but it's actually held up better than almost any of his contemporaries

guys a bellend is my view

that said i listened to the title track once when it first dropped and i can still recall the entire thing so he clearly has some kind of morbid talent. a small part of me wants to hear more for trainwreck reasons i don't want antivax/illuminati/MGTOW shit stuck in my head for months. if it was totally incompetent it would be easier to take

He's been rerranging the same three chords for about 30 years.

I mean, so's Neil Young but Neil on guitar vs. Van on sax is no contest.

Van's latter day catalog is two categories: "I bothered to actually write a song" and "fuck it, just play a 12 bar blues"

If you’re inclined to give him the slightest benefit of the doubt for not mentioning the Jews in the media song, just remember he also has a song about being sold out for a few “shekels’”

Why is he putting this out when I can't get a decent remaster of St Dominic's Preview on cd ?
Oh me Oh My

Pretty sure at least one of the songs on this monstrosity is Van bellyaching about his fans only being interested in hearing his old stuff.

xpost if you're looking for problematic songs on the new album don't ignore "Western Man"

I know that a couple posters here are marsh apologists and may listen to his show, so please let us know if he talks about the record tomorrow…

― veronica moser, Saturday, May 8, 2021 5:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I don't have satellite radio, so I've never heard Marsh's shows, but he's never been one to pull punches with musicians he considers close friends. Pete Townshend in particular was harshly criticized by Marsh for an early 2002 blog post supporting the US war in Afghanistan that ended with, "I am grateful for American military might." And Marsh was critical of Bruce for supporting Kerry (who, it is sometimes forgotten, was pro-war, anti-immigration, and anti-gay-marriage) in 2004. I assume Marsh wasn't too keen on Bruce and Obama's podcast, but as I said, I haven't heard Marsh's shows.

Clinton Heylin gets a lot of shit for being an ass to either his peers or his subject matter, but in Van's case, that tendency works great, and it's a big reason why his biography is the best one out there. I suppose it makes it a tougher read to fans who don't want to hear how much of an ass Van has been, but I don't have a problem accepting the fact that there's always been something seriously wrong with Van. I've always taken a glass-half-full view and believe the fact he's made so much great work (and always had a label willing to put it out despite his open hostility towards them) is fortunate and miraculous, because that shouldn't have happened with a sociopathic ass like Van.

But as mentioned, his recorded output over the last 20 years is nearly a waste. Except for Roll with the Punches, the unreleased Choppin' Wood and a handful tracks like "Fast Road" and perhaps the unreleased "At the Crossroads" (anyone have that? Solomon Burke covered it but Van did his own version), nearly everything else wouldn't have been missed if it was dumped in the trash. He can still put on a great show - the ones he was giving at Forest Hills in Queens, NY have been consistently great - but he tosses out so many worthless records that it's easy to see why the good stuff gets overlooked as it's only like 5% or 10% of his output.

(just to clarify, fortunate that we get to hear that work...not so fortunate for the endless number of people who had to put up with his shit)

There’s a hypnotic quality after a dozen or two repeats of the line “Why are you on Facebook?” and by the end I was pilled.

just read the youtube comments section for "they own the media"

lotta nazis there

imagine my shock

Don’t we kind of expect that at this point, though? Every great artist seems to have about a decade of great output followed by a decade of falling off followed by a lifetime of competent but completely inessential dross

Van has done some good material in the 2000s overall, I'd say, until now, his quality ratio is better than most of his contemporaries

I liked something I heard recently, "Close Enough for Jazz," I think, but yeah.

Don’t we kind of expect that at this point, though? Every great artist seems to have about a decade of great output followed by a decade of falling off followed by a lifetime of competent but completely inessential dross

In pop music that's usually the case mainly because it's so rooted in youth culture, and that's always changing. But the resulting doctrinal belief has also unfairly shortchanged older artists who do excellent work later on. The argument becomes much weaker when you look outside of pop music - Miles Davis and Duke Ellington are the first two that come to mind, creating masterpieces several decades apart. I'm reluctant to go along with the idea because it leads to some misguided judgment. Again, it's understandably a common argument in pop music, but it's dubious when brought it up in other art forms, never mind other areas of music.

But as mentioned, his recorded output over the last 20 years is nearly a waste

not to defend the guy who put out latest record project vol 1 but born to sing: no plan b and keep me singing came out within the past decade and are really lovely records

xp - I was thinking Scott Walker, Johnny Cash, David Bowie - artists that started in something close to pop (at least compared to Miles and Duke) and yet managed to put out great (and popular) records practically from their deathbeds.

As a rule of thumb I'd say it applies, mostly. With exceptions, of course, as mentioned. And yeah, a lot less so outside of pop music.

xpost - Brad - have you listened to Magic Time from 2005? I really like that one

Blackstar by Bowie is a masterpiece but overall, I think if you take Van post, say 1990, versus Bowie's output, he's way more consistent and it's not that close

I just feel like a lot of people are assuming things about a discography they haven't and don't intend to listen to

though at the same time, they are so different...Bowie was always looking around for new things, like working with NIN or doing drum n bass stuff etc, where Van just has his vein of soul/jazz/r&b that he worked his whole career so maybe it's not that surprising

this new album is shockingly bad though

Morrison/Bowie definitely feels like an inapt comparison; Morrison/Lemmy is probably a better one. There was a new Motörhead album every two years, and every one had at least 3-4 great new songs on it. And no one outside the core fan base gave a shit.

haha yeah actually that's a great one actually i never would have thought of that

And Van and Lemmy were roommates in the 60s! That's when they hatched their plans for continued musical relevance into the next millennium.

i like magic time quite a bit!

xpost roommates! wow I can't believe I never heard that

Now I don't know where I read that, I can't find confirmation online.