29-Sep-09 Chicago Theatre, Chicago Concert Review
Chicago Tribune
“Astral Weeks,” a 1968 album that produced not a single hit but remains one of the most revered works of the rock era, was the main course at Van Morrison’s sold-out concert Tuesday at the Chicago Theatre.
Its eight songs were performed in slightly reshuffled order from the original album, presumably so Morrison could present the album in definitive form. His nine-piece band was designed to evoke the flavor of the original, with its mix of acoustic instrumentation, chamber-pop orchestration and agile, jazz-flavored interplay. At the center of it all was the Irish soul singer in fedora and shades. As is his habit, he didn’t say anything to his audience that wasn’t already in his music.
He played with a mixture of resolve and distraction, throwing himself into some songs and tossing off others, notably the obligatory hits “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Have I Told You Lately.”
The singer and his musicians eased into the concert a bit uneasily, with muted versions of relative obscurities such as “Northern Muse (Solid Ground)” and “Fair Play.” The band was best when Morrison was setting the tempo on acoustic guitar, and he found a rich vein of country-soul that morphed into brass-fueled R&B in “Little Village,” shouting off the microphone and soloing on his saxophone. Soon after he delivered an incantatory version of “In the Garden,” working subtle variations barely above a whisper into a song like a prayer.
If the set so far had been a bit relaxed, the start of “Astral Weeks” in the show’s second half found the musicians leaning into their instruments, visibly rising to the challenge.
The album is less a narrative then an exploration of emotional extremes, the human experience laid out in childhood reveries and adult anxieties, infatuation and sadness, desire and death. To reflect that bittersweet volatility, the music ebbed and flowed, the upright bass of David Hayes surging to the front of the mix and then receding, Jay Berliner’s guitar and Tony Fitzgibbon’s fiddle answering each other like human voices, while Morrison turned his voice into a saxophone, the way he reshaped syllables and phrases.
Berliner, the lone musician on stage who also played on the original “Astral Weeks” sessions, embroidered every vocal phrase on the brilliant title song, and the three-piece string section played a slow, shivering fade – the night’s single most enduring moment.
“Turn me up!” Morrison yelled to his sound engineer as he and Berliner traded lines in “Beside You.” Then came the dark “Slim Slow Slider,” which ended the original album on a devastating note, its anguish now punctuated by Morrison’s slashing rhythm guitar.
“Cypress Avenue” couched its illicit longing in stately harpsichord. “The Way Young Lovers Do” swung ebulliently. And the elegiac “Madame George” brought the song cycle to a close with an invitation to leave this world – presumably for a better place. “Get on this train,” Morrison chanted as if in a church, conjuring images of Curtis Mayfield’s civil-rights anthem “People Get Ready.”
After that, a mini-medley of the singer’s garage-rock classics with Them, “Mystic Eyes” and Gloria,” felt anti-climactic. Four decades after it was recorded, “Astral Weeks” remains a tough act to follow.
-Greg Kot
Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Brown Eyed Girl
Fair Play
Foreign Window
The Mystery
Little Village
Have I Told You Lately
In the Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cypress Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Mystic Eyes/Gloria
Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
26-Sep-09 Wells Fargo Theater, Denver Concert Review
Denver Post
Van Morrison was armed well at his Denver concert on Saturday night.
Wearing his ever-present sunglasses, suit and fedora, Morrison switched between a white acoustic guitar and a harmonica, an electric guitar and an alto saxophone during his 90-minute, no-nonsense set at the Wells Fargo Theatre on Saturday.
The time spent with Morrison was hardly as memorable as the artist’s Red Rocks show a few summers back, but longtime fans were pleased as Morrison kicked off the evening (at 8 p.m. sharp, no less) with “Northern Muse (Solid Ground),” “This Love of Mine” and “Fair Play.”
The singer-songwriter catered his performance to the fans who have faithfully followed his music beyond “Brown Eyed Girl,” the fans who enjoy/revel in elongated takes – accented by multiple solos – of “Foreign Window” and “The Mystery.” I’ll admit that I’m not that fan, but still Morrison’s top-notch six-piece band made for an entertaining evening.
The gentleman on the flute/tenor sax/bari sax was a master player who was versatile enough to handle all three of those instruments with aplomb, and the seated acoustic guitarist was a madman who slayed each of his solos and accented Morrison’s playing smartly, ably.
Speaking of the solos, the best part of the show came watching Morrison dole out the solos – with a head-nod here and a finger-point there. You could tell some of it was impromptu, as Morrison would sometimes bark at an unprepared player – the flutist/sax player and the pianist/trumpeter – to pick up his other instrument and join him on an improvisation.
Morrison’s shows are always studies in dynamics, and the loud-soft-loud of his songs is one of his trademarks that, like his hat and glasses, has become a cliché. But Morrison’s cloud-lifted, otherworldly voice never gets old.
That said, Saturday’s setlist, which also included “Queen of the Slipstream,” “All In the Game” and a gorgeous “In the Garden,” wasn’t ideal. It’s not like anybody who paid between $90 and $350 to see Morrison expected to hear “Brown Eyed Girl,” but he could have thrown a couple more familiar bones.
He played fewer than 15 songs, and of those, only two or three were familiar hits – including “Moondance” and the Them track “Gloria.” And of those, Moondance cruised on a sweet backbeat while “Gloria” sounded like a dated anachronism – a shame indeed because it’s one of the strongest songs he’s written to date.
-Ricardo Baca
Here's Rick's review:
OK, so one night after Vegas, with an 8:00 start time instead of 7:00 in a city in which he has usually punched the clock, I was expecting Van to simply mail in tonight's set. What I didn't expect, and what we got, was a Van fan's wet dream. I mean, I suppose it could have been better, he could have encored with a ten minute version of Cyprus Avenue, and at the end screamed "It's too late to stop now", thrown down the mic an stormed off the stage.
But what we did get is a Van who was engaged throughout, great sound, nice sightlines and a show worthy of the ages. The setlist is below. Trust that even though the man never spoke to the audience, he was pointing out solos generously, and letting the band do its thing. Setlist surprises were Little
Village and Philosopher's Stone, but the highlight had to be the extended version of Fair Play, including scat, harmonica and a solo from David Hayes on the stand-up bass that looked like he was making love to it. And one night after an abbreviated "You Know What They're Writing About" when the audience got enthusiastic a little too early, the same thing happened except Van then went straight to the Rainbow in his Soul and Making It Real One More Time and ripped it up.
Oh, and he needed the 90-minute clock, because the show clocked in at 88 minutes. But a sublime 88 minutes it was.
-Rick
Setlist
Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
{Images via Erik Kabik}
Saturday, September 26, 2009
25-Sep-09 Hard Rock, Las Vegas Concert Review
Vegas News
Morrison, wearing his iconic black Fedora and dark sunglasses, performed some of his greatest tunes and demonstrated his powerful and dynamic vocal prowess as the audience hung on every note. At times you could hear a pin drop in the Joint as he skatted and whispered out some of his vocals and then slowly and soulfully built them up into soaring powerful deliveries that got the crowd on its feet and into full roaring applause and cheers.
The sold out crowd was fully engaged with Morrison throughout. He was in full command of the stage, his large backing band and the gold microphone and gold microphone stand embellished with the initials VM. Morrison also played piano, guitar, saxophone and harmonica throughout the show.
Highlights included the tunes In The Garden, Moondance ( a jazzy version reminicent of classic Miles Davis and Art Blakey tunes), Gloria, And The Healing Has Begun, That's Life and Have I Told You Lately?
- Erik Kabik
Here's Chris W's review:
Van really came to sing at the Hard Rock tonight. The first half of the show was simply sublime. He stretched every song out and seemed to be in that spiritual "higher plane." The Voice and the band were in total sync. The newly renovated Joint was somewhat cavernous but this is Vegas. They obviously had unlimited bucks to spend on sound, lights, video screens, etc. and it showed.
Highlights included a beautiful Fair Play, In the Garden, Foreign Window, and Mystery. His tone wandered a bit at the beginning of Slipstream but he brought it back into another drawn out triumph.
Then he went into the real VM "Workshop," All in the Game and he seemed to be impossibly taking it into an even higher realm. He brought the end of "You Know What They're Writing About" to a whisper and started backing away from the mic. The applause quickly built to a crescendo, Van looked up, I think a little disgusted, and abruptly ended the tune. I think the string of medium- to
slow-tempo relatively obscure tunes proved too much for the alcohol-fueled casino crowd.
Next thing you know the band is walking through a perfunctory Moondance (standing ovation) followed by Help Me. He walked off the stage at the end of a well-sung And the Healing Has Begun and we wondered if we would get BEG, Gloria or both. Instead he did Common One with Richie before the usual Gloria closer. It was just about 90 minutes at the end of the last drum crash so I figure he needed another (somewhat longer) song to add to the "encore." The crowd waited
around for a long time thinking they could bring the band back with more applause. They didn't know that Van was probably at the airport before the end of Gloria. Admittedly, the airport in Vegas is pretty close.
Half of one of the best shows I've ever seen is pretty good. Am I too greedy to have wanted a whole one?
- Chris
Setlist
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
That's Life
Fair Play
Foreign Window
In The Garden
Queen of the Slipstream
Moondance
Help Me
Have I Told You Lately
And The Healing Has Begun
Common One
Gloria
Big Hand For The Band
Paul Moran
Tony Fitzgibbon
David Hayes
Richie Buckley
Jay Berliner
Bobby Ruggiero
{Images via Steven Lawton & Erik Kabik}
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Van Fans Pre & Post Show Gatherings 
Come enjoy a drink (or two) and meet other Van fans before the show!
Meeting places are listed on the left under the venue info under Concert Schedule. Additional gatherings to be added when confirmed.
Email me if you have any questions or want to suggest a place if you do not see one listed: vanmorrisonnews{at}yahoo.com
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Astral Phenomenon: Van Morrison In Conversation, Sort Of
Montreal Gazette
The fact that Van Morrison is on the road performing his 1968 album Astral Weeks might suggest he’d be keen to reminisce about the recording, heralded as a masterpiece by too many musicians and critics to count.
But if you think that, you might not know the first thing about the mercurial singer.
In an email interview with the Gazette, Morrison was dismissive when asked how the original album sounds to his ears these days. “It sounds like a 20-something-year-old me,” he wrote. “I do not listen to it. But I suppose it sounds like it always did.”
In the 1979 essay collection Stranded: Rock and Roll For a Desert Island, the iconoclastic – and difficult to please – critic Lester Bangs said Astral Weeks was “the rock record with the most significance in my life so far.” In a rhapsodic retrospective, Bangs referred to a “swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work.”
Even if such assessments were meaningful to Morrison – which is doubtful – it wouldn’t make him any more inclined to preserve the record as a museum piece. When its 40th anniversary came around last year, Morrison celebrated by performing the whole album, slightly resequenced, over two November nights at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
“The whole point is, I wanted to do it live with full orchestration – and that is what I did,” he wrote. “Plus, most of these songs are the least played in my whole repertoire.”
The Hollywood Bowl shows, subsequently released on CD and DVD, featured a small string section and enough musicians to comfortably navigate the unusual chamber jazz and folk sounds of the original release. Guitarist Jay Berliner, who played on the first Astral Weeks, returned for the live revisit. Without providing specifics, Morrison wrote that his Oct. 1 concert here will feature “about the same lineup as in Hollywood.”
The Hollywood Bowl concerts were intended as a one-shot deal. New York and London followed early this year, however, and before long, a full tour was under way.
“Demand was the only reason it carried on,” Morrison wrote. “I only intended two shows in Hollywood to get the recording down live in front of an audience. I prefer live music to studio – especially for a project like Astral Weeks. It gives it a fullness a studio would not have allowed for.”
It’s hard not to be struck by the difference between Morrison’s vocal performance on the 1968 recording and his approach to the 2008 re-invention. On the original, there’s a nervous energy and a sense of uncharted territory that announces an untamed, raw talent – a bona fide original who was probably not yet sure, at 23, of his place in the music business, let alone the world.
At that point, Morrison had had only one hit since leaving Belfast R&B rockers Them: the infectious, catchy Brown Eyed Girl, released the previous year. And his new label, Warner Bros., could only have been hoping for more of the same.
It’s a sure bet that no label suit was wishing for an impossible-to-categorize batch of lengthy free-form compositions with jazz players weaving a wondrous path around the singer’s folk- and blues-based meditations. Not to mention inscrutable lyrics that were more likely to feature drag queens and dying loved ones than brown-eyed girls.
But it was what it was. And it was brought to life by Morrison, singing and playing acoustic guitar, augmented by blue-chip jazz players like Berliner, who had played with Charles Mingus, bassist Richard Davis, who had worked with Miles Davis and the late Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay, along with Van’s own sideman John Payne on flute and soprano sax. With the eight tracks that make up the album recorded over only two sessions – a middle session yielded nothing useable – a classic was born.
Like many classics, however, it sold very little – at least not for a long time. After years of ending up on all-time-greatest-album lists in every major rock periodical you can think of, Astral Weeks earned its gold record only in 2001.
“(It) is a work of such singular beauty, such sustained emotional intensity, that nothing recorded before or since sounds even remotely similar,” Sean O’Hagan wrote in the London Observer last November, encapsulating the slow-building acclaim that eventually added commercial respectability to artistic praise.
The 2008 Astral Weeks, at least as captured on the live CD, is a different animal. It shows Morrison fully self-assured, deeper-voiced and comfortable with a technique that has been honed and crafted, yet still depends on wild abandon for its full force. Challenged by the songs, he sounds at the top of his game.
Which means that while the printed lyrics might say “And I will stroll the merry way and jump the hedges first/ And I will drink clear clean water for to quench my thirst,” what comes out of Morrison’s mouth is “Allathrowamanywayenstepahedgesfirst/ Asadrinkthecleclewallafoddaquenchamythirst.”
Through much of the performance, Morrison is singing in tongues, his voice channeling mystical impressions from somewhere else.
For Morrison, it just comes down to doing what he has always done. “I do not assess it,” he wrote in response to a question regarding the difference between his vocal approach to the Astral Weeks material then and now. “I just do what I do in the moment. I have to have a non-contrived element to all my singing.
“I did not do it the same way twice then and I do not do it the same way twice now. It just happens organically that way,” he explained.
Oddly enough, while much of Morrison’s catalogue has been remastered, Astral Weeks and its hugely successful follow-up, Moondance (1970), are among those that have not been upgraded to state-of-the-art sound.
“I spent a year of my life getting those remasters together,” Morrison wrote. “It was all me. They just ran it through a machine after I did all the work. I retained back, from Universal, half of the remasters. And I intend to put those out on my own at some point – maybe.”
The need for that kind of artistic control is evidenced by Morrison’s insistence on producing his own albums – pretty much since Astral Weeks.
“For one thing, my recordings do not get ruined or stamped with someone else’s opinion, who could not possibly understand where I am coming from musically,” he wrote. “No producer has ever contributed anything to any of my recordings. They have just detracted and pushed back vocals.”
Anyone who has listened to Morrison’s body of work knows that he has an even lower opinion of anyone on the business side of music. Still lower: people who exploit his life to sell books.
“There will always be people who think they know something they have no idea about – and I am one of those things,” he wrote. “It’s bizarre when people write entire books about you and the music who have no clue what they are talking about. That is not to mention the people who make things up just to appear like they are ‘involved,’ or in the know. I am not into that. I have my peace now, but I get it from other sources that no one knows about.”
Morrison also had a few choice words for the state of the way people consume music now. Certainly, in an age where the album is in danger of extinction and music is being mixed and matched via digital downloads, track by arbitrary track, it’s hard to imagine the modern-day descendent of an indivisible work like Astral Weeks ever taking hold.
“The demise of the album was the demise of the record business,” Morrison wrote. “Now it’s just compressed air and digitized distortion of original resonance. That is a shame.”
Still, Morrison has not closed the door on future album-related projects that might echo the Astral Weeks revisit. Queried about his current thoughts on what some consider one of his masterpieces, the 1991 album Hymns To the Silence, he offered a tantalizing bit of information.
“Hymns is one of the albums I would like to rework live,” he wrote. “I hear different things when I listen to it now, and I would like to experiment with it at some point.”
-Bernard Perusse
Van Morrison performs Oct. 1 at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of Place des Arts. Tickets cost $100 to $250. Phone 514-842-2112 or go to www.laplacedesarts.com
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Exciting Van Video News!!
Make sure you check out Van's official video channel, YouTube - OfficialExileFilms, which is in the process of being updated - new videos added today. Expect more to come very soon! Some of the footage will be familiar to fans but there shall also be new edits and new material appearing as well!
The aim is to provide Van's global fanbase with a quality, easy-to-access source of great, Van footage.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
To Be Born Again Documentary To Be Released In Movie Theaters 
Times Online
Film to show Van Morrison is own man
The Northern Ireland-born singer hopes to clear up 'myths' about his past
Nobody ever suspected there’d be days like this: Van Morrison is directing a documentary chronicling his experience in reviving Astral Weeks, a 40-year-old album, in an effort to dispel myths about himself and his career.
One of the music industry’s most reluctant celebrities, the Northern Ireland-born singer-songwriter would never have been expected to co-operate with a behind-the-scenes documentary, let alone make it. Entitled To Be Born Again, it will be released early next year.
The documentary will show Morrison rehearsing for the Astral Weeks tour which began at the Hollywood Bowl last November, and contains lengthy interviews with him and fly-on-the-wall footage shot over the past year.
To Be Born Again will first be shown in arthouse cinemas in New York and Los Angeles, and Morrison is also considering entering the production for the Sundance and Cannes film festivals.
The musician, who has spent much of his career avoiding the media, said he decided to make the documentary so he could “set the record straight”.
Gigi Lee, Van Morrison’s business partner, said he wants to correct a number of misconceptions, such as the belief that all his songs are autobiographical.
“Van tells his own story for the first time so people can hear the truth direct from the man himself rather than relying on the false planted stories of any tabloid,” said Lee.
“The film dispels all the books written by those who do not know him and never met him, who took it upon themselves to tell the public tall tales. It dispels the pretenders and false friends quite well.
“It’s all Van in fine form — raw, candid and completely brilliant in his ability to convey to the audience the nuance of his music. It’s his story, direct from him, without all the mythology connected to it, without all the voluminous fabrications that have been written about it.”
A trailer for the documentary, carried on the website of producer Darren Doane, shows Morrison in the back of a car. He spots some fans with records on a street corner and shouts out the window to them, in a gruff American accent: “Why don’t you buy some new ones?” before rolling up the window and muttering, “f***”.
In another part of the trailer, 64-year-old Morrison tells the camera: “I’ve got these scars. Why do I have to keep showing people the scars all the time, you know what I mean?”
Morrison would like the film to depict him as “a proud Ulster-Scot”, Lee said, “and that whatever people derive from his music is much more about them and their thoughts and projections than him as a songwriter. Each composition is a made-up, architected song and story — his songs are not at all autobiographical”.
Last year at the Hollywood Bowl was the first time Morrison had performed Astral Weeks in one complete concert set. A live album and film — Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl — on Morrison’s new EMI-distributed label, Listen to the Lion Records, followed. There was also a film of the concert, which included an orchestral string section and some of the musicians who had played on the original Astral Weeks sessions in 1968.
Written when he was just 23 and recorded in two days, Astral Weeks failed to crack the charts when it was originally released. The album sold poorly for years and was neglected by his record company.
“It received no promotion from Warner Brothers — that’s why I never got to play the songs live,” Morrison told Rolling Stone magazine last November. But the album has since been hailed as the Belfast musician’s best work. In 2003, Rolling Stone rated Astral Weeks No 19 on its list of 500 greatest albums of all time.
Morrison has also shied away from award ceremonies. He wasn’t in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1993 when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though he did accept honorary degrees from the University of Ulster in 1992 and Queen’s University in 2001. He also became an OBE in 1996.
-Gabrielle Monaghan
Monday, August 24, 2009
More North American Shows Added In September & October
25-Sep-09 Las Vegas, NV - The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel
26-Sep-09 Wells Fargo Theatre, Denver
29-Sep-09 Chicago, IL - Chicago Theatre
30-Sep-09 Toronto, CA - Massey Hall
01-Oct-09 Montreal, CA - Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier
JUST ADDED
02-Oct-09 Toronto, CA - Massey Hall
24-Oct-09 Waterbury, CT, USA Palace Theater
25-Oct-09 New York, USA Wamu Theater
28-Oct-09 Mashantucket, CT, USA MGM Foxwoods
Friday, August 21, 2009
San Francisco Examiner Interview With Shana Morrison
San Francisco Examiner
Shana Morrison’s back making music
Shana Morrison’s famous father, Van Morrison, has had a rather high profile lately, not only with his special “Astral Weeks” concerts, but in countless interviews the usually quiet Celt has granted to promote the rare events.
“Every magazine, every newspaper, every TV show — my dad’s there,” Shana says. “He talked to more press in the past year than in the previous 20 years combined. People were running up to me going, ‘Did you know Van’s on “Regis” right now?’ He surprised everybody.”
Shana — a blustery blues belter in her own right — often accompanies her father onstage. But not this time.
In fact, since the 2007 solo disc “That’s Who I Am” on her own Belfast Violet Records, the Mill Valley resident has kept an almost nonexistent profile locally; she’s finally emerging Sunday in her hometown with the Hippie Chick Twang SheBang, a special in-the-round evening with three other songwriters, Kim McLean, Devon O’Day and Eve Selis.
Where exactly has she been for the past two years?
For a hint, Morrison points to her once flaming red mane, now trimmed shoulder-length short and dyed a more timid brown.
For months now, she says, she’s been living the office life in Palo Alto, working 60 hours a week for a new Internet startup that prequalifies prospective employees for high-tech positions.
“Companies like Yahoo and Google have so many applications coming in, so we screen them through our Web site,” she says. “They want to be a Java programmer? They do the Java test. And we also do personality tests, math and logic and English tests.”
The singer only returned to Mill Valley, and her songwriting, a month ago.
“As a musician, you have to diversify,” Shana says. “You wear different hats, do different jobs to balance everything out. And it’s great to take my mind off music for awhile. When I come back, I’m always refreshed and reinvigorated.”
That’s how she hit on her novel SheBang concept, an evening of serious female composers trading songs and stories that’s already wowed Nashville. O’Day even launched an Internet radio station at live365.com called the Hippie Chick Twang Cast, featuring similar artists.
It feels great to be back, says Shana, who actually took some of her company’s tests before she left.
“I got a bad grade on the English one,” she says. “And then I did the personality test, and the results said, ‘You should never attempt to do anything creative, and you will never be a leader.’ So I’ve wasted my entire life!”
-Tom Lanham
IF YOU GO
The Hippie Chick Twang SheBang with Shana Morrison
Where: Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley
When: 7 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $18 to $25
Contact: (415) 383-9600, www.142throckmortontheatre.com
Monday, August 17, 2009
New Van Morrison Documentary, To Be Born Again, To Be Released in Early 2010
Rolling Stone
What started as a few shows to revisit Van Morrison’s 1968 classic Astral Weeks — an album he’d never previously performed live — has blossomed into a much larger celebration of the LP. First, Morrison turned a November 2008 performance in Los Angeles into the live film/album Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl. Now he’s on a full-blown Astral Weeks tour that will run at least through this fall, and there are more related releases in the near future: Morrison is so dedicated to his Astral Weeks revival that fans will be able to witness the entire year-long process of rediscovering the record in the forthcoming feature-length documentary To Be Born Again.
The film, slated for an early 2010 release, will draw from live performances, interviews, rehearsals and other behind-the-scenes footage, starting with the first Hollywood Bowl shows last fall. The doc features footage shot exclusively during the past year, and Morrison (who’s directing) is looking forward to finally telling his story the way he wants it to be told. “The film shows the real Van Morrison,” explains Darren Doane, the filmmaker who co-directed the Live at the Hollywood Bowl concert film and will be working alongside Morrison for the documentary. “It’s his film. And the film is about exposing and tearing down all the myths about Van Morrison and the music industry as a whole.”
Watch Preview of To Be Born Again
For Morrison, Astral Weeks — an album that sold poorly for years and was neglected by his record company upon its release — has stood as a metaphor for his long history of breaking boundaries and pushing artistic limits. “It received no promotion from Warner Bros. — that’s why I never got to play the songs live,” he told Rolling Stone last November. Reclaiming the album as his own through thrilling live performances during the past year has been a liberating experience for Morrison, whose recent Astral Weeks shows have been some of the most inspired performances of his whole career. Using Astral Weeks as his spiritual and artistic focus, Morrison has been revisiting other similarly overlooked portions from his immense catalog, performing breathtaking versions of rarities “Fair Play” and “Streets of Arklow” from the underappreciated 1974 album Veedon Fleece at recent shows in the Northeast.
As for other projects in the works, Morrison is, as always, writing new material but remains focused on his Astral Weeks revival, gearing up for a set of U.S. shows this fall while he puts the finishing touches on To Be Born Again. As Doane explains, the film will be “just one more aspect of Van creating.” As director of the film, Van Morrison is behind all of the creative decisions for the documentary and the film should unmistakably be a product of Morrison’s artistic vision. As Doane puts it, “It’s another 90-120 minutes of pure Van art.”
-Jon Bernstein The Pretender
Monday, August 10, 2009
08-Aug-09 Atlantic City Concert Review
Here's Dan's review:
Nicer venue at Caesars than expected, especially with the name Circus Maximus. About 1,600 seats and a potent, crystal-clear sound system. Much more definition in the instruments and voice than at the DAR in DC. No changes from the Friday night DC setlist, except for Game added in early part of set and Gloria to end the gig. It was another superb performance that was both deeply serious and irresistably joyous and upbeat. Van has broken out that sweet humming he does for these gigs.
The audience was along for the ride, and seemed to enjoy every minute of it. Van and the band's presentation has been so quietly dramatic that the audiences have been allowing Morrison to work deeply and mine whatever improvisational vein he wishes.
Morrison's band has been called on to improvise as never before, and all these wonderful players have risen to the challenge. Van and Jay Berliner were going at it so juicily during Ballerina that Morrison laughed in delight. Tony Fitzgibbon and Richard Buckley have been their usual excellent selves, and all the band deserves to be name-checked.
Last night's Arklow locked into a deep Celtic blues. Foreign Window featured Van "sleeping on a pallet on somebody's floor". In Madame Joy George, he warns about the "frickin cops". In Slim Slo, Morrison rhapsodized about the Rock Island Line "a very fine line" and also evoked memories about emerging from the German doctor's office with some railway carriage charms and feeling like he was "walking on air. One pill to take you up, two to take you back down."Sweet Thing into Burning Ground was a showcase for Van's emotional control and power.
This was a marvelous run of gigs, save the runt on Thursday in DC. Boston was magical; 2nd Night DC may have been the most beautiful show I have ever heard from Van; and Atlantic City was filled with a life-affirming sense of wonder. Looks like the train shows no signs of stopping through the rest of the summer and into the days of the leaves.
-Dan M.
Setlist:
Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
Fair Play
The Mystery
Foreign Window
Streets Of Arklow/You Don't Pull No Punches
All In The Game
In The Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing>Burning Ground
Cyprus Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
On Hyndford Street
Gloria
Big Hand For The Band!
Tony Fitzgibbon
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Bobby Ruggiero
David Hayes
Jay Berliner
Paul Moran
Rick Schlosser
[Image via Taylor Hill/Getty Images]
Sunday, August 09, 2009
NPR
Van Morrison Revisits His 1968 Classic
(Audio Below)
Van Morrison's 1968 Astral Weeks is perhaps the seminal album of the folk-rock genre. Morrison has described the album as a series of short stories and impressions, some gathered from his time spent in New York and Cambridge, Mass.
"It's just impressions, basically, things people were saying," Morrison says. "Songs come from strange sources."
But when Morrison approached his record label with the album, they almost shelved it.
"All they did was release it," Morrison says. As they call it in the music business, the album was 'buried.' That was kind of the order of the day. You just got ripped off — that's just the way it was."
The Album That Would Not Go Away
But over the years, the album kept coming up. It was a perennial favorite in polls with titles like "What is the greatest album of all time?" On the other hand, Morrison himself had been content to forget the album ever happened.
"It was suppressed in my memory," Morrison says. "As far as I was concerned, it just didn't exist."
Now, the album has an almost mythological status in pop culture. Everyone from Glen Hansard to Johnny Depp has talked about how it changed their lives.
"I don't know what to say because it didn't change my life," says Morrison. "I don't know what to make of [the mythology]. It's like any sort of art form — it's whatever it means to you."
Morrison's cynicism goes further.
"Rock is a brainwash — I think that's where your mythology goes back to," Morrison says. "It's the most pretentious area in music. It's got singers who don't really sing."
In any event, this year Morrison will be touring select cities and performing every song from Astral Weeks. But he says not to expect the sound of his 1968 recordings from his live performances.
"I'm not this 21- or 22-year-old guy," Morrison says. "You move on."
-Guy Raz
Saturday, August 08, 2009
07-Aug-09 Washington, DC Concert Review
The Baltimore Sun's Midnight Sun Blog has a review of the show.
Here is Mark's review:
We sat next to several folks from North and South Carolina who had made the car trip up to Washington DC. Very nice Van Fans! We also chatted with the security guy who was at the foot of the stage. He spoke of last night's (Thurs) concert and how he only recognized the two "60s songs" at the end of the show! (BEG and Gorilla). So, I was certainly expecting that we would get at least Mystic Eyes/Gorilla as the encore. As you will read later on encores were not in Friday's "Astral plans".
At 8:10pm the house lights went dark and band members took the stage quickly followed by our hero, Van The Man. Van took his seat at the grand piano and began the beautiful slow arrangement of Northern Muse (Solid Ground). I really enjoyed this version and it was fresh to our ears. The show was off to a great beginning!
Next up was Fair Play. My wife and I have dreamed for decades of hearing anything off of Veedon Fleece and we finally were given the opportunity last night. The sound was lush and so romantic. Van's vocal chords opened up fully during Fair Play and you could not help but surrender to the beauty of it all. I was in a trance already. Lots of fans stood at the end of Fair Play and applauded. Van was "2 for 2" and batting 1.000 coming out of the box.
Fair Play was followed up by a mediocre reading of The Mystery. Van never "let himself go" and did not probe the mysteries of this song. It was a very straightforward rendition and he was too fidgety and distracted by something going on with the sound. He asked for his microphone levels to be turned up several times with hand gestures and few of his little barking commands. Oh well, two for three at the point.
Foreign Window was next! NGNMNT is a fave of ours and my wife and I smiled at each other upon hearing the opening notes.....this one was done perfectly! Van gave it his all and seemed to be enjoying the sounds coming from the band. Van really concentrated on the vocal beauty of the song. Some very nice improv passages towards the end of Foreign Window.
Back to Veedon Fleece and a rousing rendition of Streets of Arklow (with a snippet of You Don't Pull No Punches tacked on the end for good measure). Van and the band absolutely nailed this one. The flute, the violin, the piano, the guitar were all featured. Lush lush lush and again you just had to surrender to the beauty of this masterpiece. We were in heaven. About half the audience stood to clap at the end.
Next up was a breathtakingly beautiful rendition of In The Garden (back to NGNMNT). I was lucky enought to have seen Van on the NGNMNT tour at Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia July 1986, and this 2009 version was even better than the 1986 version. There are really no words to describe the connection that Van made with the audience last night during In The Garden. It was absolutely unreal. The entire crowd was in a trance during the whispered ending. Again, a majority of the crowd stood at the end to show their appreciation for this masterpiece. Van was batting 5 for 6 on the pre Astral warm up songs.
Now on to Astral Weeks:
By now everyone has at least heard the live version of AW at the Hollywood Bowl. I will try and convey what was different about last night's version.
Astral Weeks was cut a bit short. Van never got into this one last night. He seemed to rush the ending and never got into the improv section of it. Nobody transcended with Van because Van never tried to take the title track to a special place. Oh well, things got better in a hurry.
Slim Slow Slider was even better than the Hollywood Bowl version - a complete connection between Van, his band, and the DAR audience. I recalled how much I enjoyed the version from the Supper Club 1996 shows, but this 2009 version was even better. (I hope that a tape of the show appears so that I can hear this one again.) My wife and I agreed that this was one of the best versions of Slim we had ever heard! Outstanding!
Next up was the surprise (and piece de resistance) of the evening..........Sweet Thing and Burning Ground. My wife and I had tears flowing at the end (tears of joy). Everyone at DAR rose to their feet at the end of Burning Ground - fans were cheering and whistling and everyone had a look of amazement and wonder on their faces. There is nothing quite like this one-two combination of Sweet Thing and Burning Ground. I witnessed the same thing in June 2004 at the Theater at MSG. Van acted out the carrying of the sack during the noonday sun! Van, the band and the crowd completely connected and we were all in a trance! My soul was on the roof of DAR Constitution Hall and I have never felt a religious experience quite like it. The dynamics of Burning Ground are pure genius. The crowd respected Van during the quiet parts and there were no yahoos yelling the rebel yell. You could have heard a pin drop. Stunning stunning stunning. Nuff said.
Next up was Cyprus Avenue. It was well done but how could anything possibly follow what we witnessed during Burning Ground. I was still thinking of Burning Ground during Cyprus Avenue! I couldn't concentrate. I wanted to hear Sweet Thing/Burning Ground over and over and live through that experience again.
Next up was a very bouncy version of The WayYoung Lovers Do. Great stuff and the band really nails it. Nice solos from everyone.
Ballerina was beautiful. This was another highlight and Van had the audience laughing during the "it's getting very very very very very late" part about the light being on the left side of your head (cheek slap and all). Van's vocal dynamics during this one were spot on.
And finally we got Madame George. A bit short and Van was clearly eyeing the exit stage left signs and was anxious to wrap things up. Nothing special about Madame George last night.
Then the troubles started. Van was not happy with the band's performance or the sound during Hyndford Street. Van was moving his microphone stand around and fussing with his sheet music and lyrics on the stand. He was clearly agitated and annoyed about something. He barked out some orders to a few bandmembers and fumbled over a few of the words during the Hyndford Street reading. He walked off to the left of the stage and never returned. The audience was left at the altar, cheering and hoping for more. The stage hands began breaking down the equipment and the stunned audience accepted the reality that there would be no encore. A very strange ending to a beautiful evening of music.
Shannon has posted her thoughts on her blog.
Setlist:
Big Hand For The Band!
Tony Fitzgibbon
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Bobby Ruggiero
David Hayes
Jay Berliner
Paul Moran
Rick Schlosser
[Image via Brian Reed/Washington Post]
Friday, August 07, 2009
06-Aug-09 Washington, DC Concert Review & Interview With Van
Washington Post
The Van Morrison who showed up at Constitution Hall on Thursday clearly views himself as an artist, not an entertainer. So anybody wanting to hear Van Morrison smash hits would have had more success finding a good jukebox or hitting an open mike night at the local coffeehouse.
But for folks who looked forward to spending the evening with a distaff diva, Van the Man delivered.
Quibblers could harp about Morrison staying away from familiar material as if it'd give him swine flu. And that he modulated his voice less than Willie Nelson and mumbled enough to owe Bob Dylan royalties. His people skills were invisible -- not so much as a hello or thanks to fans who'd paid up to $350 face value to share the room with him, and he yelled at bandmates and stagehands like Buddy Rich on a tour bus.
But, oh, what a supply of attitude and talent! An artist's supply, even.
Morrison's current tour showcases material from "Astral Weeks," a 1968 record that got him his greatest reviews, though it wasn't a big seller and had no radio hits. It's the kind of record best listened to alone in a dark room with a mildly mind-altering substance, and clearly comes from an age long before iTunes and singles downloads. In other words, "Astral" is not an obvious choice for the sort of album-centric tours that so many vintage artists are giving these days. But that's Van being Van. Backed by a large band with strings and horns, he reprised tunes such as "The Way Young Lovers Do" and "Slim Slow Slider" while being at once intense and mellow, hushed and swinging. "Sweet Thing" flaunted the Belfast-born Morrison's special brand of Celtic rhythm and blues.
(Read the rest of the review after the jump.)
Morrison, 63, has never been a poster boy for good living. Thursday night he looked like a bloated pallbearer in his dark suit, dark sunglasses and a black hat. But his voice was incredibly strong and clear whenever he wanted it to be. He didn't want it to be that often: For "Cyprus Avenue," he used his lyrics, scat-like, to send a rhythmic rather than verbal message.
Morrison treated his band and crew horribly. In the midst of "Fair Play," one of a handful of non-"Astral" tunes in the set, he decided he didn't like the tempo and screamed at his drummer to switch from brushes to sticks. Morrison was close enough to the microphone that the crowd couldn't avoid taking in the humiliation. He later summoned a roadie to the center of the stage to move microphone and music stands a few feet away from him, then screamed an obscenity at him while telling him to leave the stage. Then Morrison launched into "In the Garden," a 1986 spiritual glorious enough to get him right with god, flaws and all.
The clearest show of respect for the performer and the performance: There was no talking in the nearly full house as the band played, and, despite all the deep cuts, no shouted requests between songs for his hits. At night's end, Morrison touched on his singles file briefly, though it was so little and so late that it felt more like a taunt than a reward. He turned the band loose on "Gloria," a three-chord garage rocker that he wrote as a teenager and was later covered reverently by, among others, Patti Smith, Jimi Hendrix and another iconic Morrison, Jim of the Doors.
But the biggest surprise came with the opening notes of "Brown Eyed Girl." Given all that came earlier, Morrison couldn't have shocked the crowd more if he'd Tasered everybody. But, consistent to the end, Morrison performed his gem with apparent disdain. He sang the opening of the chorus - "Do you remember when we used to sing" - but turned his back to the seats to let the crowd take the "Sha la la la la la la la la la la ti da." He knew everybody would remember.
-Dave McKenna
Washington City Paper
Van Morrison’s gift was the ability to cop a religious experience from the little stuff—the shade of a redwood tree; Jackie Wilson on a staticky radio; a glass of water. Oh, and women—not for nothing was his first hit (with Irish rockers Them) an elision: Gloria, the chick, and gloria, the great hosanna.
That spiritual suggestibility came off rather muted on Thursday night, when Morrison brought his Astral Weeks revival tour to DAR Constitution Hall. Clad in his signature pinstripe suit, tinted sunglasses, and the fedora that’s been glued to his head for the past decade, Van addressed the audience only once—at the end, to thank the band—and otherwise seemed more concerned with PA glitches than with, say, his immortal soul.
The current tour is the first in which Morrison has performed Astral Weeks in its entirety. In certain circles, this is a big deal. And while he isn’t so much performing the songs as trotting them out, the thrill of recognition is enough to carry the suite. Chalk up some of that eeriness to the presence of Richard Davis, who played upright bass (arguably the lead instrument) on the original record. Over those freely wrought, back-turning basslines, Morrison sang with his new voice—a bark-like thing with little time for dynamics but still capable of the righteous flutter and the tearful break. But woe to he who hasn’t memorized the record: Morrison’s latter-day delivery leaves much to the imagination, lyrics-wise; and the slurs and mumbles that once seemed inspired now seem merely unavoidable. Also: A woman in front of me laughed when Morrison promised to “stroll the merry way / and jump the hedges first”; and “Beside You” now sounds vaguely like a threat.
“Northern Muse (Solid Ground),” meanwhile, had Morrison showing off his facility on the piano, and while he omitted his traditional soul-growl from “Listen to the Lion,” he blew a churning harmonica vamp on “Mystic Eyes.” Van’s still spinning a clipped cadence and being willfully inscrutable, and the through-the-nose crowd lapped it up.
Before the performance, Morrison responded by email to a number of my questions. His responses—terse and, yes, willfully inscrutable—below:
Last November, we heard that Astral Weeks at the Bowl would be a one-off. What prompted the decision to tour?
Because the Bowl was so well received, the demand grew. I originally intended just two shows in Hollywood, to get it recorded live from the stage, raw and uncut. And that was it.
While you’ve done songs like “Cyprus Avenue” in concert before, these shows are the first time you’ve played Astral Weeks in its entirety. Why never before? Why now?
Because this music is timeless, for one, and the record did not get any promotion whatsoever when it came out. These are the least performed songs in my repertoire.
One of the mysteries of Astral Weeks is the fantastic looseness of the band. On the subsequent four records—the exception, perhaps, being Moondance—your backing groups hew to a tighter, more consistent sound. Did you take a stronger hand in arrangements after Astral Weeks? How did the experience of writing and recording that album affect your approach in the studio?
Yes, their brief was to “follow the vocal.” And that was exactly what they did, under my direction.
You’ve spoken publicly about your experience with stage fright. Has that fear dissipated with age?
I do not have stage fright any more, though I had it a couple of times in the past.
How does your current lineup stack up with, say, the Caledonia Soul Orchestra or the Caledonia Soul Express? Is there a different approach on this tour?
The Caledonia Soul Orchestra was from another time when it was all about going deep into the music and nothing else.
What will your next record sound like?
Whatever my soul dictates, I suppose. Good question.
What is the first record you remember listening to? The first record you bought? The last record you bought?
The first record I remember hearing was Bing Crosby on the radio—a song called “Please.” The first record I bought was a 78 of Sonny Terry, an instrumental. I believe the last record I bought was Louis Armstrong—I buy those over and over…even if I already have it!
“St. Dominic’s Preview,” as far as I can tell, is a song about what to do once you’ve gotten what you’ve always wanted; for you, I imagined it was also about reconciling poetic integrity with commercial success. Is that fair? And can you please explain where the idea for the song came from—what is St. Dominic’s Preview?
I was writing at the time—I remember reading about a St. Donimic’s Church in San Francisco. Also, there was a French song about St. Dominic, which may or may not be relevant because songs come in such mysterious ways sometimes….
This is a hobbyist question, but I can’t help myself: If you could compose a band of any artists from any era, what would that band look like? E.g., James Jamerson on bass, Howard Johnson in the horn section…who would that be for you?
I have been around long enough to know there is no “ideal” band. Bands are very individual and work to the musical goals. The ones I might choose may or may not be able to go where I need to go or grasp where I want to be, no matter what their pedigree is. That is a loaded question…but a good one.
SetlistNorthern Muse
Fair Play
The Mystery
Streets of Arklow
In the Garden
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cyprus Avenue
Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen to the Lion
Foreign Window
It's All in the Game
Queen of the Slipstream
Brown Eyed Girl
Mystic Eyes>Gloria
Big Hand For The Band!Tony Fitzgibbon
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Bobby Ruggiero
David Hayes
Jay Berliner
Paul Moran
Rick Schlosser
[Images via Taylor Hill/Getty Images]
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Washington Times Interview With Van
Washington Times
Van Morrison to revisit 'Astral Weeks' in concert
Financially speaking, 1968 was a hard year for Van Morrison. "Brown Eyed Girl," the songwriter's first single as a solo artist, had become an international hit in 1967, yet a skewed record contract kept Mr. Morrison from receiving any royalty payments. Meanwhile, his label continued to push for more pop-oriented music, hoping to capitalize on the single's success.
When the founder of Bang Records died unexpectedly, Mr. Morrison managed to extricate himself from the contract that had all but bankrupted him. A partnership with Warner Bros followed, allowing greater control of his own music but little money upfront. Virtually penniless, Mr. Morrison began recording a new album in September.
"The lack of support and money did force me to do the record lean in '68," Mr. Morrison recalls via email, "but it turns out that was really to my benefit. I learned that to make a solid record, one does not have to have all the producers, bells and whistles. You just have to have the ability, the patience, the ear and the soul. If you can sing and if you write a solid song, all you need is a microphone."
Although Mr. Morrison would eventually insist on producing his own albums, producer Lewis Merenstein was brought aboard to helm the 1968 recording sessions. "I only remember him going for sandwiches," says Mr. Morrison, who nonetheless allowed Mr. Merenstein to assemble a cast of veteran jazz musicians for the project. Bassist Richard Davis, guitarist Jay Berliner and drummer Connie Kay were among those recruited, and their jazz training lent an improvised, impressionistic elegance to the album. Within one month, "Astral Weeks" was complete.
Although "Astral Weeks" never matched the sales of its predecessor, few albums have better stood the test of time. The music is simultaneously baffling and beautiful, mixing uncanny lyrics with an elastic mix of soul, jazz, Celtic folk and classical tropes. Four decades later, "Astral Weeks" continues to yield new discoveries with each listen.
Mr. Morrison claims the record could have been better, however.
"I have just started listening to some old albums of mine, and I wish I would have never let someone else ever touch my songs in post-production," he says now. Recalling his songs were "butchered and killed" in post-production, he vows, "I will never use a producer for post-production ever again; I like real and I like resonance, and that stuff kills it."
To celebrate the album's 40th anniversary — and to revive those elements that had been lost during production — Mr. Morrison has chosen to revisit the songs in concert. "Astral Weeks" had rarely been played live, since Mr. Morrison refused to perform the material without proper instrumentation. Accordingly, a new cast of jazz musicians was assembled in time for two highly publicized concerts in Los Angeles.
Despite the challenging nature of "Astral Weeks," Mr. Morrison only scheduled one rehearsal before opening night.
"I did not prepare," he says. "I did not want to touch until it was time for me to hit the stage, really. We had one rehearsal, and in my estimation it was not hot. The songs came alive in a whole new way [in concert], though. Forty years later, and I just let it rip as if it was brand new. People are saying that I made it new, which I appreciate tremendously. They noticed!"
The concerts were unanimously popular, prompting the release of a live album, "Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl," as well as the launch of a national tour. Dubbed "Astral Weeks Live," the tour has since sold out multiple venues across the country, bringing more attention to one of the industry's most reluctant celebrities.
"I love music, I hate fame," he admits. "Fame draws in parasites and fools. I love singing, though, and this has been the irony of me doing what I do. It's difficult to reconcile the two, so I just keep doing what I do — reluctantly."
For all his discomfort on the red carpet, however, Mr. Morrison maintains a confident, commanding presence onstage. "Each performance of 'Astral Weeks 2009' has tended to have its own power and its own magic, and luckily it evolves into something different than the time before, in a good and surprising way each time. With solid songs, this is what can happen."
- Andrew Leahey
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
04-Aug-09 Boston Concert Review
Boston Globe
So how does Van Morrison singing Them gems “Mystic Eyes’’ and “Gloria’’ feel almost superfluous? Well, when he does those tunes after a cathartic reading of his “Astral Weeks’’ album.
Morrison and his band ended last night’s concert at the Citi Performing Arts Center’s Wang Theatre with those garage-rock paeans. And he began the show with some wonderfully introspective fare that climaxed with the spiritual knockout “In the Garden.’’
But it was Morrison’s venture back into his classic 1968 album that made the night one to remember.
Morrison first revisited “Astral Weeks,’’ a work conceived around the time he was living in Cambridge, last fall with a pair of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl that became the foundation for a live album.
Since then he has performed “Astral Weeks’’ shows sparingly and has only a handful on the East Coast this month. So without overdoing this at-times delicate, almost-always intricate piece of work, Morrison is giving the best of himself.
At the Wang, he did not simply sing the eight-song cycle; he reclaimed its themes of rebirth and awakening in a manner that dispelled criticisms he has endured over the years for seeming uninterested.
Looking fit and ready to work, Morrison arrived on stage wearing his trademark dark shades, dark hat, and dark blazer and took his place at a baby grand for “Northern Muse (Solid Ground).’’ The songs played ahead of the “Astral Weeks’’ tunes mirrored the tone and nature of the main-event material. “The Mystery’’ and “Hard Nose the Highway’’ allowed Morrison and his nine-piece band to work through vocal and solo intricacies that would later congeal beautifully around such “Astral’’ fare as “Slim Slow Slider’’ and “Sweet Thing,’’ songs that alchemize folk, jazz, and pop.
Morrison, playing guitar, sax, and harmonica, did not ape the beefed-up arrangements heard on the live album, instead reinventing the reinventions.
The song “Astral Weeks’’ here got trimmed and tightened. “Cypress Avenue’’ veered from the baroque pop of the original into a poetic flight of fancy. “The Way Young Lovers Do’’ arrived in sleek, dynamic fashion, sounding like the smash hit it should have been originally.
Morrison dramatically inhabited the songs. But as wild as Van got, his band stayed calm, easily following the leader’s every artistic twitch.
After singing “Madame George,’’ Morrison spoke the elegiac “On Hyndford Street,’’ and that’s in his heart, where the show ended.
-Scott McLennan
Boston Herald
It’s hard for old dudes to do young music. Bruce Springsteen is running out of “Born to Run” moxie. The Rolling Stones haven’t been in “Street Fighting Man” shape for years.
But Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” - his masterpiece made when he was just into his 20s - was never young music. From the moment Van the Man cut those eight tracks, they were immortal.
Last night at a packed Wang Theatre, Morrison and his nine-piece backing band did all of “Astral Weeks.” It wasn’t that wicked ’68 piece of wax. But it worked.
The Man emerged in black shades, hat and coat, and strapped on a shining white guitar. Plucking out feisty guitar solos and urging his band on with constant waves of his mighty hand, he growled through “Fair Play” and mashed “Streets of Arklow” into “You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push the River.” The three “Veedon Fleece” tunes primed the pump.
With his grand band, Morrison turned the storied LP into something big. He crowded the songs’ intimacy with long solos, swollen arrangements and rumbling, grumbling, tough vocals. Instead of trying to recreate, he interpreted - which is what he’s best at anyway, even with his own catalog.
The title track became less a mystical meditation and more an Irish barn-dance romp. Next, “Slim Slow Sider” (Morrison mixed up the album’s sequence) got the tempo right, but had a fuller sound as Morrison called more and more of his musicians into the mix. For “Beside You” and “Sweet Thing,” the formula was repeated with diminishing returns as each ended with the full band congesting the tunes.
But “Cyprus Avenue,” with its soothing harpsichord and double-bass intro, was rightly balanced. And “Madame George” was the night’s highlight. Finally commanding his band to lay back - no fiddle solos or sax jams - Van the Mystic peeled off those poetic verses.
“Down on Cyprus Avenue,” he called. Then fainter, but bell clear: “With a childlike vision leaping into view/Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe/Ford & Fitzroy, Madame George.”
That moment was worth the price of admission. Well, almost. Morrison tickets are as ridiculously steep as ever - you can’t see Van for less than a Benjamin.
But no one seemed to complain as Morrison encored with a classic Them medley - the only thing that got the crowd out of their seats and clapping. “Astral Weeks” is wonderful, but rumblin’, ’60s r&b is a great coda.
-Jed Gottlieb
Boston Music Spotlight
Morrison charms Boston faithful with Astral Weeks
If you came to hear mainstream hits like "Moondance" and "Brown Eyed Girl" you came to the wrong place. But, if you came expecting Van Morrison's best you were happily satisfied. And satisfied one should be with tickets going for several hundred dollars, but apparently Van Morrison shows are recession-proof as the legendary Irish star packed them in for a performance of his 1968 classic Astral Weeks along with some other choice numbers. Morrison is notorious for being off as much as he is on. Luckily, the Boston fans caught him on a night where Van the Man certianly lived up to his knickname.
Morrison started off the show on the piano for "Northern Muse (Solid Ground)" starting the show off on solid ground itself as he quickly exhibited his many vocal abilities from his rambling to his held notes born way down in his powerful frame.
For the rest of the show Morrison, dressed in his usual black coat, hat, and shades, took center stage with his white acoustic guitar belting out tune after tune while running his nine-piece band like a Jazz general as he kept to his improvisation tradition, pointing out band members whom he whished to solo. Violinist Tony Fitzgibbon often got the nod, as he did on "The Mystery" before bassist Dave Hayes took his bassline for a walk at the song's conclusion.
Morrison was animated using his hands to invoke a quick saxophone solo from Richie Buckley before he pumped his arms in anticipation of the drum fills on "Hard Nose The Highway". "Streets of Arklow" then segued into "You Don't Pull No Punches" where Morrison built up the energy with calls for several improvisations from his band before taking the song down to a whisper, getting so he quiet that he was amused enough to chuckle to end the song.
Ready to get to Astral Weeks after "In The Garden", Morrison slightly changed the original track order of the album by playing "Slim Slow Slider" , the last song on the album, after the title track opener. Fitzgibbon played a soft solo in "Slider" but got quite lively soon after during "Sweet Thing". Morrison played his harmonica for the first time during the song before taking it down for another delicate ending. He then did some pickin' along with guitarist Jay Berliner in "Ballerina" which provided one of the best jam sessions of the night.
"Madame George" finished off the Astral Weeks performance as Morrison joked, "Gimme Five!" before many fans rose to their feet in awe. The Man took off after the spoken word "On Hyndford Street" only to return a moment later for a short encore that included portions of both "Mystic Eyes" and "Gloria". The encore was appreciated but definitely felt like an afterthought. However, after Morrison exited for the evening during "Gloria" it did give the fans the chance to show their admiration for his stellar band who each individually answered every call Morrison made while sounding so sonically smooth and effortless as an ensemble.
With ticket prices costing a few Bejamins and a classic, yet commcercially unsuccessful album scheduled to be performed, this Van Morrison show surely was aimed towards the diehard fan. Those diehards who know Van Morrison knew he brought the good stuff and it's performances like this that will make fans feel like it was money well spent.
-Kevin McSheffrey
Also - check out Shannon's Blog for her thoughts on the concert in Boston.
Setlist:
Nothern Muse (Solid Ground)
Fair Play
The Mystery
Hard Nose the Highway
Streets of Arklow>You Don't Pull No Punches
In the Garden
Astral Weeks
Slim Slow Slider
Beside You
Sweet Thing
Cypress Avenue
Way Young Lovers
Ballerina
Madame George
On Hyndford Street
Mystic Eyes>Gloria
Big Hand For The Band!
Tony Fitzgibbon
Richie Buckley
Michael Graham
Terry Adams
Bobby Ruggiero
David Hayes
Jay Berliner
Paul Moran
Rick Schlosser
Thanks to Di For Setlist