21-Jun-09 Cardiff Concert Review
South Wales Argus
THE great man was in great form, as was his superb band of highly accomplished musicians.

Sporting his trademark suit, hat and shades, Morrison joined in on piano, saxophone, guitar and harmonica.

There were the old standard crowd-pleasing favourites like Brown Eyed Girl, Moondance, Gloria and Georgia On My Mind.

But where Morrison really came into his own was with more compositions that fuse blues, jazz and Celtic tinges, some of his music is achingly beautiful. He and his band played straight through for an hour and a half without a break to a packed Wales Millennium Centre.

Numbers like In The Garden, The Philosopher's Stone and Heavy Connection were sublimely played and went down a storm.

Van the Man doesn't do audience banter. He and his musicians just let the music do the talking.
-Iwan Davies

Correspondent Mike's report:

Yesterday in Cardiff was a moving experience in a number of ways. Coming off the first show in my previous post I sent some minor disappointment what with the return to the 90 minute format and no Astral Weeks to be found. When I awoke this morning after show two in Cardiff at a magnificent new facility that had tremendous sound
quality (you could hear a pin drop...) I've come away as we all do - wanting and waiting for more. Here's why. My first thought as I rose was that I needed to re-connect to "Veedon Fleece", another of the storied Van classic albums that
keeps coming up along with Astral Weeks as most celebrated, though never selling terribly well and perhaps under appreciated. Since Van is obviously listening to the comments (thank you Johnny G) and perhaps noting that this album is often referred to in a similar vein by we purists as Astral Weeks -- he continued to mine his gold over these past two nights and all I wanted to do was listen again to that album which I did and it was stunning. I've listened twice since early this morning. So Van did his magic, moving off the Astral Weeks train to a new platform and it appeared that we are on another grand non-stop train. Fair Play led off straight away out of both nights following the opening - Van on piano, growling Northern Muse/Solid Ground, lofts into Moondance and then.... real magic. Fair Play was just stunning again and the flair that Jay Berliner lent with Van coaxing him further on ("Yeah, yeah....") -- we've witnessed that exchange in Astral Weeks sets and it's very clear that Van is enjoying his time on stage with Mr. Berliner. It just builds from there and while you may have heard the two setlists by now, in night two we had some very special additions including Streets of Arklow from that same album but rather than Ned's harmonica, it was Jay and Tony and Paul that helped build it and it was magnificent to hear.

Over the two nights we heard some classics from the vault and now that
I've been able to step away from the Astral Weeks phenom, and while I'd still love to see that again (and it's rumoured) in August... Van did as he does and
reminds us why we keep coming back. He takes us back...way way way back and reinvents the music that propels us all forward to the next gig. I'm on that train & now much as I hate to rush the summer, August can't come soon enough. Here's what we got over two nights, in no particular order:

Solid Ground
Foreign Window
In the Garden
Fair Play
Streets of Arklow
Alan Watts Blues (one of MY all-time favs and Paul Moran was spectacular on piano)
Leaves Come Falling Down
The Mystery
Healing Has Begun
Have I Told You Lately
Philosophers Stone
Queen Of The Slipstream
So Quiet In Here
All In The Game
Georgia
Magic Time
Moondance
Brown Eyed Girl(oops - how'd that get in there?)
Mystic Eyes/Gloria.

Now, that's a dream set list if ever there were one and I know some are probably thinking of their own dream tunes to include.
All I might say is that when you wish upon a star....or whatever it is
that you might wish upon (my wife comes to mind...) Whoever thought we'd get Astral Weeks cover to cover. Now that Veedon Fleece is in the mix, No Guru is back after a decade of absence --- hard to know what lies ahead but suffice to say, this briiliant train continues rolling and we're along for a great ride.
-Mike

Setlist:
Northern muse (Solid Ground)
Moondance
Fair Play
Foreign window
It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing About
Allan Watts Blues
The Mystery
When The Leaves Come Falling Down
In The Garden
Streets of Arklow
Philosopher's Stone
Georgia
And The Healing Has Begun
So Quiet In Here
Brown-Eyed Girl
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

Big Hand For The Band!
Paul Moran
Richie Buckley
Tony Fitzgibbon
Bobby Ruggiero
David Hayes
Jay Berliner
Sarah Jory

Thanks to Ivo & Bern for setlist!

20-Jun-09 Bristol, England Concert Review

Bristol Evening Post
VAN THE MAN ON TOP FORM

With ticket prices of £80, this was always destined to be a gig to remember, but Van Morrison’s reputation for unpredictability is the stuff of legend so nobody was taking anything for granted.

In the run-up to this rescheduled gig, there was much talk of the curmudgeonly singer playing tracks from his seminal 1968 album Astral Weeks, as he had recently done in New York and London.

The hefty ticket prices - almost twice what they were the last time he played the venue - certainly suggested the prospect of something as special as a rare airing of his most famous work.

Dressed in his trademark dark suit, black fedora and aviator shades, Morrison walked on stage on the stroke of 8pm with his seven-piece band and he clearly meant business from the outset.

With no acknowledgement of the rapturous reception that greeted him, he sat at the grand piano and launched into Northern Muse (Solid Ground), a track from his lesser known 1982 album Beautiful Vision.

Moondance, one of his most famous songs, came next and then he picked up the guitar for I Like It Like That, a song recorded by his original band Them.

With a career spanning almost 50 years, this fiery Belfast singer songwriter has a vast back catalogue to choose from and he picks the set list as he goes along, depending on his mood. Not even the band know what’s coming next and there is always an air of tension in his performances.

It soon became clear that he was in a more reflective mood and he cherry-picked several tracks from his underrated mid-career albums of the late Seventies and Eighties.

These included some of his more spiritual songs: Queen of The Slipstream and The Mystery (both from 1987’s Poetic Champions Compose) and the magnificent track In The Garden from the 1986 album No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, an epic song during which Morrison brought the volume of his skin-tight band down so low that you could hear a pin drop before raising the roof again.

And there were even more gems to come - a brilliant version of Into The Mystic from the classic 1970 album Moondance and a superlative rendition of And The Healing Has Begun from 1979’s Into The Music, with Morrison playing some mean electric guitar, slapping his instrument like a man a fraction of his 63 years.

After 90 minutes, Morrison left the stage, having not acknowledged the audience or uttered a word all night.

Before the band had chance to leave the stage, he returned to play some improvised bluesy harmonica before going straight into a raucous version of Gloria, which had the audience to its feet and still dancing as he slipped away again and the lights came up for good, job done.

OK, a tad disappointing if you had paid £80 expecting to hear Astral Weeks, but this was Van Morrison on top form and to see this legendary singer at such close quarters, rather in the large arenas he could play, has to be worth every penny even if he doesn't acknowledge it himself.
-Mark Taylor

Here' Bern's Report:
Still totally blown away this morning - hard to grasp that he did Fair Play, and it was an awesome performance as well. Someone said to me after that they came to hear the voice but the musical ending to that song was fantastic!
Also In the Garden, and a sincere version too. Much chat afterward about the last time he did this live. I recall him saying once that he didn't sing it any more because he no longer believed in god. Foreign Window and Into the Mystery and Slipstream where also big moments for me. This AW stretch is certainly getting him reconnected with some of his best work.

And not one AW song in the 90 minute set!

Van and slimmed down band certainly delivered for me.
-Bern

Correspondent Gordon checks in:

Briefly... a great gig. Solid Ground with Van on piano then Moondance and in no particular order .... a wonderful version of In the game, Fair Play (!!), Queen of the slipstream, The mystery song freom poetic champions (sorry I'm tired... whats your excuse), In the garden, (not played live for a while), A filler Magic time, the one about sleeping on a pallet on the floor in the palace of the lord (brilliant), NGMT (also brilliant), also Into the Mystic, Help me, and a song I could not identify.

That's all for now must chill as I am in work tomorrow - everyone was on a buzz about so many people from all over and that just added to the evening - cheers Van and all Vanatics for a great evening... enjoy Cardiff !!
-Gordon Home "in Bristol"

Setlist :
Nothern Muse (Solid Ground)
Moondance
Fair Play
Foreign Window
The Mystery
Help Me
Have I Told You Lately
All In The Game
In the Garden
Queen of the Slipstream
Into the Mystic
Magic Time
Healing Has Begun
Mystic Eyes/Gloria

Big Hand For The Band!
Paul Moran
Richie Buckley
Tony Fitzgibbon
Bobby Ruggiero
David Hayes
Jay Berliner
Sarah Jory

New US Concerts Announced

Ticketmaster
August 4 – Boston, MA – Wang Theatre

August 6 & 7 – Washington, DC – DAR Constitution Hall

August 8 – Atlantic City, NJ – Caesars Ballroom

Van To Be A 2010 Walk of Fame Honoree

Hollywood Reporter
2010 Walk of Fame honorees revealed

Russell Crowe, Adam Sandler, Bill Maher and Ringo Starr are among the entertainers who will have their names added to Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce announced Wednesday that next year's Walk honorees from the world of motion pictures will be Crowe, Sandler, James Cameron, John Cusack, Colin Firth, Gale Anne Hurd, Alan Menken, Randy Newman, Emma Thompson and Mark Wahlberg.

TV honorees are Maher, Chris Berman, Jon Cryer, Peter Graves, Jimmy Kimmel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Sam Waterston.

Recording artists to be recognized are Starr, Bryan Adams, the Funk Brothers, Alan Jackson, Chaka Khan, Van Morrison, Marco Antonio Solis, ZZ Top and the late Roy Orbison.

Andrea Bocelli and the Cirque du Soleil's Guy Liberte will represent live performance and theater.

Reuters Interview With Van

Reuters
Van Morrison's career almost over before it began

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Van Morrison hates the fame game so much that he would have abandoned his music career 40 years ago if one of his early albums had made him a superstar.

The album in question is his second solo release, "Astral Weeks," which failed to crack the U.S. or British pop charts when it came out in 1968 but is now regarded as one of the greatest musical works of the rock era and is generating new interest more than 40 years since its release.

Undaunted by the initial commercial setback, the Irish soul singer says he "just moved on" to his next project: The 1970 album "Moondance" whose title track is one of his best-known songs.

If "Astral Weeks" had generated the sales commensurate with its eventual stellar status and transformed him into a huge pop star, Morrison is in no doubt about his reaction.

"I would have quit the business had that happened," he said in an email interview with Reuters. "I am not one who has ever taken well to fame and what that attracts. It's a drag. I just wanted to be a songwriter and a singer. I did not bargain for all the rest of it."

Morrison, now 63, has spent his entire career trying to dodge "all the rest of it," in the process becoming one of rock's most unknowable figures. A hugely influential artist who was in turn inspired by Ray Charles and Lonnie Donegan, Morrison has earned a reputation as a grumpy old man and has zero tolerance for showbiz frivolity. He even failed to turn up to his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1993.

FICTIONAL FAVORITE

But Morrison remains proud of "Astral Weeks," which ranks at No. 19 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the greatest albums of all time and is now a steady seller along with the rest of his vast catalog.

The disc, recorded in less than two days in New York City with a jazz quartet assembled by producer Lewis Merenstein, was a marked departure for the singer of the pop hits "Gloria" (with his band Them) and "Brown Eyed Girl."

Morrison had spent years crafting the songs, setting mysterious lyrics referencing his Belfast childhood to multilayered arrangements. The centerpiece of the free-form improvisational effort was "Madame George," a 10-minute tune whose meaning confounds the writer and his fans to this day.

"I was practicing songwriting," he recalled. "Each composition is a fictional story I made up to work on my craft as a songwriter. The rest of the stories people say about my music is fiction as well. I do not tend to write about me. I write about the collective, the collective unconscious."

While many artists of a certain vintage avoid dwelling on their past glories in an effort to show that they are still relevant, Morrison is simply reveling in "Astral Weeks."

To mark its 40th anniversary, he performed the album in its entirety at two shows in Los Angeles last November, and released the fruits on the DVD "Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl," which has just gone on sale exclusively at Amazon.com. A CD was also released through his own EMI-distributed label.

He has also revived "Astral Weeks" at sold-out shows in London and New York City.

Morrison has been accompanied on stage by an orchestral string section as well as a band comprising two of the veterans from the original "Astral Works" sessions. He has also ad-libbed new material to many of his compositions.

"To me it is very forward-looking and, I am told, iconoclastic to have the guts to take a vintage work and take it somewhere else," he said. "Each and every show, I have discovered layers I had not noticed in my lyrics and magic from every crowd."

Morrison said movie studios have expressed a lot of interest in licensing the live recordings. It helps that the vague lyrics can be applied to virtually any situation.

"Any film would be done right by the live versions of these compositions," he said. "Each can tell a story -- whatever story one wants to make of it. This is why when people say 'It's about this or that' I just laugh because that is about the person listening -- not me. These songs trigger things in people's own imaginations. That is their stuff -- not mine."
-Dean Goodman