Latest musical recommendation

Ok, my weekly music recommendation has turned into an every once in a while recommendation. But, here goes another installment. Like most things, I tend to get wordy and that’s why I post so infrequently – who has the time to write this much?

I would like to discuss an artist that I have listened to for many years. The man is known by numerous monikers including The Belfast Cowboy and Van the Man. I am speaking, of course, of Van Morrison.

Whether or not you know the name or are very familiar at all with his work, I know you know a couple of his tunes, at least. His late sixties top ten hit "Brown Eyed Girl" has to be one of the most aired songs in radio history. Other radio hits include 1970’s "Moondance" and "Domino." He also had something of a hit with "Wild Night" (redone back in the 1990’s by John Mellencamp and some chick whose name I can’t pronounce or spell). His 1989 song "Have I Told You Lately" was re-recorded by Rod Stewart in the 1990s and was a big hit.

Van has worked with some of the greatest as well. This includes Ray Charles, B. B. King, John Lee Hooker, The Chieftans, Bob Dylan, and others. His songs have been in numerous movies. He also has several books about his life – I think he detests these!

Van has a reputation of being difficult. He has walked out on shows. He has walked out on interviews. I once read an interview of him and it was filled with vulgarity – almost to the point of making me not want to listen to his music anymore. This bad temper and personality is puzzling to some because frequently Van writes and records songs with an apparant Christian theme. A few examples of these are "Full Force Gale," "Whenever God Shines His Light," "When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God," "Give Me My Rapture," and so on. However, to put these songs into perspective, you have to know the context in which he writes. I do not pretend to know the inner workings of the man, but I can speculate quite a bit based on what I do know of him.

One other thing you may or may not know about Van is that one of the greatest garage band songs of all time was penned by no other than Van the Man. After spending his youth in the fifties and early sixties playing various music scenes (most notably as a saxophonist with the band The Monarchs), Van was part of the rock band Them, which was a minor part of the British Invasion of 1964-65. (Ok, so they weren’t the Beatles!) They scored some hits with "Here Comes the Night," and "Baby Please Don’t Go." (The latter of which I know I heard in a movie soundtrack once, but I do not recall the movie.) However, their most notable hit was the Morrison penned "Gloria." This is the song where the chorus has the lead singer spell out the name G—L—O—R—I—A-A-A-A-A-A as the background singers belt out "Gloria." Shortly after Them scored with the song, another British Invasion Band (I don’t recall their name), scored a hit with it also. Later the song was done by the likes of The Doors, and Jimi Hendrix. Probably every garage band in the 60s-80s also worked this song. Give Van credit. Even at his most shallow, he can write a mean tune!

But the problem with Van in terms of radio success (he’s had a pretty steady career for over forty years, but only a handful of songs ever find radio airplay) is that he is not usually shallow. He is often deep. The roots of that depth have to be discussed.

To understand something about Van, you have to consider where he came from. Belfast Northern Ireland is a town filled with spiritual anxiety. This is the hotbed of Catholic/Protestant tension. Van has stated that this tension was not really in the form of violence when he was growing up, but it has since gone that route. However, certainly the background of Catholic/Protestant tension can cause one to wander spiritually if one is a spiritual wanderer by nature, especially if one does not have his anchor down very firmly. Van’s father, I believe, was not necessarily religious. But, to add confusion to the already confused state, Van’s mother converted to the Jehovah’s Witness. She used to drag him to the meetings (his father apparantly did not go). Van has written about this in the song "Kingdom Hall" on the 1978 album "Wavelength."

So, we have a not particularly religious father, a Jehovah’s Witness mother, in a land filled with Protestant/Catholic strife. Add to that the fact that evidently Van is a natural wanderer filled with a literary, spiritual, and philosophical keenness and curiosity and you have a potential for some fairly interesting outcomes. Compound all of this with the fact that the British Isles as a whole, including specifically Ireland, have a wide and varied religious history that have included everything from the very pagan Druids to Reformed Christianity. In the midst of all of this, the Isles have so many legends and lore that often times mix and match the various religious cultures. There are all sorts of Christian and pseudo-Christian stories in the history of the Isles. We can think of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Camelot, Avalon, the Holy Grail, etc. Much of this has ties to the history of the Church. Some of this is nothing more than fable. Van has tapped into this history and mythology and it comes through frequently in his music.

The great British, and particularly Irish poets, philosophers, and other writers have always been attracted to the spiritual meandering that have gone on throughout the history of the Isles. Van is no exception. However, what makes him stand out from say, Keats, is that Van’s poetry, philosophy, and religious groanings are carried out in the form of recorded music.
Speaking of the music, this brings us to exactly what influence his father did have on him. If his father had little of no influence on Van’s spiritual journeys (of course he HAD to have some influence one way or the other), his biggest influence on the young Van was musical. Van’s father was a collector of records. He had everything from Jazz to Hank Williams. Van grew up with this all around him. Particularly, American R&B, early Rock and Roll, and Country (such as Williams) shaped Van’s taste and style. I have heard him indicate that probably Ray Charles was the single biggest influence on him musically. It is obvious that he had a love for much of the early rock music such as Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, etc. Other influences included black gospel music, traditional Irish music, and so on.

So, in the end what you have in Van is a man of deep literary, poetic, philosophical, and spiritual yearnings, playing music inspired by a range of styles from Irish folk to Jazz to R&B to Rock and Roll to gospel to Country. In his forty plus year career, variations of all this comes out again and again. Sometimes he makes an album that has virtually no deep thoughts but is filled with music inspired by the likes of the early R&B performers. At other times he writes and records music and lyrics that are almost other-worldly. At other times he betrays his depth by simply name dropping in his songs. It would be interesting to see a complete list of names he has mentioned in his songs throughout the years. They would include, just as a starting place, all of the names already mentioned above as well as Mahalia Jackson, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Gene Chandler, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Henry David Thoreah, Jack Keroack (sp?), Chet Baker, and many, many others.

So, where does one start if one wants to explore this long and varied career? If you have little or no knowledge of Van’s music, the place to start would be with "The Best of Van Morrison". Be careful – there is now three volumes of TBOVM and specifically the one I am talking about is the first. On top of this, there are several variations of early Van music that carry the "Best of" moniker. This is not to say that the others are not good. It’s just that as a starting place in understanding his music and to have his most familiar tunes, this is the place to start. This is a twenty song set that includes the aforementioned "Gloria", "Brown Eyed Girl", "Here Comes the Night," "Baby Please Don’t Go," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Domino," "Have I Told You Lately," "Wild Night," "Whenever God…" "Moondance," and "Full Force Gale" not to mention some other gems such as "Bright Side of the Road," and "Cleaning Windows." This collection barely scratches his deeper stuff. But it does cover almost all of his radio hits and some of the other catchier, if lighter, fair of his career. The disc seems to span from his days with Them in the mid 1960s, through 1989s "Avalon Sunset" album.

The Best of – Vol 2 might be a good compendium to have as well. It covers virtually the same territory, though released a couple of years later and containing a few songs from the two new albums he put out in the meantime. Vol 2 does seem to get into some of the deeper, spiritual stuff. The fifteen songs (many are longer than the average song on Vol 1) include "When Will I Ever…", "In the Garden," "A Sense of Wonder," "Hymns to the Silence", "The Mystery," and "Enlightenment" Just looking at the song titles tells you that most of this stuff is more spiritual and philosophical than "Baby Please don’t Go" and "Wild Night". The Best of – Vol 3 seems a bit more spotty even though it is a two disc, 31 song collection that has just recently come out.
Beyond this, it would be a huge debate as to where one should start. Simply looking at his solo career, there are so many various styles and forms represented in his music that one could hardly represent to someone what the best single album would be. Some Van fans absolutely insist that "Astral Weeks" is not only the pinnacle of his work, but is the greatest recording ever. Other people find it unlistenable for a variety of reasons. Others seem to indicate that the Album "Moondance" is his greatest, while others feel like it is a weak effort at lounge lizard jazz. Some people praise to the hilt every new album he comes out with as his best ever, or the best since "Astral Weeks" or "Moondance" or whatever their other favorite is. Others pan all his newer albums and say that only his older stuff is good. So, to add to the confusion, here is very briefly one man’s opinion.

After the Them years, he struggled for a time, eventually having his biggest hit "Brown Eyed Girl." (BEG) Though this song seems more or less standard light pop flair, it was not without controversy. Apparantly he originally titled it "Brown Skinned Girl" but the record company did not want to release a white as paste singer singing about "Making love in the green grass, behind the stadium with you, my brown skinned girl"!! This was 1967. An album of mixed stuff was relaesed with it and has been reissued with various names numerous times since then. One of the songs on the album was called "T.B. Sheets" It was about an 8-9 minute whine about Van visiting a friend dying of T.B. Uplifting stuff!

The BEG album was followed by the album "Astral Weeks" (AW) which was anything but standard pop tunage. AW is sureal, other worldly, dreamy – weird. It defies any and all musical genres. It is not rock. It is not folk. It is not country. It is not traditional celtic, or jazz, or gospel, or classical, or anything we can think of. It has elements of all of these. At times it comes real close to standard jazz e.g. "The Way Young Lovers Do." Other times it is indescribable e.g. the title song. The record was recorded quickly using experienced studio musicians. It is unpolished. There are mistakes on it. Supposedly, the original recording included tons of extended instrumental jams in the middle of many of the songs, but for time sake these were cut out, and have never been heard since. The songs are sentimental, poetic, philosophical, spiritual, eerie. The album makes many rock critics list of top albums of the rock era, but in the 40 years since its release, it may still not even be a gold album. Most novices would immediately turn their noses up to it, and their ears away from it. It is not accessible so to speak. But, for the advanced fan, it is good stuff. I just ain’t for everybody. "Sweet Thing" from this album is on Best of Vol 1.
Somewhere during the late sixties, possibly between BEG and AW, Van had major problems with the record industry. He was contractually bound to produce an album, and he did not like the terms of it. In a fit of anger, he recorded dozens of little sensless soundbites of one or one and a half minutes. This was more or less giving the record company the bird. In their eternal wisdom, record companies have taken those jokes of recordings and re-released them in CD format and marketed them as early Van recordings. You can find it now under the title of "The Bang Sessions" All the sound bites are simply titled "Jamming Sessions" but they are mostly just Van repeatedly strumming the guitar and singing sensless lyrics. The stuff they won’t sell!!! Forty years later, nearly every album he releases has at least one, if not more, songs negatively portraying the record industry.

Now, after AW his next big recording was the album "Moondance"(MD)in 1970. Although containing the great song "Into the Mystic," the album as a whole was far less mystical than AW. The title song is swinging jazz. There are several standard pop-rock tunes. On the whole, the album is far more accesible than AW. MD was followed by "His Band and the Street Choir" also 1970. This contained the big hit "Domino" as well as the smaller hit "Blue Money." Other than the Best of Vol 1, I would send the novice to this album as a starting point. Not a whole lot of deep spiritual meandering here. A lot of good, R&B, horn driven music. If you know the song "Domino," this is an album full of "Dominos." "Give Me A Kiss", "I’ve Been Working," and "Virgo Clowns" stand out as catchy. The slow soft "I’ll Be Your Lover Too" is beautiful and is reminescient of AW, only more polished and easier to listen to. Not really a bad song on the disc, though some are better than others.

"Street Choir" was followed by 1971’s "Tupelo Honey" (TH.) this contained, in addition to the title song, "Wild Night" and the beautiful "You’re My Woman." For the most part this is a peaceful, fairly happy sounding record. Van was married, incidently, to some hippie chick named Janet Planet during the MD, Street Choir, and TH years and most of the music sounds relatively upbeat. However, shortly thereafter the marriage started to break up and the music began having some darker nooks and crannies again.

1972’s "St. Dominic’s Preview" (SDP) had the very bright "Jackie Wilson Said" and "I Will be There" but also contained an 11 minute scorcher called "Listen to the Lion" where Van seems to be purging himself of some difficult feelings. Btw, at this time, I would say, I do recommend not only Street Choir, but MD, TH, and SDP. They are all good in their own way.

The follow-up, however, was called "Hard Nose to the Highway" and was probably the most forgetable Van recording yet. Not without any merit ("Warm Love" as seen on Best of Vol 1) on the whole more or less a mundane album.

The next recording is probably the most mixed reviewed album of his career. "Veeden Fleece" VF (1974) is sometimes referred to as the ‘divorce album" because either the divorce was finalized or at least in progress during the writing/recording of it. Some reviewers say stay completely away from this one. Others start with the "best since AW" type language. It is perhaps the most AW like of any of his other recordings. However, it is far more polished in sound, and at times is someone lighthearted – though heavy at others. Although the song makes no sense to me, Vans singing in "Linden Arden Stole the Highlights" is some of his best. "Comfort You" is one of his most beautiful ballads. In my opinion a good, at times great, album – but not for everyone.

Other than a live recording, Van did not release another record until 1977’s "A Period of Transition." (APOT) In retrospect, this is not a bad album. It is definitely not his best but it is not bad. But, it was a huge disappointment. Van had been gone for three years, came back with an album called "APOT" on which he worked with the great New Orleans musician Dr. John. People were expecting great things. When they got good, not great, it fell flat. "Cold Wind in August" though is a beautiful tune.

1978’s Wavelength was again an uneven work. No truly great song on there. Some good songs. Some poor songs. "Kingdom Hall" is very catchy, but the rest of the work falls short.
So, by 1979 it had been several years since a superb recording by Van had been done. That year, though, marked a true comeback and a true period of transition. "Into the Music" (ITM) is perhaps my favorite Van recording. Mostly acoustic with light woodwinds, violins (ok, fiddles) understated drumming, yet somehow still rocking R&B. "Full Force Gail", "Bright Side of the Road" – these are truly fun songs. The second half gets downright serious though. "And The Healing Has Begun" is – well what can I say – to me at least, sexy

Girl, put on your summery dress,
your Easter bonnet and all the rest,
And I want to make love to you yes, yes yes
And the Healing has begun

Cool stuff. The last song is a remake of a very old song that has been done numerous times in the past – "It’s all in the Game" Vans rendition is the best I’ve heard.

1980’s "Common One" (CO) is, next to VF the receiver of the most mixed of reviews, and next to AW is the most inaccepsible album of his career. Notice how the very accepssible ITM is followed by an inaccesible recording. CO is stranger, deeper, darker, than most of the others. "Haunts of Ancient Peace" opens up with images of that old British folklore spoken of earlier. "Summertime in England" is a fifteen minute alternating song that I personally like, though I think I would be in the minority. The last song, "When Heart is Open" is a poem set to mystical musical sounds with very little melody or rhythm. It is odd, but I like it every once in a great while if I can listen to it in the dark with a good glass of wine in hand.

This album, though, set the tone for most of the 1980s. Most of the recordings during that time were searching, spiritual, and philosophical. Some were really good, some were not (The worst in my opinion is 1982s "Inarticulate Speech of the Heart" – this is probably the last Van recording you need to buy – only when you have exhausted all other options) Most during this time though were mixed bags. "A Sense of Wonder" has some great songs like "Ancient of Days" and "The Masters Eyes" but it also has its share of filler. The Album "No Guru, No Method, No Teacher" has some of the best lyrics, and some of the best arrangements of any Van recording, but yet his voice just somehow doesn’t fit and there is a lot lacking in melodies. "In the Garden" from that album, though is certainly in my top ten Van songs of all time.

Also of note from the 1980s is Vans recording with the Chieftans of traditional Irish music. In addition to a couple of reworked Van originals, there are some older Irish folk songs. My personal favorite of the bunch is "Carrickfergus" Vans vocals are outstanding.
The 80s closed out with Avalon Sunset – one of the easiest listening records of his career – including the hits "Have I Told You…" "When Will I Ever…"and "Whenever God..." the 90s opened up with "Enlightenment" which combined some of the spiritual meanerings of his 80s recordings with a little more R&B style. It is mostly good. This phase of his career ened with 1991’s double LP "Hymns to the Silence" (HTTS) The title song is also one of his ten best in my opinion. However, I describe this work as one really really great CD spread out over two CDs. That is, it is half great, half filler. A little musical editing would have been in order.

The next recording was "Too Long in Exile" This too gets very mixed reviews. The guy at one of the major Van websites panned this one heavily saying Van should have just stayed home. However, it is one of my favorites. Van returns to his R&B roots – redoing a Ray Charles song, recording a new version of "Gloria" with John Lee Hooker, an original bluesy duet "Wasted Years" also with Hooker. A fifteen minute take on Brook Bentons "I’ll Take Care of You" finishes it off. I recommend this one.

Since that time, Van has oscillated between releasing more of the same R&B flavored original recordings along with some specialty recordings. That is, Van has released a Big Band Jazz Album ("How Long Has This Been Going On") Two Country Albums (One with Jerry Lee Lewis’ sister for some unknown reason, and the recently released "Pay the Devil") and an album of skiffle music. I have limited exposure to only a couple of his albums from the last decade or so so I feel limited on what I can say.

In the end, then, buy 1) Best of Vol 1, 2) Street Choir 3) Into the Music and 4) Best of Vol 2, Too Long IN Exile. If you like it, keep going there are about fifty more. If you don’t like it, then stop after Best of Vol 1!

Van being inducted into the songwriters hall of fame (with Ray Charles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bbLDFDfdc0

Van and John Lee Hooker doing "Gloria"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRlVE2pNQ-s

Van doing "tupelo Honey" ~1979
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZUbjFCvlC0