19-Jun-11 Irish Feis - Finsbury Park, London, England

Petra sent theis review

Festival Day No. 2 started with promising sunshine – no wellies needed today. The muddy grounds had dried after yesterday’s rain, cleaned from millions of beer cups, and we were fit and eager for more music to come.

Jimmy Cliff was the first gig we joined in the afternoon – who said it’s an Irish festival. The reggae sounds brought a merry Caribbean feeling to Finsbury Park in sunshine – Jimmy and his band a sight for sore eyes with their Jamaican colored drums and costumes, Jimmy dressed all in gold.

The Irish band Clannad delivered smooth harp sounds and angelic singing (a bit boring to my opinion), but then we were woken up by honest and loud folk rock from the Horslips with great e-guitar playing – music legends in Ireland all of them.

But this is the Van Morrison News Blog and, of course, the main reason why we and so many other people traveled to London from far and near is Vantheman. We hadn’t seen him since his last concerts in Germany in 2008. Van gigs in Europe had become scarce after that, and his fans around the world were worrying if he would do any more gigs at all – the latest one was at the Royal Albert Hall in London in October 2010.

So anticipation was growing extremely for the Vanatics as the scheduled time for the Van gig came … Uwe and me were lucky to stand very close to the stage, together with Mike, Brian and Alan – good company. What would be the line-up of his new band ? Which song would be the starter...  would he do a mere routine gig, grab his money and run... or a real good show which would show us that he’s back to the world?

Van was dressed in a black leather jacket and leather waistcoat, fedora and shades as usual. He seemed to be a bit annoyed with some technical issues in the beginning and I feared the worst. Would he turn round on his heel and leave the stage ? But here it came – probably the best of his gigs we joined, so far.

It was obvious from the start that Van not just meant to meet his contractual obligations as we had feared – he tried hard to deliver good quality and give his best. The band was probably not as tight as it could be – maybe they need quite a bit more rehearsals to be fit for the tour we all hope for … But with Jay Berliner playing a wonderful acoustic guitar and with a great horn section they are not far from being perfect. No harmony singers, no fiddle. The sound was beautiful where we stood - for a big event like this. The other musicians were (as far as I know - Van did not introduce the band members this time …): Alistair White on trombone, Chris White on sax, Paul Moore on upright bass, Paul Moran on keyboards and trumpet, Andy Jones (or was it Dave Keary ?) on electric guitar, Jeff Lardner on drums.

The show started with ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ leading into ‘Here Comes The Night’ and ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ with Van playing sax and a great jazzy fade-out. Now we are through with the crowd pleasers and can focus on what really matters ... Quite smart of Van, I think. Normally the crowd shouts for the “hits” until they get them - what is annoying for everybody.

We were delighted to hear next ‘Fair Play’ from the sublime 1974 Veedon Fleece album. It faded into Van’s mumbled phrasing of ‘church bell chime’ and ‘are you there ?’.

Sounds promising – that’s exactly what we had hoped for … ‘ Real Real Gone’ was next, nice to hear this one again. ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ – beautiful. The inevitable ‘Moondance’ with Van and Chris on sax and Paul Moran playing a magnificent muted trumpet – a sublime version of the old standard. I began to look around and watch some faces in the audience around me. Many young people, some with Asian or African background, swaying to the music with an enchanted expression on their faces. Looks like Van is going to win over another audience generation for him …

‘Have I Told You Lately’ for once was not the awful fast Las Vegas version but sung slowly with a feeling, beautiful muted trumpet sound in the background. ‘Wavelength’ was next – never heard it live before ... ‘It’s All In The Game’ with Van playing sax again. And then a wonderful version of ‘In The Garden’ – had hoped so much to hear this one on our previous gigs years ago … This time ‘No Guru’ had an interesting lyric variation: Van sang ‘holy guardian angel’ instead of ‘holy ghost’, looking up into the bright blue evening sky when singing this line … I think listening to this wonderful song brought tears not only to my eyes … Then he murmured something like ‘Live is something completely different’ …

The only really Irish reminiscence was ‘Star Of The County Down’ getting great audience acclaim, of course. Maybe the most amazing song of this evening was his ‘Ballerina’ version ending up in an unusual rock rhythm – never heard that before.

The nightshirt in ‘Help Me’ with a harp playing Van is an indicator that the show comes to an end. A barn-storming ‘Gloria’ was last as usual – then it was done. No word to the audience – Van wanders off the stage, playing his harp while the band continues to play .. As always.

But Van seemed to be in good shape, good voice, played a lot of great sax solos and was quite obviously doing an effort to deliver a good concert. What he really did. We thought it was probably the best one of the 6 gigs we were lucky to witness, so far. Let’s hope this was the start of a new tour series … It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Van !!

-Petra

Bridgit's  review
Van Morrison - second highlight of the day - entertaining concert, the right mix of fast sing-a-longs and some jazzier standards; started with "Baby please don't go" and ended with - well, of course "Gloria"; "Moondance" could have been longer, "Star of the County Down" had a jazzy touch (reminded me of the Montreux 1990 standard); no setlist here, I'm sure somebody else will provide it... the voice is as good as ever (even though he seemed to struggle). I got pretty much to the front - great sound there, happy people but even amongst the hardcore fans you couldn't get away from the noisy drunkards bumping into you.

PS: Later at the "Twelve Pins" Irish Bar right around the corner they had some fun live music, including yet another shalala Brown Eyed Girl. All these kids were happily dancing to it and singing along. And those I asked all said that their concert highlight of the weekend had been "Van the Man".
-Birgit

Setlist (Thanks To Jordi)

Baby Please Don't Go (Van on harp)

Here Comes The Night

Brown Eyed Girl (Nice new version with good horns)

Fair Play

Real Real Gone

I Can't Stop Loving You

Moondance (Few bars of My Funny Valentine)

Have I Told You Lately (Slightly new version of this classic)

Wavelength

All In The Game

In The Garden

Star Of The County Down

Ballerina

Help Me

Gloria

Van Morrison Returns This Sunday

London Feis June 19, 2011

Photo: Norman Seeff

For line up details, tickets, announcements & news visit: www.londonfeis.com

Your Favorite Van Albums 1980-1989

No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986) 32%

Poetic Champions Compose (1987) 21%

Common One (1980) 13%

Avalon Sunset (1989) 10%

Beautiful Vision (1982) 7%

Irish Heartbeat (1988) 4%

Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast (1984) 4%

A Sense of Wonder (1985) 3%

Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983) 2%

Over one thousand votes were recorded - thanks for participating!

Your Favorite Van Albums 2000-2009

Astral Weeks Live (2009) 38%

Magic Time (2005) 21%

Down The Road (2002) 16%

Keep It Simple (2008) 11%

What's Wrong With This Picture (2003) 6%

Pay The Devil (2006) 3%

The Skiffle Sessions (2000) 3%

You Win Again (2000) 2%

Over a thousand votes were recorded - thanks for participating!

1981 Interview With Van 

by Paul Vincent

From the February 12, 1982 issue of

BAM: The California Music Magazine (issue #123)

Originally Transcribed by David Chance For The van-the-man.info website

Audio available from KMEL archives here.

Van & Paul Vincent November 13, 1981

The following interview took place at KMEL-FM's San Francisco studios in mid-November of last year. Although we don't, as a rule, reprint radio interviews, we were so impressed by the rapport between Van and KMEL jock Paul Vincent that we thought it would be fun to share this rare glimpse of Van Morrison with our readers.

Paul Vincent: How different is it being Van Morrison the artist now as opposed to Van Morrison the artist in the '60s?

Van Morrison: I think now there's a lot less emphasis on art in the music business. It's completely different. When I started there were more people like me. Now there are fewer people doing creative stuff, writing songs or whatever.

PV: Is it difficult separating music from "the business"?

VM: Yeah it is, because the business is like a fixed system now. It's gotten that way because of econimics, I guess.

PV: How do you cope with that?

VM: Well, in some way you've got to compromise. If I really did what I felt I wanted to do, it might be sort of inaccessible because, for instance, when you make an album you end up with three-, four-, maybe five-minute songs, but when I actually just play with other musicians things stretch out much longer than that, so you have to edit it and re-shape it to make it accessible for people to "get it."

PV: "Summertime In England," from Common One, was originally thirteen minutes long, and the record company released an edit of that. Does that distress you when you hear your work edited?

VM: No. That's what I'm saying--you have to do that, 'cause at the pace we live in the world we live in, that's the way it's done.

PV: You play quite a bit in the Bay Area, but you haven't toured in a while. I can understand the negative aspects of touring, but there are also the positive aspects--the reaction you get from people in different cities, and so forth. Do you miss that at all?

VM: You see, for me it was more negative than positive. I take my involvement with music as a whole thing. I was telling somebody yesterday that this album I have coming out has taken me 21 years to make. It's not just an album, something I did months ago. I don't just take it as 1981 or 1982. I've been in it for 21 years, so it's taken me 21 years to get to this point. It's accumulated experience. Getting back to the going on the road thing--I started going on the road when I was 15, so by the time I was 21 I had had enough of touring. Before I even walked in a studio all I knew was touring, one-nighters.

PV: Do you see a time when you might just write and record and not tour at all? Miles Davis, for instance, just came out of a semi-retirement of seven years to do some gigs, and there are other examples of artists who write but don't perform.

VM: It's hard to say, because it depends on a combination of things. If you're happy with the band you've got and it's really happening, you can stand to do more gigs and combat staying in hotels. But also, the economic situation of touring is outrageous at the present time.

PV: You seem to be pretty pleased with the band you have now.

VM: That's why I've been doing some gigs. We just finished the album and it was time to say "goodnight," but I realized I haven't gotten off with a bunch of musicians like this in quite a while, so I wanted to keep it happening.

PV: Many of your songs are rather complex, intricately put together. How do you write? Do you have a musical idea first, or a lyrical idea?

VM: Well, there's "A," "B" and "C." "A" is where I get the whole idea, the lyrics and the melody to the song. That's inspirational writing, which is very rare. "B" is where I get a melody or have a melody I'm working on, and I later work on words to go with the melody and the chords. And "C" is the reverse of that.

PV: Do you write on the guitar or keyboards?

VM: Guitar and piano.

PV: Do you think about your audience at all when you're writing?

VM: Not really, because you can't think about anything when you're writing except that. It's like if you're a carpenter, you can't build a shelf well if you're thinking about who you're going to sell it to. You have to build the shelf first, and then whoever wants to buy it...

PV: Unfortunately, the reverse is usually true these days. Writing--and maybe even carpentry--is done with the audience in mind.

VM: See, I don't think of myself as "a songwriter." I know songwriters and I'm not one. A songwriter's a guy who can come in at 9:30 in the morning and write a song on demand, and I've never been able to do that. I'm an inspirational writer. I write when I'm inspired. If I'm not inspired I *can't* write. It's impossible for me. I'm not like a craftsman, which is what a songwriter is.

PV: There was a period of about three years, between Veedon Fleece ['74] and Period of Transition ['77], when you went back to Ireland for a while. Were you writing during that time? There was no album for about three years.

VM: There was a period there where I didn't write for about two-and-a-half years. I didn't do anything. I didn't play guitar, I didn't listen to music. I had overdosed. I had to stop. I had had enough. I was mentally exhausted, physically exhausted and I just had to get away from music completely. I'd been going at it hard for ten or twelve years.

PV: And then it all came around again and you got psyched up and ready to go back.

VM: I started to like it again. When I was taking the time off I hated it. I had a total aversion to everything about it.

PV: How planned are your live sets? They seem to be kind of structured as they go along.

VM: At this point they're planned, or more planned than they'd be if we just threw something together to play at a club. There are too many people for it not to be planned. There are seven musicians and three singers. The order of the songs isn't planned, though.

PV: Do you still enjoy performing your older music? Do you still enjoy playing "Gloria," or do you do it kind of for the sake of the audience?

VM: If I haven't done a song for a while and it's fresh, I enjoy it. I haven't done "Gloria" in quite a while so it is fresh. I don't take it seriously, though.

PV: You get a kick out of it, though, don't you? It's not drudgery.

VM: No, no, it's good. It's so old it's new, y'know?

PV: A lot of times in live performance you do great songs that weren't written by you: "Stand By Me," "Mona," "Not Fade Away," Sam Cooke's "You Send Me," some Jimmy Reed songs, some Willie Dixon songs, and "Buona Sera," a Louis Prima song which is really a kick. Do you have studio versions of any of these in a vault somewhere?

VM: There's a version of "Buona Sera" somewhere from a KSAN show. I went into the studio a couple of years ago and went through my old tapes. By the time you get through everything you realize it would be better to do it fresh than get hung up on old tapes.

PV: The flipside of "Joyous Sound" from Period of Transition is a song called "Mechanical Bliss" which is weird, kind of strange...

VM: That was a big disappointment for me because I was trying to break into comedy there and that was my only comedy song. I played it for Dudley Moore and he flipped over it; he really loved it. I thought, "This is it. This is my big chance." But Warner Bros. buried it.

PV: It was a flipside and wasn't on any album, but it does show a humorous side of you. A lot of people look at you as being the brooding musician who rarely cracks a smile. Are you aware of people having that image of you as the depressed poet?

VM: Yeah, but I think it's totally wrong. Things have been written and people get hold of certain things and put it in the paper and it gets blown out of proportion. Like the thing that I don't do many interviews. That's wrong. I've done so many interviews you wouldn't believe it. Writers have something about everybody: "Oh he's like that," which usually he isn't.

PV: Do you think, though, that people might get that idea, too, from your live shows? You're very much into your music and the music is the bottom line in your live shows. But do you think people expect you to be more of a--

VM: If I went out there and tried comedy, what would happen? It would be "What?" When I've done that, they don't know what to make of it because the image that's out there is not conducive for me to do comedy. I've been in bands where I've done actual comedy.

PV: At a recent show at the Palace of Fine Arts [in SF] a couple of people yelled out, "Van, talk to us. Say something to us." You hear that when they say it, don't you?

VM: Yeah, but you can't please everybody. When I'm playing I've got to concentrate on the music--the arrangements and the people and getting the moment. If I start developing myself as a personality, that's another form of concentration, so in order to concentrate on that I couldn't do what I do now. I would have to change completely. I have to concentrate to build the energy and I have to put a spell on it, so to speak, to do it. I don't want to talk because it would break the spell. Music is what I'm saying.

PV: Is it frustrating to think that a lot of people don't pick up on that and think that you're just being cold?

VM: Who are "they"? Different people think different things and the audience is made up of individuals. Some people like it and some people don't. I do what I do and if people get it, great. And if they don't get it, they don't have to buy it.

PV: In the past year or so, when you have performed the song "Angeliou", you've expressed some opinions in the break there, little ad libs or whatever. One time I wrote down what you said: "This is the part--this is my message--it only takes a few--everyone will get it sooner or later." What will they get?

VM: The message is not in actual lyrics, because lyrics are different every time. And the message is not really in songs. The message is behind the whole thing, which is getting very, very quiet. And when you get very, very quiet you can actually hear yourself. That's what I was trying to say. I was trying to show the dynamics in the music. There's not enough education about what music is today. Kids aren't taught what it is, and I was trying to do a little teaching about it: these elements are in music because they exist in ourselves and society. Anger is in rock and roll, love is in there. There's a lot of different energy. But if you go out and you don't know what you're doing with it--you're just *blasting* this energy--then it becomes destructive. I was trying to show people, "this is energy and *this* is energy, but ultimately the real energy that we're dealing with is the energy that's inside you that you can only hear when you get quiet. And the whole purpose of that was to make people listen to themselves.

PV: At another point in that break in "Angeliou" you referred to a San Francisco music critic who put your music in with rock and roll and you said, "It's not rock and roll, that's not what it's all about." Is rock and roll a bad image in your mind?

VM: Oh yeah. Once you say "rock and roll" people start to project and relate to you in a certain way. I'm just so far away from that projection and that image. The way I live my life from day to day is so far removed from what people think of when you say "rock and roll." I've got nothing to do with all that rock and roll stuff at all. When I started out, when I was a teenager, rock and roll to me was Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and people like that. But now, what is rock and roll? Rock and roll is a mind trip. It's not music anymore.

PV: Are you aware of what albums are selling these days; what's at the top of the charts? Do you keep abreast at all of any of that?

VM: I don't really know. Some of the new music is interesting. I definitely believe we need a new music, something new in order to survive. If music is such a big thing in everybody's life--and I think it is--we need something different because the garbage that we keep getting is going to make everybody sick after a while. I think the young kids are crying out--screaming--for something new. That's why you're getting all this really destructive punk music. They're saying, "We can't take it anymore. We'll do anything." I feel like some of it is very adventurous, and I like that about it. But some of it has turned into a very destructive thing.

PV: How far in advance do you work as far as writing goes? Do you have songs that you've written and that you'll get back to or do you try to stay pretty current with what you're doing?

VM: I try to stay current, but like I said before, I'm an inspirational writer so I've always got bits and pieces hanging around. I never really put it together unless I've got a contract. If I didn't have a contract to do an album, I wouldn't do it.

PV: Until the mood hit you.

VM: I'd only do it if I need the money, if I needed to do it for survival purposes. Otherwise I'd never do it. I went through that phase years ago of being successful, and then I went through the phase of being a successful songwriter. I went through those phases and saw what they were. When you see what something is, then you can drop it; if you don't see what it is, then you keep doing it.

PV: Your music is always changing. Are those mainly conscious or unconscious changes?

VM: At this point it's conscious, because I'm actually starting to work on it. It's taken me 20 years to be able to see what it is I'm involved in and what I'm actually doing with it. You find out after a while it's just too limiting to make an album and tour, make another album and tour. It's not very creative. So you start exploring: what does a C chord mean? It could mean a lot of different things; it could be a color. The C chord means a certain thing, the G chord means certain things. What does this song mean? What do these lyrics mean? It took me 20 years to get to this point, where I'm consciously involved with what I'm doing.

Glen Hansard On Meeting Van Morrison

New Poll: What's Your Favorite Van Morrison Album of the 1980s?

Vote in the column on the left

Common One (1980)

Beautiful Vision (1982)

Inarticulate Speech of the Heart (1983)

Live At The Belfast Grand Opera House (1984)

Sense of Wonder (1985)

No Guru, No Method, No Teacher (1986)

Poetic Champions Compose (1987)

Irish Heartbeat (1988)

Avalon Sunset (1989)

Van Photo Of The Day

Van Morrison Boston 1970

Photo by AJ Sullivan

And Your Stairway Reaches Up To The Moon

Guardian  More than any other writer, Van Morrison seems blessed with a transformational power to bring a beautiful vision to even the most humdrum objects and events

In my mind, the Vanlose Stairway of Van Morrison's song was always a majestic affair; not quite the full Scarlett O'Hara, but certainly something with a little grandeur. I'm not sure when I learned that it was, in reality, not much more than a flight of stairs running to the fourth floor of a plain apartment block in Copenhagen, but when I looked up the picture again this week, I was struck by the building's ordinariness: pale brick, small balcony, broad, blank windows.

In the early 1980s, Morrison stayed at an apartment here with a girlfriend named Ulla Munch. She inspired much of the material from his 1982 album Beautiful Vision, including Vanlose Stairway. Morrison referred to this song as "a Twenty Flight Rock" – a nod to Eddie Cochran's fabulously euphemistic 1957 hit about climbing 20 flights to see his "baby", only to find on his arrival that he is too tired to "rock".

Van's stairway song is a little more spiritual – sewn with references to Krishna, the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible. And it's a little more romantic, too: "And your stairway/ Reaches up to the moon," he growls, "And it comes right back/ It comes right back to you." Here, alongside the moonlit wooing and the spirituality, there is even room for a few references to John Lee Hooker's Send Me Your Pillow and Little Richard's Send Me Some Lovin', too.

It is one of my favourite Morrison songs, a perfect ball of love and desire, belief and rock'n'roll, and, perhaps more oddly, one of the most frequently performed songs at his shows. Peter Mills, in Hymns to the Silence, refers to it as "this dark horse of a song" – a way to describe the surprising appeal of a song that was never a hit, but has proved compelling to many.

Beautiful Vision is not one of Morrison's most critically feted albums. In his recent book Listening to Van Morrison, Greil Marcus numbered it among the 15 Van albums he would happily write off, consigning it to "the endless stream of dull and tired albums through the 1980s and 90s, carrying titles like warning labels … a string of records where Morrison seems to attempt to reduce whatever might be elusive, undefinable, and sui generis in his music to parts that can never recombine into a whole."

There are Morrison albums I like better, but Beautiful Vision has never struck me as dull; on the contrary, its particular strangeness has always proved appealing – an exploration of Celtic heritage, distance, reminiscence, spirituality and the writings of Alice Bailey. Its most commercial track is Cleaning Windows, a wistful tale of a stint as a window cleaner, that marries the pleasures of physical work and sensory delights – bakery smells, Paris buns, and smoking Woodbines – to a time of expanding artistic and intellectual vision, of playing sax on the weekend, listening to Jimmie Rodgers on a lunch break, reading Kerouac and Christmas Humphreys, hearing Leadbelly and Blind Lemon on the street.

Cleaning Windows, like the rest of Beautiful Vision, seems to me an attempt to explain how a spiritual, emotional life does not exist in isolation, how the lemonade and Paris buns are as stirring as the Kerouac, and how the memory of both can be tethered to those "wrought iron gate rows". This has always been what I loved about Morrison: more than any other songwriter, he seems blessed with a transformational power, with the ability to bring a beautiful vision to even the most humdrum objects and events – the "clicking, clacking of the high-heeled shoe", the "crack in the windowpane", the "decent sherry" and the "drop of port", and "this letter-box behind this door here …"

And perhaps this spurs Vanlose Stairway, that dark horse of a song, perhaps it is simply the strange and beautiful majesty of finding the Gita, and the Cochran, and the moonlight, in the pale brick, small balcony, and broad, blank windows of an ordinary apartment block in Copenhagen.

-Laura Barton

Here's a Short Video About What Makes Van's Music Special To So Many People

Reader's Questions

I get a good few questions here at the blog. Many are the same questions from many people so I have compiled a list of the most frequent asked questions and I try to answer best as I can. If any readers out there can answer - please use comments section below. Thanks.

-John

Q: Do you know what happened to the rest of the great Van Morrison remaster series?
It seems like the rest of the announced stuff (CDs) will not be released in the near future.
Maybe you know something about it.

Thanks also for your great site & best wishes.

-Frank L. (Germany)

A: It seems when Van left his last record label, the re-issues were discontinued. It doesn't appear that Van is currently with any record label as of today so it may be awhile before we see them.

Q: Do you have contact details for Van's booking agency?

-Peter R. (Durban, South Africa)

A: No - I have no contact with Van's management or booking agency nor do i know how to get in contact with them.

Q: As an avid Van Morrison fan, I was wondering whether there is any new music in the offing currently, whether there is a new Van Morrison CD being made, organized, or even planned.

Wondering if you have any insights?

-Gavin T. (Australia)

A:  I have not heard anything about a new album release from Van. I also do not know if he's recording or not.

Q: Where can I find a list of Van's future concerts? 

-CJ

A: When I hear of concert dates and can confirm them - I post them on this blog as soon as possible. Only other suggestion is to sign up for email alerts from Ticketmaster for Van gigs.

Q: I live in Wellington New Zealand and I’ve been a fan of Van Morrison’s music since the days of “Them”

 

It would be great to know if Van has ever toured in New Zealand?

 

The DVD version of Astral Weeks live has never been available in New Zealand (we’re zoned 4) and I wonder why this DVD has never been released here in New Zealand.

 

What has been available in New Zealand to purchase I have (cd’s, video and vinyl).

Cheers,

-Russell F (Wellington, New Zealand)

A: To the best of my knowledge, I do not think Van has ever toured New Zealand. If any readers know - please comment.

The Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl DVD has been discontinued and is not available for sale anymore. I'm not sure what is available in New Zealand in terms of CDs and DVDs. Does any reader from there know?

Q: I am looking for a site or database which would have the setlist for the Feb. 20, 1979 concert in Belfast? 

I've searched and searched with no luck.  Can you offer any help? 

-Stuart S.

A: Try setlist.com

Q: Is there a version of Coney island (live ?) where Van goes straight in to have i told you lately that i love you.

I heard from a friend they played it on an Irish radio station a while back. If so what cd does it come from?

-Derek T. (Ireland) 

A: Never heard of such a recording. I do not think it exists. 

Q: Wonder if you can help me locate a song Van recorded some years back which featured a trombone backing 'chorus'.  I'd be very happy if you could point me to it.

-Malc S.

A: Not sure which song you heard. Does anyone know?

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Unreleased Van Tracks On Forthcoming Chris Barber 2 CD Set

Update: Chris Barber has a 2 CD compilation coming out in the UK on 5 September, the US and Canada on 8 February and Germany on 6 May 2011. Release dates subject to change..

Memories of My Trip include three tracks that Van recorded with Barber that have never been released before:



Van With The Chris Barber Skiffle Group - How Long Blues

Van With Chris Barber's Jazz Band - Goin' Home

Van With Chris Barber And Dr. John - Didn't He Ramble
 
So far there's no information on when these tracks were recorded. Van has played and toured with Chris Barber many times over the years.

Take Me Back
Bono Interviews Dylan & Van (1984)

From Hot Press:

Conducted at the Slane Castle, Dublin, Ireland prior to Dylan's show (JULY 8, 1984). Both Bono and Van Morrison were later guests at the show, Van Morrison doing his usual It's All Over Now, Baby Blue and Bono joining Dylan on Blowin' In The Wind.

Bono: Van, what do you think of electronic music?

Morrison: I like the music Brian Eno plays.

Bono: He speaks very highly of you. He's producing our record right now.

Morrison: Say hello.

Bono: When you're working with a producer, do you give him the lee-way to challenge you?

Dylan: Yeah, if he feels like it. But usually we just go into the studio and sing a song, and play the music, and have, you know ...

Bono: Have you had somebody in the last five years who said "That's crap, Bob"?

Dylan: Oh, they say that all the time!

Bono: Mark Knopfler, did he say that?

Dylan: I don't know, they spend time getting their various songs right, but with me, I just take a song into the studio and try to rehearse it, and then record it, and then do it. It's a little harder now though to make a good record - even if you've got a good song and a good band. Even if you go in and record it live, it's not gonna sound like it used to sound, because the studios now are so modern, and overly developed, that you can take anything good and you can press it and squeeze it and squash it, and constipate it and suffocate it. You do a great performance in the studio and you listen back to it because the speakers are all so good, but, ah, no!

Bono: All technology does is - you go into a dead room with dead instruments and you use technology to give it life that it doesn't have, and then it comes out of the speakers and you believe it. What I've been trying to do is find a room that has life in itself.

Dylan: Yeah.

Bono: A 'living' room.

Dylan: The machines though, can even take the life out of that room, I've found. You can record in St Peter's Cathedral, you know, and they still make it sound like, eh, ...

Bono: Somebody's backyard.

Dylan: Yeah.

Dylan: That's a good idea. I'd love to record in a cathedral.

Dylan: You know the studios in the old days were all much better, and the equipment so much better, there's no question about it in my mind. You just walked into a studio, they were just big rooms, you just sang, you know, you just made records; and they sounded like the way they sounded there. That stopped happening in the late Sixties, for me anyway. I noticed the big change. You go into a studio now and they got rugs on the floor, settees and pinball machines and videos and sandwiches coming every ten minutes. It's a big expensive party and you're lucky if you come out with anything that sounds decent.

Bono: Yeah, records haven't got better, have they?

Dylan: No, you go in now, you got your producer, you got your engineer, you got your assistant engineer, usually your assistant producer, you got a guy carrying the tapes around. I mean, you know, there's a million people go into recording just an acoustic song on your guitar. The boys turn the machines on and it's a great undertaking.

Bono: There's a system called Effanel which Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac brought to Africa. It was built for him because he wanted to get some real African drummin', for "Tusk". We've used that system. It comes in a light suitcase, very small, no bullshit studio, and it just arrives, you can literally bring it to your living room.

Morrison: I think all the same they'll go back to 2-track eventually.

Bono: There's a guy called Conny Plank, who lives in Germany. He's a producer I think. He produced Makem and Clancy and some Irish traditional bands, also orchestral and funnily enough a lot of the new electronic groups, DAF, Ultravox, and so on. He used to record orchestras by just finding a position in the room where they were already balanced and he applies this in his thinking, in recording modern music: he finds a place in the room where it's already mixed.

Morrison: I don't know, when I started we didn't think about that! You didn't even think about recording ... (laughs)

Bono: You didn't even think!

Morrison: You didn't even know what was on the cards. One day you were in the room, they turned the tape on. After about eight hours or so, they'd say, 'OK, tea break, it's over'.

Dylan: Yeah, next song, next song!

Morrison: And that was that - it was an album.

Dylan: Yeah, you'd make an album on three days or four days and it was over - if that many! It's that long now ... it takes four days to get a drum sound.

Bono: Do you know the Monty Python team, they're comedians, British comedians, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. They have a sketch that reminds me of you guys - sitting back talking of days gone by: "You tell that to the young people of today and they'd never believe you". But you can't go backwards, you must go forward. You try to bring the values that were back there, you know, the strength, and if you see something that was lost, you got to find a new way to capture that same strength. Have you any idea of how to do that? I think you've done it by the way ... I think 'Shot Of Love', that opening track has that.

Dylan: I think so too, You're one of the few people to say that to me about that record, to mention that record to me.

Bono: That has *that* feeling.

Dylan: It's a great record, it suits just about everybody.

Bono: The sound from that record makes me feel like I'm in the same room as the other musicians. I don't feel like they're over *there*. Some of our records, I feel like they're over there because we got into this cinema type sound, not bland like FM sound, but we got into this very broad sound. Now we're trying to focus more of a punch, and that's what we are after, this intimacy .... I've never interviewed anybody before, by the way. I hate being interviewed myself.

Morrison: You're doing a good job!

Bono: Is this OK?. Good! What records do you listen to?

Dylan: What records do I listen to? New records? I don't know, just the old records really. Robert Johnson. I still listen to those records that I listened to when I was growing up - they really changed my life. They still change my life. They still hold up, you know. The Louvain Brothers, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Charlie Patton, I always liked to listen to him.

Bono: I just bought Woody Guthrie's 'Bound For Glory'. I'm just a beginner when it comes to America. I mean, it's changed me. When you go the US, coming from this country, it's more than a different continent ....

Morrison: It's shell shock.

Bono: Yeah, coming from troubled Ireland, it's the real shell shock! I'm just getting acquainted with American music and literature. Do you still see Allen Ginsberg?

Dylan: I run across Allen from time to time, yeah, Gregory Corsos's back now, he's doing some readings, I think he's just published a new book.

Bono: I've just been reading this book 'Howl'.

Dylan: Oh, that's very powerful. That's another book that changed me. 'Howl', 'On the Road', 'Dharma Bums'.

Morrison: (to Bono) Have you read 'On the Road'?

Bono: Yes I have, I'm just starting that. You have a reference in one of your songs to John Donne, 'Rave On John Donne'. Have you read his poetry?

Morrison: I was reading it at the time.

Dylan: (to Bono) You heard the songs - Brendan Behan's songs?

Bono: Yeah.

Dylan: 'Royal Canal', you know the 'Royal Canal'?

Morrison: His brother wrote it. His name is Dominic.

Dylan: Oh, Dominic wrote 'Royal Canal'?

Bono: You know Brendan's son hang out around here in Dublin. He's a good guy, I believe.

Dylan: I know the solo lyrics to the 'Royal Canal'. I used to sing it all the time.

Bono: How does it go?

Dylan: (sings) 'The hungry feeling came over me stealing, as the mice were squalling in my prison cell'.

Bono: That's right, yeah!

Dylan: (continues) 'That old triangle went jingle jangle, all along the banks of the Royal Canal'.

Bono: That's right, when did you read that?

Dylan: (there's no way stopping him now) 'In the female prison there's seventy women. It's all over there that I want to dwell. And that old triangle goes jingle jangle, all along the banks of the Royal Canal'.

Bono: Have you been to the Royal Canal?

Dylan: No I used to sing that song though. Every night.

Bono: Our music - as I was saying earlier - it doesn't have those roots.

Morrison: Yeah, there was a break in the lineage. I sussed that out when I went to see Thin Lizzy years ago, the first night in L.A. and I was watching at the back of the stage and I realized that the music was a complete cut in the connection between the end of the Sixties and the middle of the Seventies - a severing of the traditional lineage of groups.

Bono: I like to know more about roots music. I'm hungry for a past.

Morrison: You know you should listen to some of that stuff.

Bono: I will. I've been listening to some gospel music, you know, like the Swan Silvertones, and stuff like that.

Dylan: That's US stuff though.

Morrison: US stuff, but the British stuff you should listen to, you know, like some of the old stuff, like the Yardbirds.

Bono: Yeah, I've got some of their tapes recently, some real good tapes.

Dylan: You can still hear the McPeakes. The next generation may not be able to though. Who knows? I would hate to think that. Listen we're gonna have to get ready to play. Are you gonna stay for the show?

Bono: Certainly, that's what I'm here for actually.

Dylan: To record it, HA!

Vote For A Great Jazz Song
Moondance

NPR's A Blog Supreme is asking it's listener's to vote for The greatest Jazz songs Ever.

Soon, our Seattle-based NPR Music partners Jazz24 will create an online stream called The Jazz 100, featuring the 100 quintessential recorded jazz songs of all time. But first, Jazz24 needs to figure out what those songs are.

So they're asking for help. You can nominate your favorites for consideration at the Jazz24 website. Soon, they'll sit down and make the list using your input. And then you'll be able to hear the songs in a 24/7 streaming mix (think the All Songs Considered channel) here at NPR Music for two weeks.

Van's Moondance is a song that many fans believe is a jazz standard. Do you think so? If so, please vote at Name The 100 Greatest Jazz Songs Ever.

Tom Jones, Jeff Beck & Van 
Bring It On Home To Me 
 Trouble In Mind

From Martin Scorsese's 2003 Blues Documentaty.

40th Anniversary of Van's His Band And The Street Choir Album

Van Morison's His Band And The Street Choir was released 40 years ago today on 15 November 1970. Originally titled Virgo's Fool, Street Choir was renamed by Warner Brothers without Van's consent. Van had intended to record the album a cappella with only vocal backing by a vocal group he called the Street Choir.

Side one

"Domino"

"Crazy Face"

"Give Me a Kiss (Just One Sweet Kiss)"

"I've Been Working"

"Call Me Up in Dreamland"

"I'll Be Your Lover, Too"

Side two

"Blue Money"

"Virgo Clowns"

"Gypsy Queen"

"Sweet Jannie"

"If I Ever Needed Someone"

"Street Choir"

Street Choir peaked at number 32 on the Billboard 200 and number 18 on the UK Album Chart and was help mainly by the Top Ten hit Domino. Some songs on the album were previously recorded a few years earlier: I've Been Working was an out-take from the Astral Weeks sessions in 1968 and the Moondance sessions in 1969; If I Ever Needed Someone was also originally recorded in 1968; Virgo Clowns was first recorded at the start of 1969 as (Sit Down) Funny Face; Crazy Face evolved from "Going Around with Jesse James", a song Van first recorded for Astral Weeks on 15 October 1968.

Rolling Stone magazine's, Jon Landau, reviewed Street Choir and described it as follows:

His Band and the Street Choir is a free album. It was recorded with minimal over-dubbing and was obviously intended to show the other side of Moondance. And if it has a flaw it is that, like Moondance, it is too much what it set out to be. A few more numbers with a gravity of "Street Choir" would have made this album as close to perfect as anyone could have stood.

But notwithstanding its limitations. His Band and the Street Choir is another beautiful phase in the continuing development of one of the few originals left in rock. In his own mysterious way. Van Morrison continues to shake his head, strum his guitar and to sing his songs. He knows it's too late to stop now and he quit trying to a long, long time ago. Meanwhile, the song he is singing keeps getting better and better.