Van Morrison: your views please

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.

I cannot imagine Lemmy putting up with Van Morrison for any length of time tbh.

Oh, to be a fly on any other wall than whatever walls may have enclosed those two.

Lemmy angry with Van for finishing the Crispix

The Old Before Their Time Ones

probably best to start with these killer last frames for the Lemmy & Van Sunday comic and work backwards: "he ate the grapes. he ate the grapes.", "bring me the Raid. bring me the Raid.", "cookies, I made. cookies, I made."(dressed as yoda for halloween)

I really need that "Who's Grumpy" boot

Just checked out "Why are you on Facebook?" I guess you could think of it as him making music relevant to his own age group, and if it were a joke song I might even like it, esp. the long-drawn out "Facebooook" at the end of the chorus. What bums me out is knowing he's 100% serious.

I listened to all of Van Morrison's solo records through to 1991's Hymns to the Silence. I hit the wall with that one and didn't want to go any further. It felt like a bunch of safe adult contemporary with no creative spark. He was consistently interesting before that though - even has a bunch of very good 1980s records like No Guru, No Method, No Teacher and Beautiful Vision.

I quite liked Down the Road, from 2002, I think? It didn't blow me away, but it had nice bittersweet/nostalgic vibe and there are a few songs on it that still stick in my mind: "The Beauty of the Days Gone By," "What Makes the Irish Heart Beat," the title track, maybe some others.

I quite liked Down the Road, from 2002, I think? It didn't blow me away, but it had nice bittersweet/nostalgic vibe and there are a few songs on it that still stick in my mind: "The Beauty of the Days Gone By," "What Makes the Irish Heart Beat," the title track, maybe some others.

Yeah, that grew out of Choppin' Wood after he fired Linda Gail Lewis and proceeded to mix her out or re-record the songs while dropping a few and adding a whole lot more. To be fair "Fast Train" (not "Fast Road" as I said earlier, I mentally squashed that title in with "Down the Road") is a great track, so that would have been missed, but otherwise I strongly prefer Choppin' Wood. Also, "Down the Road" is a great track, but it was also a 20-year-old song that he held back until then - not an unusual practice for Van, but in hindsight, it's like he had tapped that reserve completely dry. (He hasn't, there are some excellent songs that to this day are available only as bootlegged outtakes. But at this point, I don't think I'd want to hear newly recorded versions of them.)

the healing game I liked a lot at the time but haven’t listened to it in forever

keep me singing was good. “out in the cold again” is really affecting despite the first line being
‘I was Mr Nice Guy too long’

"In Tiburon" off Keep Me Singing was really beautiful too, singing about a San Francisco that's about as far away as some ancient Celtic village now

TIL that Garth Hudson played organ on Wavelength

Also Bobby Tench is no relation to Benmont Tench

Excellent things to L.

isn’t there a really awesome song on a musical history that’s literally Van fronting The Band sometime in the 70s? or did I dream that? Think it might be on philosopher’s stone too

He sang on their song "4% Pantomime", from Cahoots.

And co-wrote it too.

hmmm yeah that’s probably what I’m thinking of

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/van-morrison-john-cooper-clarke

Well, someone *loves* the new album...

(The article writer, not JCC...)

looking forward to Latest Record Project, Volume 2: Have I told you lately that I hate you

I need my laptop to play “Why Are You on Facebook?” every time I go to the website.

end of that interview is amazing.

xp Yes! New browser extension where instead of blocking the time-wasting websites it just forces you to listen to Van's latest record project the whole time you're on them.

Well, someone *loves* the new album...

... appalling Tory dickhead, Dylan Jones, to be precise.

Funny name, does he sing “ballad of a thin man” to himself?

So Van's label tried selling signed copies of this to help sales, and they even posted a photo of him signing one. But fans started to grumble that the signatures were fake - at least one reported by the press resembled a printed or stamped signature (the ink's uniform instead of a path of ink traced along by a writing instrument), and several photos of different signed CD's owned by different people have completely identical signatures even though they're placed on different parts of the booklet. (I just saw After the Thin Man for the first time last week, and hilariously this very subject figures in that film where they identify forged signatures using the same method - putting two checks on top of each other over a light and discovering they are more or less identical.) His management has already denied this, pointing to the photo of evidence. All this somehow feels appropriate given Van's support of the same bullshit theories spouted by the orange Mussolini who has relocated to Florida.

hmmm....that's interesting. because at this point i'd think they could probably predict exactly how many copies of a new van morrison album they were going to sell give or take a thousand or two.

guess the press must be turning off some of the hardcore fans

The price wasn't marked up much, if at all, so maybe whoever organized it thought it was "okay" because of that. Plus Van probably said "I'm not signing a thousand f-ing CD's!"

Van probably said "I'm not signing a thousand f-ing CD's!"

Fixed that for you.

"Bring me some Edison Cylinders!"

van usually seems so pumped about going the extra mile to please his fans. disappointed he would be involved in a lazy ripoff

He signed some for us last time around, so, not unheard of for him to do this. They weren't auto-penned or anything, but there also weren't that many. 100 or so, I think.

important new interview i enjoyed very much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZrVM089byI

Picturing Van standing (alone) outside a vaccine centre with a placard with "Down with this sort of thing" on it.

https://news.sky.com/story/vaccine-programme-opens-to-all-adults-in-northern-ireland-12318011

This is Extra ordinary . pic.twitter.com/M0jmA0JIf2

— Stephen Nolan (@StephenNolan) June 11, 2021

Working out the chorus lyrics for volume 2 in public these days.

Why's Van so angry? Rangers won the league this year

Not 100% sure about the chronology, but hours before Nolan tweeted that, he also reported about four Van Morrison gigs that had been cancelled the previous day "at the last minute," so Van could be particularly angry about that happening.

I've never actually seen Van lose it and scream like that before - a pretty sad sight, but at least we got an amusing "Brown-Eyed Girl" request. (Of course Van didn't look amused.)

Unexpected'zinger' there from the DUP's Ian Paisley Jr.

Ah, that's who "junior" was. Not someone I'd ever vote for.

This is the calibre of person Van hangs out with these days.