Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by Clams »

whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....
Right. There's also Moondance.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Clams wrote:
whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....
Right. There's also Moondance.
Hey credit to you, this time you at least have heard of him :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Very well-written and interesting article. Count me as one of those who like Moondance better than Astral Weeks.

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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worrierking wrote:Very well-written and interesting article. Count me as one of those who like Moondance better than Astral Weeks.
Saint Dominic's Preview may not have the prestige, hype, and well-known songs of the other two, but I think it's every bit as good
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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It's an interesting and well-written article but I still think Astral Weeks is Van's best album. I also enjoy many other albums including the less-appreciated ones he was talking about (80s and into the 90s).

Into the Music is a favorite for me among his lesser-known albums.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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I don't think it's an insult to the many excellent albums he made later to say Astral Weeks is his best album. It's somewhat like saying Citizen Kane is the best film that Orson Welles ever made.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Bill in CT wrote:It's an interesting and well-written article but I still think Astral Weeks is Van's best album. I also enjoy many other albums including the less-appreciated ones he was talking about (80s and into the 90s).

Into the Music is a favorite for me among his lesser-known albums.
All that plus Hymns to the Silence is a favorite from the lesser-known/later works category
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Bill in CT wrote:Into the Music is a favorite for me among his lesser-known albums.




love how loud Jerry is when he sings the first line! One of the best shows I ever saw
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by Flea »

I don't know if this is more a Van Morrison work or a Chieftains work, but Irish Heartbeat is one of my faves from the late 80s.

Now it's dark.

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Flea wrote:I don't know if this is more a Van Morrison work or a Chieftains work, but Irish Heartbeat is one of my faves from the late 80s.

The Irish Heartbeat version of this is heavenly

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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I always liked this album.

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:
worrierking wrote:Very well-written and interesting article. Count me as one of those who like Moondance better than Astral Weeks.
Saint Dominic's Preview may not have the prestige, hype, and well-known songs of the other two, but I think it's every bit as good
The title track is one I'm taking to the desert island.

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by Rocky »

In The Garden is an absolutely amazing song.

How in the fuck did Bruce Springsteen rip Van Morrison off?
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Rocky wrote:In The Garden is an absolutely amazing song.

How in the fuck did Bruce Springsteen rip Van Morrison off?
This. I don't get that either.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Rocky wrote:In The Garden is an absolutely amazing song.

How in the fuck did Bruce Springsteen rip Van Morrison off?
There is a lot of Van influence on the first two albums. “Rip off” is harsh but nonetheless the influence is there, especially in the music and overall sound of the band. I am not smart enough to have figured this out for myself: read reviews of the
first two albums and articles from that period and Van is mentioned quite often
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by whatwouldcooleydo? »

Iowan wrote:
whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:
worrierking wrote:Very well-written and interesting article. Count me as one of those who like Moondance better than Astral Weeks.
Saint Dominic's Preview may not have the prestige, hype, and well-known songs of the other two, but I think it's every bit as good
The title track is one I'm taking to the desert island.
A vocal performance for the ages
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:
Rocky wrote:In The Garden is an absolutely amazing song.

How in the fuck did Bruce Springsteen rip Van Morrison off?
There is a lot of Van influence on the first two albums. “Rip off” is harsh but nonetheless the influence is there, especially in the music and overall sound of the band. I am not smart enough to have figured this out for myself: read reviews of the
first two albums and articles from that period and Van is mentioned quite often
Which I myself wouldn't call a rip-off.

There are songs written in a lot of different songwriters' styles in the Tracks collection, especially (if I remember right) disk 2.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by John A Arkansawyer »

whatwouldcooleydo? wrote:
worrierking wrote:Very well-written and interesting article. Count me as one of those who like Moondance better than Astral Weeks.
Saint Dominic's Preview may not have the prestige, hype, and well-known songs of the other two, but I think it's every bit as good
I don't understand how anyone who likes any Van record from Astral Weeks to Veedon Fleece doesn't like them all. The only other seven-studio-record run I can think of that great is Talking Heads, which goes through at least three distinctly different styles. Those Van records are more of less all woven from the same cloth. The greatness of that only becomes more amazing when you figure in the tracks from The Philosopher's Stone, which is about two more records worth of equally great tracks.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Flea wrote:I don't know if this is more a Van Morrison work or a Chieftains work, but Irish Heartbeat is one of my faves from the late 80s.

Love this. Also this:

Image

And this is an overlooked gem from the '80s:

Image

Poetic Celtic pretentiousness at its best.

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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bovine knievel wrote:I always liked this album.

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Gotta love Bovine's random drop-in posts. :lol:

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by RolanK »

I have never been able to get into Astral Weeks the way others seem to do.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by beantownbubba »

Hmmmm.... much to chew on here, in both the article and thread. Some initial reactions:

Steven Hyden once again proves worthy of his rep around here. First rate work.

Under any common understanding of "ripped off" it's absurd to say that Springsteen ripped off Van Morrison. "Influenced by" is not remotely synonymous w/ "ripped off."

I was pleased to read Hyden giving Wavelength exactly the level of appreciation it deserves.

Then there's this: "if you were sexually active in the late 20th century, Van Morrison likely howled “I wanna rock your Gypsy soul!” at least once during an intimate moment." Exactly.

RolanK, I don't know for sure, but I would not be surprised if your difficulty w/ Astral Weeks is as Hyden describes, i.e. it's impossible to come to it fresh, w/out too much baggage.

And damn, Hyden nails, just NAILS Van's peformance in/on The Last Waltz.
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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bovine knievel wrote:I always liked this album.

Image
this is a great song (couldn't find a good live Van video, plus I like this version.... a lot. I was at this show and made one of the better recordings of my taping career). Featuring force of nature Melvin Seals on some wailin' B3

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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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The fact that we are this deep into this thread and not one mention yet (I think) regarding the majesty of His Band and Street Choir and Tupelo Honey. That speaks volumes about the man's body of work
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Astral Weeks at 50

things from the article that caught my eye/made me chortle/etc.

* “It made me trust in beauty,” Bruce Springsteen once said of Astral Weeks, one of his favorite records. “It gave me a sense of the divine.” (He loved it so much that, in tribute, he sought out Astral Weeks bassist Richard Davis to play on his first two albums. “Astral Weeks was like a religion to us,” said E Street guitarist Steven Van Zandt.)

* “What he lacked in glamour he made up in strangeness,” Greil Marcus writes, “or rather his strangeness made glamour impossible, and at the same time captivated some who felt strange themselves.” “He was a hateful little guy,” one Warner Bros. executive remembers of the man who wrote these songs that seemed to glow with such otherworldly benevolence; Marcus quotes another critic who says, “Van always looked to me like a half-homicidal leprechaun who lived under the bridge.”


* It was around this time that Marcus went to Woodstock to interview Morrison’s neighbor Robbie Robertson, and ended up talking to his wife Dominique. “Look at all this,” she said, gesturing toward the country landscape, the idyllic dream of the ’60s. “It’s everything people ought to want, and I hate it. … There’s nothing here but dope, music, and beauty. If you’re a woman, and you don’t make music and you don’t use dope, there’s nothing here at all.”

* Moondance was the first album Morrison made after moving to that Edenic nowhere, and it was everything Astral Weeks was not—most importantly, commercially successful. Morrison was intent on making Moondance a rebuttal to its predecessor: Although the Astral Weeks session players did come upstate to run through new material, Morrison wanted a radical change, so he sent them all packing, brought in a more pop-minded band, and decided to produce the record himself. The result was more palatable and radio-friendly and spawned classics like “And It Stoned Me,” “Caravan,” and “Into the Mystic.” This record and the two that followed, His Band and the Street Choir and Tupelo Honey, weren’t exactly transmissions from the astral plane. But they did make him a star.

* Janet Planet and Van Morrison divorced in 1973.....“Being a muse is a thankless job, and the pay is lousy,” she told Walsh.

* “For me there is always a sense of worry when I put the album on again,” Greil Marcus writes, and can I ever relate. “Will it sound as true, will it sound as good as before, will there come a time when I will be listening to the end of ‘Madame George’ and suddenly it’s already there, I’ve heard it, it has nothing left to tell me—and that has never happened.”
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by whatwouldcooleydo? »

VAN MORRISON ABRUPTLY RELEASES LONG-SOUGHT-AFTER ‘CATACOMBS TAPES’ ON ITUNES UK

really, really hope this is released physically (CD/vinyl/8 track/wax cylinder) in the States
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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

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Sue me :lol: :lol: :lol:



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Re: Van Morrison Is More Than ‘Astral Weeks’....

Post by RolanK »

beantownbubba wrote: RolanK, I don't know for sure, but I would not be surprised if your difficulty w/ Astral Weeks is as Hyden describes, i.e. it's impossible to come to it fresh, w/out too much baggage.

And damn, Hyden nails, just NAILS Van's peformance in/on The Last Waltz.
I dont know really why I feel the way I feel about AW. I guess I find it a bit boring to listen to. Something to do with the production perhaps. Sounds like most of the songs are just the same repetitive semi-modal I-IV movement, flute and double bass noodling away on high notes. Mostly percussion, drummer never hitting kick or snare. Sort of like intros to songs that never really starts.

Fully agree on his Last Waltz performance, one of my all time favorite live performances. Gives me goosebumps every time.

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