Et Van Morrison chantait...

l’annonce d’un best of Van Morrison/vol.3.

Je suppose qu'il y a donc des volumes 1 et 2, ce sont sur des périodes différentes? ça reste bien pour découvrir le personnage ou pas?
Je ne connais que par Them (ou Them again, je sais plus...)

Les trois best of sont intéressants et sont autant de bons plans pour découvrir Van.

Le vol.1 (1990) réalisé par sa maison de disques comporte la plupart des classiques de sa période Them puis en solo - fin des sixties jusqu'à la fin des années 80. Se sont les "tubes" et si tu n'aimes pas ce volume, très probablement que Van Morrison n'est pas pour toi.


Le vol.2 (1993) paru assez rapidement pour surfer sur le franc succès connu par le volume précédent, est très différent. Cette fois, c'est Van Morrison lui même, qui se charge de la sélection et s'il puise dans la même période (60,70,80), lui va se concentrer -hormis deux concessions aux Them- sur ses travaux récents (86-91) certainement une manière de signifier qu'il n'est pas encore fini et que ce qui l'intéresse, c'est la musique qu'il est entrain de créer.



Le vol.3 (2007, voir aussi post ci dessus) est peut être le plus réussi des trois, même s'il n'illustre pas la période la plus impressionante de l'Irlandais (1993-2006). Mais comme je le disais c'est un best of qui est également un recueil de duos ainsi qu'une compil d'inédits et de raretés (voilà sans doute pourquoi, l'objet est double)



En bref, tu as deux cds sortis séparément sur la période de 1964 à 1991: le premier composé de choses très connues et le second de titres obscurs (vol.1&2); puis un cd double -qui vient de sortir- sur la période suivante 1993-2006 (vol.3) et ils sont tous vivement recommandés!

En ce qui concerne les albums, ceux proposés par Jungleland sont incontournables mais "Veedon Fleece" ou "Tupelo Honey" le sont tout autant pour les seventies. Plus tard on citera "No Guru, No Method, No Teacher" ou "Avalon Sunset" pour las années 80 et "Days Like This" ou l'immense "Back on Top" pour les nineties. Les années 00's ne sont pas forcément en reste avec l'excellent "Down The Road".

Après il y a aussi des albums live et des projets paralèles comme la collaboration avec les Chieftains pour un album de chansons traditionnelles irlandaises etc...etc...

Ou comment ouvrir une boite de pandore en se procurant un best of nice price.

Merci de ce "spotlight" sur l'un des chanteurs qui me chamboule régulièrement.
On avait eu l'occasion d'en parler de ce "best of vol3" (autre lieu, autre pseudo..mais même envie de partage Dom:) ), et tu connais le bien que j'en pense.
Il m'a permis de découvrir un peu mieux sa période récente, de m'y réintéresser en tous ca, parceque je t'avoue que j'avais un peu décroché vers la fin des années 80 et le début des années 90, en ayant le sentiment, certainement à tord, d'une certaine répétition et d'un manque d'inspiration.
Jusque là, je me fendais de chacun des ses nouveau opus.
Je les ressort et les déguste régulièrement.
Certainement un des meilleurs chaneurs contemporains...mais aussi des plus méconnus, ce qui est un comble, vu sa durée de carrière.
Faut dire qu'il est rare en interview, et lorqu'il parle un peu, il est plutôt...eu...bourru, non?

Comme quoi, un best of, lorsqu'il est bien fait, thématique, peut vraiment permettre une (re)découverte.

Merci encore Dom

jungleland a dit : Van Morrison est eclectique, touche à tout et sait merveilleusement bien marier des atmosphères différentes allant du presque blues (Veedon Fleece)...

Un retour intéressant sur ce grand disque des seventies en suivant le lien ci dessous:

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/on_second_thought/van-morrison-veedon-fleece.htm

For better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Though Veedon Fleece has become a critical success over the years, somehow the album still gets overlooked by most fans, or rarely mentioned as one of his best. Never, for example, have I discussed Van Morrison with friends or Stylus compatriots, always coming back to that barfront question (top-three, now gimme), and been told Veedon Fleece made the count. I think much of this is the almost monolithic presence of its closest cousin in Van’s catalogue, the masterpiece of smoky Celtic folk, brickwall jazz, and R&B, Astral Weeks. If you’re looking for that aural cushioning, and you have to choose one come fireside, it’s likely it’ll be Astral Weeks. Which is too bad. In many ways, in both sound and temperament, Veedon Fleece is not only every bit the record of its slightly daunting elder, but a companion piece that bookended his classic 1968-1974 period.

Coming on the heels of a long tour with his Caledonia Soul Orchestra, a live set from which made up his 1974 release It’s Too Late to Stop Now, and a divorce from his wife, Janet Planet, Morrison returned to Belfast and began working on what would become Veedon Fleece. Veedon was an anachronism of sorts for Van at the time, at least viewed in light of the rumbling, bottom-fed R&B for which he’d become known on his albums from the early ‘70s like Moondance, His Band and the Street Choir, and Tupelo Honey. The first signs of a reversion to the rustic spirituality of his earliest solo material could be heard on 1972’s Saint Dominic’s Preview, with its loose, extended song structures, contemplative lyricism (“Listen to the Lion,” “Redwood Tree,” “Almost Independence Day”), and almost complete lack of radio-friendly material (barring perhaps “Jackie Wilson Said [I’m In Heaven When You Smile]”). But it was with Veedon Fleece, and perhaps with his move from California back to Ireland, that Van finally nailed again the hypnotic, meditative quality of Astral Weeks.

Opening with the dim piano-led “Fair Play,” Veedon Fleece makes its claims on you early, while also announcing a return to Van’s Celtic past. Van’s back to fireside mode, a still hand and calm voice as he reclines against the song’s out-of-the-weather feel, spouting strange about taking in architecture with his mind, Oscar Wilde, and Thoreau. Where Astral Weeks made heathen’s psalms out of Van’s back-bed poesie and gorgeous, almost smotheringly atmospheric productions, Veedon Fleece is a bit more restrained. Its instrumental weight is never as engulfing, nor are its moods as suffocating as Astral’s can sometimes be. It lets you keep your head, but makes you accountable for that allowance, and often it’s that much more striking to hear Van up close, clear and pained, against a similar backdrop of velvety R&B, blues, and Irish lullabies.

Both “Linden Arden Stole the Highlights” and “Streets of Arklow” revel in a sense of sustaining yourself through something cold and ruinous via a warmth barely sufficient to keep your hands white, where it’s really only the whiskey burn keeping things limber. Structurally, they’re built on daybreak piano parts held up straight only by stand-up bass, acoustic guitar, and Jim Rothermel’s prominent flute and recorder parts, which provide their lone stretches of color. Van’s making dense, jazzy pushes out of a breakup, seemingly solace bound through Irish outlaw tales and shards of his own past, repeated motifs both lyrical and atmospheric. It’s as though he’d spread the regret, nostalgia, and soft pull from without from “T.B. Sheets” into every cut here, and taken away the blues by taking away the blues. Likewise, one of the album’s must-hears, “Cul de Sac,” wants its end of the roads and its everlastings in the same breath, building a high-blues piano roll, prominent bass saunter, and lead guitar part into an ode to the still snapshot moment that comes before a change of course.

Fortunately, on occasion Van shakes that sifting, wet-sand feel slightly, if never reaching the tumbling basslines and spring songs he’d mastered on previous albums. With the black gallop of “You Don’t Pull No Punches, But You Don’t Push the River,” he maintains the album’s doleful sensibility without sacrificing its need to eventually move around a little bit. He’s getting all retrofitted with his New Ageism on us again, William Blake and the Eternals looking for the Veedon Fleeces, sure thing Van, but then, there are some cool flute showdowns and great heavings and clearings of Nathan Rubin’s strings. He’s setting a mood down like a meal, remembering that small palate cleanser, and this is the first. Of course, the best, and the most immediately memorable song on Veedon, is “Bulbs.” Coming about as close to laying down a groove as he does on the album, the song quickly makes dust of its acoustic start, leaping headstrong into a Waylon Jennings-style bass-roll, rump-heavy and plush, pianos shimmering and fingerdense. Van’s singing again of weekends instead of cul-de-sacs and walks remembered after the close, and, thankfully, he’s back to his “la-la-la-la-la-la”s for a moment.

But Morrison had just been through a divorce, and Veedon Fleece is a break-up album of sorts. Just like every drunken broken-with starts the night out flirting and ends up whining about his ex, every such album ends where it began: wistful and melancholic. Van’s so close to the mic on “Come Here My Love” he could pluck the strings with his chest hairs, tin-masking his pain behind mystification, Belfast space-talk, and an acoustic. As “Country Fair”’s hushed recorder and guitar arrangement finishes the album like an early frost, snake-patterned ambient noises just audible beneath, you can hear Van retreat into the song’s extended outro, humming and moaning to himself, but mainly listening to the sound of this new hush he’s created. And that new hush would draw itself out. Veedon Fleece was the last record Morrison recorded for three years, saying in interviews he needed to get away from music completely for a while. While, as I said, it’s never gained Astral’s reputation as a record-collection cornerstone, Veedon is the kind of album, so frothy and thick, that requires silence when it’s over. You have to turn the stereo off for a while. To me, that’s the better explanation for Morrison’s three-year absence. He’d just finished Veedon Fleece.

Là, j'écoute Brown Eyed Girl... par contre, apparament, ça n'est pas dans la discographie du site officiel mais c'est dans ma médiathèque municipale... pas moyen de trouver la chopette non plus..

une bizarrerie?

la date qui figure sur le CD est 1998.
Ca contient:
" Brown eyed girl "
" He ain't give you none "
" T.B. Sheets "
" Spanish rose "
" Goodbye baby "
" Ro ro rosey "
" Who drove the red sports car "
" Midnight special "
" Beside you "
" It's alright "
" Madame George "
" Send your mind "
Référ. Squire Records GUV 1.

Entre la fin des Them et sa signature sur Warner, Van Morrison s'essayait à une carrière solo chapeautée par Bert Berns (déjà producteur des Them, exilé à New York, où il fonda Bang Records) qui venait de convaincre Van de le rejoindre aux Etats Unis afin d'étoffer son label naissant.
Une partie du matériel qu'il enregistra durant ces sessions (quelque part entre 66 et 67) a été publié sur un Lp intitulé "Blowin' your Mind", avec le tube "Brown Eyed Girl", donc. Van Morrison s'était opposé à la publication de cet album ne le considérant pas suffisamment abouti malgré la présence de pépites telles "TB Sheets".
Bref, Van Morrison boude (déjà) et retourne chez lui en Irlande. Quelque temps après Bert Berns décède des suites d'une attaque ce qui a pour conséquence de libérer Van de son contrat et lui permettre d'enregistrer enfin son premier véritable album solo (Astral Weeks chez Warner, donc)
Van Morrison ne détenant pas les droits de ses enregistrements chez Bang, les bandes ont été publié maintes et maintes fois presque toujours sous forme de compil très cheap ne rendant pas justice à ces sessions ( comme, sans doute, celle que tu as récupéré à ta médiathèque).
Une autre publiée en 1991 (intitulée simplement Bang Masters) est en revanche à la hauteur avec en plus des titres précédemment cités, une première version de "Madame George" montrant ce que le jeune Van avait déjà en tête à ce moment là...

Je voulais pas forcément vous ennuyer avec ça, une fois encore , mais là j'en profite pour vous signaler que l'ensemble du catalogue (ou presque) du Belfast Cowboy va être réédité et remastérisé par Hip-O Records (la branche réédition d'Universal, équivalent contemporain du Rhino d'il y a quelques années en ce qui concerne les rééditions intelligentes et bien fichues)

Hip-O va lancer l'opération avec un Greatest Hits (de plus, ...)le 22/10/07 et devrait poursuivre au rythme de 4 albums originaux remasterisés par mois.

VAN MORRISON: STILL ON TOP 3CD SET, RELEASED ON OCTOBER 22ND



Van's back catalogue has been unavailable for some time now and has now been completely remastered for a series of reissues beginning with this superb compilation that covers the complete span of his career from the days of Them, through the classic period on Reprise and up to date with the Universal albums.

The standard release is a 2 disc set but a limited number of this 3 disc set will also be available - don't know how long for though.

CD 1
01 Jackie Wilson Said (I'm In Heaven When You Smile)
02 Dweller On The Threshold
03 Whenever God Shines His Light
04 Moondance
05 Bright Side Of The Road
06 Brown Eyed Girl
07 Wavelength
08 Crazy Love
09 Someone Like You
10 When Will I Ever Learn To Live In God
11 Tore Down A La Rimbaud
12 Wild Night
13 Gloria, Stereo Version
14 Real Real Gone
15 Into The Mystic
16 In The Garden
17 Saint Dominic's Preview
18 Stranded

CD 2
01 Precious Time
02 Domino
03 Here Comes The Night
04 Little Village
05 And It Stoned Me
06 Days Like This
07 Have I Told You Lately That I Love You
08 Cleaning Windows
09 Baby Please Don't Go
10 Back On Top
11 Vanlose Stairway
12 Celtic New Year
13 Irish Heartbeat
14 The Healing Game, Alternative Version
15 Full Force Gale
16 Warm Love
17 Did Ye Get Healed
18 Tupelo Honey
19 Wonderful Remark

CD 3
01 Hey Mr. DJ
02 In The Forest
03 Queen Of The Slipstream
04 Rave On John Donne
05 Hymns To The Silence
06 Crazy Jane On God
07 Rough God Goes Riding
08 Steal My Heart Away
09 One Irish Rover
10 Listen To The Lion
11 Streets Of Arklow
12 The Beauty Of The Days Gone By
13 Take It Where You Find It
14 Coney Island

Van Morrison avec sa troisième compilation de l'année

Pour ceux qui aiment le kitsch:

http://www.polydor.co.uk/vanmorrison/About_album.html

En même temps on ne peut guère lui en vouloir, pour les pochettes et autres objets promotionnels, puisque ça doit faire belle lurette qu'il ne doit plus guère être au courant de comment est emballée sa musique, surtout dans le cas de rétrospectives...

En tout cas ils continuent à parler de "hits" alors qu'hormis Gloria avec les Them ou Brown Eyed Girl en solo, il n'y a guère ici et dans la carrière de Van Morrison que des succès d'estime.
Si vous cherchez de merveilleuses chansons, en revanche, il suffit de choisir une plage au hasard sur l'un de ces trois disques...

Après une année 2006 consacrée à un album presque entièrement constitué de reprises country fifties et une année 2007 dédiée au retroviseur (voir ci dessus), Van Morrison revient en 2008 avec un nouvel album de compositions originales.

Etant quelque peu monomaniaque et très peu objectif quand il s'agit de l'irascible irlandais, je trouve d'ores et déjà le tracklisting fort alléchant et soupçonne cet album d'être excellent malgré sa pochette à chier (comme souvent chez Van, donc pas forcément un mauvais signe )

KEEP IT SIMPLE March 11th, 2008

1. "How Can a Poor Boy"
2. "School of Hard Knocks"
3. "That´s Entrainment"
4. "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore"
5. "Lover Come Back"
6. "Keep It Simple"
7. "End of the Land"
8. "Song of Home"
9. "No Thing"
10. "Soul"
11. "Behind the Ritual"

All songs by Van Morrison

Morrison a déclaré à propos de cet album: "I felt I had something to say with these songs." Il est peu coutumier de ce genre de communication et il faudra vérifier s'il estime vraiment avoir quelque chose de spécial à dire où s'il s'agit d'un simple argument promotionel soufflé par Lost Highway, son distributeur. Dans le même communiqué Van The Man précise encore que dans "That´s Entertainment" il explique son approche de la musique: "Enterrainment is when you connect with the music...Entertainment is really what I'm getting at in the music...It's kind of when you're in the present moment - you're here - with no past or future.
Excellent programme.

Hier 29 janvier sont ressortis 7 albums de Van Morrison avec des bonus tracks. Au total 29 albums compris entre TUPELO HONEY et DOWN THE ROAD seront concernés par ces rééditions:

Les 7 premiers sont ceux-là:

Tupelo Honey, 1971 – Wild Night (alternative take) and a reworking of the traditional Down By The Riverside

It’s Too Late To Stop Now, 1974 - a live take on Brown Eyed Girl

Wavelength, 1978 – Kingdom Hall and Wavelength (Live at the Roxy Theatre, LA, Nov 26, 1978)

Into The Music, 1979 – Steppin’ Out Queen and Troubadours (alternative takes)

A Sense Of Wonder, 1984 – Crazy Jane On God and A Sense Of Wonder (alternative takes)

Avalon Sunset, 1989 – Whenever God Shines His Light (alternative take) and When The Saints Go Marching In (with additional lyrics by Van Morrison)

Back On Top, 1999 – Philosopher’s Stone (alternative take) and Valley Of Tears (A completely new arrangement of the Fats Domino Song)

L’acariâtre Van Morrison a une réputation de ronchonneur tracassier à défendre et, ces temps ci, il défend cette dernière avec une hargne et une détermination encore renforcées.

Pendant longtemps ce sont essentiellement les journalistes ou biographes qui ont eu à supporter ses foudres, à présent il s’attaque aux internautes avec une égale méchanceté.

C’est ainsi que fin de l’année dernière il a engagé un Web Sheriff afin de faire fermer l’ensemble des sites internet traitant de sa musique en dehors de son site officiel, évidemment

Ainsi il n’y a plus aucun de ses concerts qui circulent sur dime (ce qui à la limite peut se concevoir : c’est sa musique, il fait ce qu’il veut), plus d’extraits live sur You Tube non plus.
Plus contestable, il a fait interdire « The Unofficial Van Morrison Website » de Michael Hayward (site réellement remarquable pour tout ce qui touchait de prêt ou de loin l’art de l’Irlandais) puis « Wavelength » (très bon site aussi) De véritables Labor Of Love qui lui ont été consacré et qui lui rendaient probablement davantage service qu’ils ne lui causaient de torts. Et là, il faut reconnaître que les fans sont en droit de se demander si leur idole n'est pas en train de se tromper d’ennemi.
Un peu comme si Springsteen faisait fermer Backstreets et Greasy Lake. Ou Dylan, Expecting Rain etc...
Enfin tout ne semble pas définitivement perdu puisque des discussions semblent en cours:

The (Unofficial) Van Morrison website
A fan site which began as a personal hobby back in 1995, growing over the years as it incorporated contributions from Van's fans worldwide. Currently offline pending resolution of discussions with Exile Productions et al. Stay tuned...

Wavelength has received a number of requests from Excile via Web Sheriff to make changes to the site and these are under discussion.

Mais cela ne sent pas très bon quand même, d'autant plus que cette chasse aux internautes n’est visiblement pas terminée puisque certains sites, plus confidentiels (qui apparaissaient malgré tout en tête des réponses Google) se font plus discrets, bien qu’ils existent encore. On peut imaginer qu’ils se cachent en attendant que l’orage passe.
Mais avec Van Morrison, on doute un peu que la fin de la colère soit proche...

En ce qui concerne la musique, je reviendrai sans doute plus tard sur les rééditions dont parle JC (il y a du beau monde en tout cas)
Sinon et malgré tout, on peut écouter deux titres de son prochain album (plutôt bien comme à l’accoutumée).
«That’s entrainment » très rythm'n’blues, très soul, plein de vie comme dirait Fante. Et puis « Soul », vous l’aurez deviné, dans une veine similaire mais avec en sus quelques chœurs mais pas du meilleur effet, eux. Enfin, tout cela appelle d’autres écoutes, en compagnie du reste de l’album.

Si toutefois on arrive à faire abstraction du maladif mécontentement -aussi désagréable que persistant- de l’intraitable Irlandais.

Grand artiste... mais décidément quelle tête de con !

Le site que je visitais souvent quand je cherchais des infos était celui-ci:

http://www.harbour.sfu.ca/~hayward/van/van.html

C'est celui de Michael Hayward (le premier que je citais) et il était effectivement remarquable



Une fois de plus des discussions ont l'air d'être en cours donc tout ce travail ne sera peut être pas perdu...

http://www.vancouver.sfu.ca/~hayward/

je viens d'acheter le double DVD de Montreux 74 et un autre concert début 80...pas encore vu, vous en pensez quoi ?

Tu ne devrais pas être déçu par ce dvd...

C'est le premier que publie officiellement Van Morrison et le choix de ces deux concerts à Montreux semblaient étonnant au moment de la sortie (Van participe au célèbre festival Suisse depuis les seventies et quasiment chaque année mais ces concerts de 74 & 80 n'étaient pas particulièrement réputés) mais se révèle finalement assez intéressant même si perso j'aurai préféré le concert de 1990 par exemple.

Celui de 1974 montre un Van entouré de nouveaux musiciens alors qu'il vient de mettre fin à son Caledonia Soul Orchestra : acclamé partout, dans la foulée du célèbre "It's Too Late To Stop Now", Morrison se sépare -évidemment- de ce groupe pour repartir à zéro et c'est ce que documente ce concert essentiellement constitué d'obscurités (pour le public et le groupe ).

Le concert de 1980 montre Van avec un groupe totalement différent incluant cette fois ci John Platania, John Allair (des types qui ont rejoué récemment avec lui) ou Pee Wee Ellis et Mark Isham pour un concert du coup très différent et un peu plus conventionnel mais pas moins passionnant (et avec plus de vrai morceaux de titres connus dedans ).

Précisons encore que la qualité de l'image et du son est remarquable. Pour le reste, comme toujours, il te reste à te faire une opinion par toi même

vu le concert de 74 très bien, les musiciens tricottent bien, les cuivres, les claviers, une merveille de groove, une voix irréprochable, venue de nulle part, sans jamais pousser, incroyable...des arrangement en intro (premier titre pare xemple), tu plonges d'un coup...que du bonheur...j'attend de voir la suite..et j'attend ma réédition du "it's to late to stop know !"

Encore un témoignage allant dans le sens de ce que l'on entend avec de plus en plus d'insistance: Van Morrison est un artiste merveilleux mais une tête de con tout aussi remarquable.

Cette fois, c'est Rod Stewart qui s'y colle, avant d'interpréter "Have I told you lately that I Love you" du Belfast Cowboy, il ne peut s'empêcher de préciser: "A great songwriter. And a miserable person."

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1501119/story.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10493240

On ne va pas vous refaire le coup d'il n'y a pas de fumée sans feu... mais bon, on finit quand même par se dire qu'il doit -quand même- y avoir un p'tit truc...

Bah, c'est pas ce qui va nous empêcher de vérifier ça par nous même, ce week end. En espérant tout de même rencontrer le merveilleux artiste plutôt que la teigne...




Au passage, puisqu'on évoque la tournée de Van Morrison précisons qu'il pratiquait très probablement le Never Ending Tour bien avant que Dylan ne popularise ce concept.

Ces tournées ont toujours été déconnectées de la sortie de ses albums: il tourne en permanence depuis l'age de 13 ou 15 ans...(hormis un break au milieu des seventies). Parfois la tournée correspond avec la sortie d'un album parfois pas du tout. Parfois quand un album vient de sortir, il peut, un soir, ne jouer aucun titre de l'album en question, comme il peut, le soir d'après, en jouer l'intégralité... et, évidemment, toutes les combinaisons entre ces deux options, aussi...

Il a, malgré tout, depuis la soixantaine, quelque peu ralenti le rythme: actuellement il tourne tous les week ends (le vendredi et le samedi soir) en Europe, au gré des engagements, et tous les soirs quand il est aux Etats Unis, lors de visites d'une à deux semaines. Avec ou sans nouvel album, donc.
Aux states, il doit se faire chier hors concerts, donc il joue tous les soirs. En Europe, il doit s'ennuyer aussi mais avec le système des week ends cela lui permet de passer la semaine chez lui, avec bobonne et leurs deux bébés:

Singer Van Morrision is a dad again.

His wife Michelle Rocca gave birth to a baby boy in Mount Carmel in August 2007 but details have just emerged.

The couple had kept the pregnancy a secret from the public as they did with their first child - a baby girl who was born last year.

No other details of the new arrival were revealed.

Bon, ceci dit, cela lui fait encore pas loin d'une centaine de dates par an ,chaque année, ce qui est plus qu'honorable à son age.

On est assez étonné de s’apercevoir, alors que les musiciens prennent place, que pour une fois ce sont à peu près les mêmes que la fois d’avant.

Habituellement la plupart d’entre eux valsaient alors que seul Ned Edwards, le fidèle guitariste et maître de cérémonie, depuis une dizaine d’année, gardait sa place.

Samedi dernier à Francfort, en revanche, c’est ce dernier qui fait les frais du remaniement alors que le groupe est resté peu ou prou le même. C’est l’excellent John Platania, qui a déjà accompagné Van régulièrement (il était des sessions de Moondance), à la guitare.

Mais pendant que le concert démarre, right on time, on se rend compte que l’on n’avait pas remarqué, qu’un peu en retrait, il y a un deuxième guitariste !?
Et, Holly shit, on dirait bien que c’est Mick Green !!
C’est effectivement le guitariste de Johnny Kidd & The Pirates dont on entendait régulièrement la guitare sur les disques de Morrison mais qui en revanche ne tournait que de manière exceptionnelle avec l’Irlandais.
Cette fois il est bien présent, même s’il n’est pas en évidence sur le premier titre, qui est une reprise de Sinatra.
Mais cela va vite changer, dès «Magic Time» : "you can call it Nostalgia, I don’t mind, I want to go back to this Magic Time", chante Van qui en profite pour rappeler, au passage, qu’il jouait déjà dans cette ville en 1962 (avec les Monarchs -7 sets par soir- 9 le week end et 7 jours sur 7) alors que Mick Green, en Angleterre, cartonnait avec «A shot of rythm’n’ blues», titre que les deux vétérans vont s’empresser d’interpréter.

Suit un grand, grand moment pour qui aime Van Morrison, avec «In The Afternoon » dans lequel il incorpore «Ancient Highway>Raincheck>Golden Autumn Day >Mystic Church». On en dira pas plus parce que c’est assez indescrïptible.

Puis il y a encore un «Stop Drinking» de Lightning Hopkins où Mick Green est de nouveau en évidence et un «Moondance» ou Van présente le groupe, enfin c’est Bobby Ruggiero le percussionniste qui s’y colle.




A l’appel d’une fan réclamant un de ses vieux classiques, Van rétorque «That was another me» pendant qu’on lui installe un tabouret (si même Van Morrison se met aux effets spéciaux maintenant… ) et qu’il s’empare de son harmonica pour « How can a Poor boy », un premier extrait, très blues, du prochain album.
D’ailleurs à partir de ce moment là du concert, Van ne jouera plus que ça. Je veux dire, uniquement le dernier album mais tout le dernier album.

Mais c’est une aubaine de voir un artiste de sa trempe jouer pour le public un album que personne n’a encore entendu et de le découvrir ainsi. Faut reconnaître que dans le genre preview cela a quand même plus de gueule que le téléchargement ou que l’écoute de steamings (ce que je pratique aussi évidemment )



A propos de ce futur album, autant qu’on ait pu en juger, Van revisite une fois encore l’ensemble des genres qu’il affectionne, Jazz et Gospel, Country et Blues, Folk Irlandais, Soul, Rythm’n’ blues... ce qui n’a rien de très surprenant, bien au contraire...
Mais qu’il parvienne encore à tirer quelque chose d’aussi consistant et vibrant de ces genres éculés, c’est là que cela devient un peu plus étonnant. Et intéressant.
Behind The Ritual (you find the Spiritual) chante-t-il en quittant la scène (et l’album) et c’est peut être, en effet, de quelque chose comme ça dont il s’agit. En tout cas sans doute l’une des raisons qui le pousse à continuer de parcourir inlassablement les scènes. Enfin ça et le fait qu’il doit être convaincu, à l’instar de Dylan, que l’essentiel de son art réside dans ses concerts.

Le lendemain, ceci dit, on aimerait bien écouter tout de même ce nouvel album, rien que pour voir si les musiciens et les arrangements sont les mêmes que pour la scène et si la production est à la hauteur. Et surtout prolonger le plaisir de la veille.

Pour cela on va attendre encore un peu mais l’impression est tenace : si c’est vers la simplicité que Van tend désormais, c’est l’évidence qu’il semble atteindre et ça, bien sûr, c’est tout sauf simple.

Van Morrison a donné un concert pour la BBC, dans le cadre de la promo de son prochain album

March 2008 sees the release of Van Morrison's latest studio album 'Keep It Simple'. Speaking about the title track from the album, Morrison says: “It’s just a song about how everything’s gotten now so complex and how things have become so complicated and nothing’s easy to do anymore.”

Le concert sera diffusé ce week end et aurait avant été probablement dispo sur dime sous 24H mais avec les nouvelles mesures ridiculement draconiennes du management de l'Irlandais cela va être beaucoup plus compliqué de le récupérer

Une interview -radio- de Van Morrison dans laquelle il ne peut s'empêcher, au passage, d'égratigner Mojo, Q, Rolling Stone etc...

Faire de la promo en attaquant ce qui reste de la presse musicale... pas sûr qu'il s'agisse du meilleur moyen de s'attirer les bonnes critiques mais bon, c'est Van Morrison, il faut pas trop chercher à comprendre ...

JC a dit :

Bah dites donc... si c'est un mariage d'amour ça je suis ventriloque !!!

C'est en effet ce que semble suggérer la photo, tout à fait d'accord avec toi JC...



Cependant, pour la petite histoire, la réalité (ou plutôt ce que l'on peut en deviner) semble différente. Van Morrison et Michelle Rocca sont ensemble depuis le début des 90's (plus de quinze ans) ne sont apparemment toujours pas mariés mais ont eu, en revanche, deux enfants ensemble (une fille en 2006 et un garçon un an plus tard)
http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/the-passionate-intensity-of-mismatched-lovers-517979.html
C'est elle qui apparaissait sur le tribute à Van ainsi que sur son album de 1995 "Days Like This"



Sinon Van Morrison continue la promotion du nouvel album en terminant une semaine de dates américaines (d'Austin SXSW à New York en passant par le Ryman à Nashville) avec des concerts pendant lesquels il continue de jouer le dernier album en intégralité mais quasiment aucun de ses classiques.

Il a aussi déclaré, dans une interview pour la BBC, que pas mal d'artistes ont, selon lui, gaspillé de leur créativité dans ce qu'il appelle le "fame game" (interviews, séances photos, dédicaces et solicitations diverses), Un temps précieux qu'ils n'ont pas passé, du coup, à écrire et composer...
Lui ayant été allergique à cet aspect du métier, considère avoir été quelque peu préservé de ce côté là.

Il est vrai qu'il a une quarantaine d'albums pour appuyer ses dires, et des concerts littéralement innombrables...

Pour qui apprécie la Celtic Soul de Van Morrison, les nouvelles sont plutôt bonnes puisque Michael Hayward vient de gagner une bataille contre le Web Sheriff engagé par l'Irlandais pour faire fermer le site.
En effet le site à rouvert après d'interminables discussions sans être trop défiguré ou vidé de son contenu (fort intéressant pour ceux qui s'intéressent à l'art du Cowboy de Belfast).
Le site a juste changé d'url, le nouveau étant le suivant : http://van-the-man.info/ RECTIFICATION: le site est définitivement fermé deux mois plus tard:

As of June 24, 2008 this unofficial "Van the Man" information website is gone for good. Sincere thanks to Van fans everywhere for your patronage and support during the past thirteen years (1995-2008).

En revanche toujours pas de réapparition de Van sur dimeadozen ou youtube et ça malheureusement il ne faut pas trop y compter...



C'est d'autant plus dommage qu'il a donné récemment deux concerts pour la BBC que l'on aurait pu récupérer sur dime en superbe qualité...

L'un pour la BBC Radio que l'on peut toujours écouter ici: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio2_aod.shtml?radio2/r2_vanmorrison ( lien mort)
Il est recommandé, pour ceux qui n'ont jamais le temps, de néanmoins se servir de la touche avance rapide en appuyant 3 fois sur la fonction +15 minutes, de patienter jusqu'à la fin de "Don't Go To Nightclubs Anymore" puis d'écouter la très belle version de "End Of The Land"

"If I have to drive all night just to feel all right
Going down to the end of the land"

L'autre concert était pour la BBC Four, la télé donc. Cela a été enregistré à LSO St Luke's à Londres (l'endroit ou Bruce avait déjà effectué un broadcast durant les Seeger Sessions) et aurait pu faire un beau dvd à dl (mais vous avez désormais compris que Van est revêche et ne l'entend pas de cette oreille).

Setlist:
Precious Time
Magic Time
I'm Not Feeling it Any More
Song of Home
Playhouse
End of the Land
Vanlose Stairway
Help Me
One Irish Rover
Entrainment
Keep it Simple
Behind the Ritual

Ceci dit il y a quelques titres moins réussis, qui n'ont pas été retenu pour le broadcast, les versions n'étant pas trop convaincantes, mais qu'on peut néanmoins visionner sur le site de la BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/vanmorrison/video/ (lien mort)

Pour terminer, signalons que le broadcast avait été suivi d'une sélection des meilleures participations de Van à l'émission de Jools Holland et, ça aussi, on y aura pas droit sur dime.
Trop con.

bill horton a dit:
"C'est d'autant plus dommage qu'il a donné récemment deux concerts pour la BBC que l'on aurait pu récupérer sur dime en superbe qualité..."

si c'est ceux dont tu parles ,ils sont disponibles sur Hungercity

C'est à dire que ceux qui sont disponibles sur HungerCity correspondent à deux passages de Van dans les studio de la BBC Radio pour la promo de son dernier album:
-d'une part, il y a un entretien d'une heure environ avec Paul Jones enregistré le 11/02/08 au cours duquel Van interprète 5 titres de son nouvel album
-d'autre part, il y un mini concert (mixant de nouveaux titres avec quelques anciens) enregistré le lendemain -12/02/08- toujours dans les studios de la BBC Radio.

Ces deux performances font l'objet du dl sur HungerCity, que tu mentionnes.

Mais,juste avant cela le 10/02/08 et dans le cadre de la même promo, Van Morrison a aussi donné un concert pour la BBC Four (TV) à Saint Lukes Church. C'est ce concert, en vidéo donc, que je n'ai pas encore réussi à dégoter... mais si tu as une piste je l'accueillerai avec plaisir et enthousiasme

Mais avec Van, banni d'à peu près tous les recoins du net, ce n'est vraiment pas évident. C'est déjà assez étonnant qu'il ne fasse pas parti des "Artists Not Allowed On HungerCity"

[cit]JC a dit : Euh sinon je le veux bien le DVD, j'en suis encore à 0%, faut dire j'ai d'autres choses sur le grill... [/cit]

Setlist:

Precious Time
Magic Time
I'm Not Feeling it Any More
Song of Home
Playhouse
End of the Land
Vanlose Stairway
Help Me
One Irish Rover
Entrainment
Keep it Simple
Behind the Ritual

J'ai visionné la chose.
Techniquement, rien à redire, très belle qualité du son et de l'image ainsi que réalisation impeccable.
Cependant, quand Van apparait, il a clairement la tête des mauvais jours (comme presque tous les jours avec lui ) et puis cela finit par s'arranger un peu (comme cela lui arrive quelque fois )

Il s'anime, notamment, quand arrive son vieux pote Goergie Fame (assez chouette enchainement "Vanlose Stairway" puis "Help Me") et il y a aussi l'impeccable guitare de Mick Green vers la fin, ce qui est toujours bon à prendre.
Mais, même avant cela déjà, on note quelques bons moments comme "I'm Not Feeling it Any More (like in 1984)"

Voilà, pour rester bref, un document qui sans être exceptionnel, reste un truc honnête et donc recommandé.



A noter qu'on trouve désormais aussi sur le net un autre dvd, tiré d'une émission diffusée le même soir, juste après ces BBC Four Sessions et compilant différentes apparitions télé de Van Morrison entre 1984 et 2005 (notamment chez Jools Holland que l'on retrouve sur certains titres derrière les claviers).
C'est une compil' sur plus de vingt ans donc, forcément, il y a à boire et à manger mais on retiendra malgré tout la version de "Celtic New Year"(2005), une des plus belles chansons récentes de l'Irlandais.

Après les 7 premières remasterd & expanded cds du mois de janvier, voici venir (le 30.06.08) le second volet des rééditions de l'intégrale de Van Morrison avec 8 nouveaux cds, toujours dans le désordre. Rien de bien allechant à signaler en terme de bonus hormis les inédits "At the End of The Day" et "Lonely At the Top".

On retiendra parmi ces rééditions: "The Healing Game" des 90's et "No Guru No Method No Teacher" des années 80 pour les inédits précités mais pas que. Des seventies on réécoutera "Veedon Fleece" qui n'a besoin d'aucun bonus (ou autres artifices) pour faire envie.

'A Night In San Francisco'(1994/2008) (2 CD)
Disc 1
1. Did Ye Get Healed? Live Version -
2. Medley: It's All In The Game Live Version -
3. I've Been Working Live Version -
4. I Forgot That Love Existed Live Version -
5. Medley: Vanlose Stairway Live Version -
6. You Make Me Feel So Free Live Version -
7. Beautiful Vision Live Version -
8. Medley: See Me Through Live Version -
9. Ain't That Loving You Baby? Live Version - 2007 Version
10. Medley: Stormy Monday Live Version -
11. Help Me Live Version -
12. Good Morning Little School Girl Live Version -
13. Tupelo Honey Live Version -
14. Moondance / My Funny Valentine Live Version -
Disc 2
1. Jumpin' With Symphony Sid Live Version -
2. It Fills You Up Live Version -
3. I'll Take Care Of You / It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World Live
Version - 2007 Remasterd
4. Medley: Lonely Avenue Live Version -
5. So Quiet In Here / That's Where It's At Live Version -
6. Medley: In The Garden Live Version -
7. Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? Live Version -
8. Shakin' All Over / Gloria Live Version -
9. Cleaning Windows Bonus Track Previously Unreleased

Van Morrison - 'Common One' (1980/2008)
1. Haunts Of Ancient Peace
2. Summertime In England
3. Satisfied 2007 Remmastered
4. Wild Honey
5. Spirit
6. When Heart Is Open
7. Haunts Of Ancient Peace Alternative Previously Unreleased
8. When Heart Is Open Alternative Previously Unreleased


Van Morrison - 'Enlightenment' (1990/2008)
1. Real Real Gone
2. Enlightenment
3. So Quiet In Here
4. Avalon Of The Heart
5. See Me Through
6. Youth Of 1000 Summers
7. In The Days Before Rock'n'Roll
8. Start All Over Again
9. She's My Baby
10. Memories
11. Enlightenment Alternative Previously Unreleased
12. So Quiet In Here Alternative Previously Unreleased

Van Morrison - 'Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart' (1983/2008)
1. Higher Than The World
2. Connswater
3. River Of Time
4. Celtic Swing
5. Rave On John Donne
6. Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart No.1
7. Irish Heartbeat
8. The Street Only Knew Your Name
9. Cry For Home
10. Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart No.2
11. September Night
12. Cry For Home Alternative Previously Unreleased
13. Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart No.2 Alternative Previously
Unreleased

Van Morrison - 'Live At The Grand Opera House' (1985/2008)
1. Introduction: Into The Mystic (Instrumental) / Inarticulate
Speech Of The Heart
2. Dweller On The Threshold
3. It's All In The Game / You Know What They're Writing About
4. She Gives Me Religion
5. Haunts Of Ancient Peace Live
6. Full Force Gale
7. Beautiful Vision
8. Vanlose Stairway
9. Rave On, John Donne / Rave On Part 2
10. Northern Muse (Solid Ground)
11. Cleaning Windows

Van Morrison - 'No Guru, No Method, No Teacher' (1986/2008)
1. Got To Go Back
2. Oh The Warm Feeling
3. Foreign Window
4. A Town Called Paradise
5. In The Garden
6. Tir Na Nog
7. Here Comes The Knight
8. Thanks For The Information
9. One Irish Rover
10. Ivory Tower
11. Oh The Warm Feeling Alternative Previously Unreleased
12. Lonely At the Top Previously Unreleased

Van Morrison - 'The Healing Game' (1997/2008)
1. Rough God Goes Riding
2. Fire In The Belly
3. This Weight
4. Waiting Game
5. Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
6. Burning Ground
7. It Once Was My Life
8. Sometimes We Cry
9. If You Love Me
10. The Healing Game
11. At The End Of The Day Previously Unreleased

Van Morrison - 'Veedon Fleece' (1974/2008)
1. Fair Play
2. Linden Arden Stole The Highlights
3. Who Was That Masked Man
4. Streets Of Arklow
5. You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River
6. Bulbs
7. Cul De Sac
8. Comfort You
9. Come Here My Love
10. Country Fair
11. Twilight Zone Alternative Previously Unreleased
12. Cul De Sac Alternative Previously Unreleased

(Polydor distributed by Universal Music)

Dans l'autobiographie de John Mc Enroe ("Serious") on trouve l'anecdote suivante:

Bob Dylan concert in London 1994: After the concert i was invited backstage, where i walked into a room that had 5 people in it: Dylan, Chrissie Hynde, George Harrison and his son Dhani and one guy i didn't recognise.

I went up to the guy and said "I'm John McEnroe,who are you?".

He said,"I'm Bozo the fucking clown".

It turned out to be Van Morrison'.

Toujours aussi bon...



Plus sérieusement, il y a, par ailleurs, un excellent billet de Dylan Jones dans "The Independent" qui revient sur un des grands morceaux récents de Van ("Blue and Green") passé relativement inaperçu mais néanmoins sublimissime (d'abord paru sur un album benefit au profit des victimes de Katrina: "Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now", le titre a ensuite été incorporé au Best of Vol.3 de l'année dernière)

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/dylan-jones/dylan-jones-if-you-ask-me-855000.html

If you ask me, "Blue and Green" by Van Morrison is as good a blues record as you're likely to hear, or indeed you deserve to hear, this century. It is, quite simply – in at least two senses of the word – brilliant, and has certainly restored my faith in the bitter, curmudgeonly old cove.

There I was, driving at speed through Herefordshire, seeing if I could keep ahead of the rain, and working my way through The Best of Van Morrison Vol 3, which is less a greatest hits collection and more a selection of the less offensive records he's released these last 15 years. As any half-hearted fan will know, in his dotage, Van has been "harking back to his roots", knocking out dozens of rudimentary and pretty mediocre jazz and blues tunes, often accompanied by clunky, ill-suited cohorts such as Ray Charles, Tom Jones and Georgie Fame, thinking – perhaps – that unadorned roots music will somehow afford him the critical acclaim that began deserting him in the Eighties. But seeing that most of the records he's made in the last decade and a half have been not so much curate's eggs as scrambled eggs (all mixed up and nowhere to go), it was a surprise when "Blue and Green" started wafting through the in-car stereo. In fact, it was less of a surprise and more of a revelation – spare, seductive, even-tempered, it's one of those songs you could play repeatedly for an hour and not tire of.

The song was previously included on the little-known charity album Hurricane Relief: Come Together Now, which raised money to help victims of Hurricane Katrina (which hit America's Gulf Coast in 2005) – which is probably the reason I'd never heard of it. But I implore any disillusioned Morrison buff to seek it out, as it will restore your faith in belligerent, claret-jowled old men in ill-fitting leather jackets and inappropriate hats. As one contented Amazon customer says, "Despite having most of this already I paid out my money and what did I get? A reasonable overview with some obscurities, one of which, 'Blue and Green', is worth the cost on its own." As I understand it, most reviews on Amazon are written either by the people responsible for the product, or by their friends and relatives (allegedly), but something tells me this one wasn't written by Van himself.

Van était à Toronto hier soir dans le fameux Massey Hall, celui là même où avait été enregistré un concert de Neil Young de 1971 parut récemment.



La salle (ou autre chose) a visiblement inspiré Van si on en croit le compte rendu glâné sur le net...

We walked into the beautiful Massey Hall in the light, spent one hour and 37 minutes bathed in the light of the music, and exited into the fading light of the day. We got some of the sacred texts tonight. Van often in wailing, prayerful, plaintive voice.

Setlist:
Wild Night
Tupelo Honey> Why Must I Always Explain
Keep It Simple
That's Entrainment
In the Afternoon>Raincheck
Wavelength
Moondance
Help Me
Lover Come Back
Sometimes We Cry
St. James Infirmary
Cleaning Windows
Comfortably Numb
Ballerina
St. Dominic's Preview
And the Healing Has Begun
Gloria

At the end of 'Comfortably Numb', Van told that audience that "I hope you liked that. I am not numb, and I am not comfortable."




Si d'aventure vous voyez passé le boot merci de faire signe... cela peut m'intéresser

Dans le dernier post je me faisais l'echo de très bonnes réactions suite au passage de Van au Massey Hall...

Apparemment l'Irlandais est dans une bonne période puisque l'ensemble des dates de la tournée américaine actuelle (qui se termine ce soir à Atlantic City/NJ) bénéficie de commentaires aussi excellents...



Un exemple parmi d'autre est celui de Chicago:

Incredible show in Chicago, great band, excellent vocals, tremendous setlist.

Rosemont Theater, Rosemont, Illinois, July 8, 2008
1. Wild Night
2. Tupelo Honey/Why Must I Always Explain
3. in the Midnight
4. Keep It Simple
5. That's Entrainment
6. Help Me/Dimples/Help Me
7. Comfortably Numb (Van explains it's not the kind of song he usually does, but it ended up in a movie and the Sopranos, so "we're going to do it".)
8. Wavelength
9. Ballerina
10. The Way Young Lovers Do
11. School of Hard Knocks
12. Behind the Ritual
13. In The Afternoon/Ancient HighwayJoe Turner Sings/Don't You Make Me High/Raincheck/Keep on Rockin'/Too Good to Stop Now
14. Burning Ground
15. And the Healing Has Begun/The Healing Game
Encore
17. Madame George. (Great vocal, singing all the verses, and ending with an ecstatic jam, highlighted by Van on acoustic and Tony Fitzgibbon on violin

"The love that loves to love the love that loves to love that loves...
..in the wind and the rain in the backstreet, way down home in the backstreet.."

Then van takes the wireless mike and starts a rhythmic, slow, elegant shuffle toward the wings as he scats the end of the song. The band finishes the song, the crowd goes wild. Wow...)

The show ran about 100 minutes, and almost 30 was devoted to the Astral Weeks songs. This is a show people will be talking about for a long time...

Vivement qu'il retourne dans sa vieille Europe...

La troisième fournée des rééditions d'une grande partie de la discographie de Van Morrison va se poursuivre le 30//09/08 - après deux premières vagues l'une en début d'année (29/01/08) l'autre en juin (30/06/08)

Cette fois, et avant une dernière série en janvier 2009, ce sont les sept titres ci dessous qui sont réédités et remasterisés:

A Period of Transition / 1977: Expanded Reissue

Now features The 'Street Only Knew Your Name' (alternative version) and 'Didn’t He Ramble' as previously-unreleased bonus tracks.

Beautiful Vision / 1982: Expanded Reissue

The album now features 'Cleaning Windows' (alternative take) 'and Real Real Gone' (alternative take) as previously-unreleased bonus tracks.

How Long Has This Been Going On / 1996: Expanded Reissue

This new version features 'Muleskinner Blues' and 'The Healing Game (Jazz Version)' as previously unreleased bonus tracks.

Hymns To The Silence / 1991: Expanded Reissue

It now features 'Ordinary Life' (alternative take) and 'Carrying A Torch' (alternative take) as previously unreleased bonus tracks.

Poetic Champions Compose / 1987: Expanded Reissue

Now features 'Alan Watts Blues' (alternative take) and 'I Forgot That Love Existed' (alternative take) as previously unreleased bonus tracks.

St Dominic's Preview / 1972: Expanded Reissue

Features 'Redwood Tree' (alternative take) and 'Brandy' as previously unreleased bonus tracks.

Tell Me Something / 1996: Expanded Reissue

Now features 'Look What The Good People Done' (alternative version) as previously unreleased bonus track.

Bien que relativement radin quant aux inédits, on retiendra malgré tout dans cette série deux albums particulièrement remarquable. "Saint Dominic's Preview" qu'on ne présente plus (Jackie Wilson said, I Will be There, Listen to The Lion, Almost Independence Day et le titre qui donne son nom à l'album) et le tour de force que représente "Hymns To The Silence": après avoir composé un album par an durant les années 80, Van Morrison attaque les années 90 avec un double album aussi varié que puissant ne montrant quasiment aucun signe d'essoufflement. Impressionant.

Cela nous rappelle ce que disait le Boss himself à propose de Van:

"Tell me something," Bruce Springsteen asked a while ago. "How come every year or so there's a new Van Morrison record, and every time it's great, and every time no one pays attention? Why is that ??"

Excellente question, Bruce mais, aujourd'hui encore, on a pas de réponse satisfaisante à t'apporter

Van Morrison a 63 ans aujourd'hui et c'est un prétexte comme un autre pour signaler que, sur son site officiel, il y a le "Vidéo Wall" soit une selection d'extraits de concerts allant de 1973 à 2008 (enfin cela varie)

Il a demandé de ne plus figurer sur youtube mais du coup il met à disposition (gratuitement) des vidéos de bonnes qualités sur son site .
Bref encore un maniaque du contrôle...

Actuellement on peut par exemple y visionner une superbe version de "Summertime In England" filmée au Beacon Theatre de New York en 1989 avec un superbe scat du sax, Richie Buckley. A la fin Georgie Fame présente Van Morrison en le traitant de "Mr Unfidelity", ce qui lui va plutôt bien

Van Morrison vient de demander (d'exiger?) que l'on ne vende plus de boissons durant ses comcerts et que bars et buvettes n'ouvrent qu'après la performance...

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/3677982.Music_legend_bans_drink_during_gig/

Irish music legend Van Morrison has banned fans from boozing at his gig - in case it disturbs him as he sings.

The famously grumpy 63-year-old star has told the venue he wants no alcohol sold at any of its bars before or during his performance at the Brighton Dome on Friday.

The Brown Eyed Girl folk singer is a teetotaller, having had a spell of drink problems during the 1970s and 1980s, but his agent said the ban had nothing to do with trying to impose his own lifestyle onto the crowd.

Instead he said it was designed to stop the audience from coming and going to the bar during the performance.

The Belfast born singer has complained in the past about being annoyed by crowds wandering around and said his shows should be about savouring the musical experience.

Promoter Danny Betesh, from gig organiser Kennedy Street, said: “It’s an extension of something we’ve been doing for years. We have had a policy of no drinks being taken into the hall because certain artists find it off-putting to have the audience moving around.”

Staff at the Dome said the venue had been hired for the event so they had no influence on the decision.

A spokeswoman said they were not expecting any difficulties dealing with fans. Soft drinks will still be sold.

Morrison has a reputation for being a temperamental performer who has disappointed fans by refusing to play his best-known songs and has turned his back on the audience or walked off stage when unhappy with the crowd.

The Brighton gig has already prompted anger from some fans who were shocked by the cost of tickets. The cheapest seats, with restricted views, have been sold at £40 and the most expensive have cost £105.

One fan from Seaford, who refused to be named, said: “I have seen Van Morrison 25 times over the years. Having followed his career for the past 40 years I consider myself an ardent fan.

“Unjustifiably high ticket prices alienate fans such as me because I just cannot afford to pay those prices any more.”

Did you know about the booze ban before you bought your tickets?

Rien à voir -selon lui- avec le fait qu'il ait arrêté la picole récemment mais une manière d'améliorer les conditions de concert pour le groupe et le public

Ce qui est certain, c'est qu'apparemment il ne devait pas toucher de % sur les ventes du bar

il s'inscrit dans une mouvance 'Devils & dust' tour ou bien veut-il encourager le 'Binge drinking' préconcert de ses fans assoiffés .
Quoi qu'il en soit, un musicien irlandais qui bannit les boissons, je trouve celà antinomique .
Celà dit, tant qu'il ne m'interdit pas de 'farter' à loisir ou de 'picker my nose', je respecterais ses décisions .

Cheers, mate !!

Surtout un musicien irlandais qui a passé une grande partie des années 90 avec ses deux meilleurs potes de l'époque Jerry Lee Lewis (un temps exilé en Irlande pour des raisons fiscales) et Shane McGowan a faire la fermeture de bon nombre de pubs et autres nightclubs

Un peu (même beaucoup) à la manière de Brian Wilson qui avait recréé sur scène le "Pet Sounds" des Beach Boys, c'est à présent au tour de Van Morrison d'annoncer un projet similaire, puisqu'il va interpréter Astral Weeks intégralement pendant deux soirs de suite sur la scène du Hollywood en compagnie -notamment- des musisciens qui jouaient sur l'album original (dont le bassiste, désormais légendaire, Richard Davis).

En tout cas c'est ce qui est au programme de ce quarantième anniversaire qui devrait, par la suite, être le prétexte à un dvd "Astral Weeks Live At The Hollwood Bowl".

Mais Van étant toujours aussi imprévisible, on ne peut vraiment être sûr de rien pour l'instant, ni concernant ce qui va réellement se passer durant ces deux soirées de novembre, ni concernant une sortie officielle.

VAN MORRISON TO CLOSE OUT HOLLYWOOD BOWL 2008 SEASON WITH "ASTRAL WEEKS LIVE" IN NOVEMBER

Hollywood, CA. - Multi-award winning musical legend Van Morrison will take to the Los Angeles concert stage for "Astral Weeks Live" at the Hollywood Bowl on November 7 and 8, closing out the 2008 season of the famous venue. Van Morrison has over 150 songs featured in major motion pictures--with the latest being featured in the Scorsese film "The Departed". Tickets for the concerts go on sale 10 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, with Citi pre-sales beginning 10 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 1 through 10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 4.

While the first half of the show features Morrison and his band playing the timeless classics that have made him a legend, the second half is a breathtaking cover to cover recreation of the "Astral Weeks" album. The Astral Weeks band will be a different line up and include band members from the original sessions. The seminal astral weeks recordings established Van Morrison as a great solo artist and has consequentially changed the face of music.

"This is a welcomed opportunity for me to perform these songs the way I originally intended them to be," says Morrison. "It's about the world of creation and of the imagination: That is what a song is, a little movie with melodies and music built around it, poetry in moving pictures in the mind…In the 60's and 70's the record companies did not support the music, so I never got to take these songs on tour, and I certainly did not have the money to do it. These songs are as timeless and fresh right now as the day they were written and I am happy about taking them to the Hollywood Bowl."

"Astral Weeks" is timeless music from the soul. It is ranked the #2 greatest album of all time in the Mojo list, and it ranks #19 in Rolling Stone. Britain's The Times lists it #3 in its all-time rankings. Morrison has said the album was "a little about Belfast, but it has never been about any person or thing as these works are channeled works of the imagination.. the keyword being work.. it was a lot of hard work"

The November concerts will be recorded live for the upcoming album "Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl." This album will be released on Morrison's new label, Listen To The Lion Records, scheduled for LP / vinyl release in time for Christmas 2008, followed by a CD release in January.

For the concerts, Morrison will be joined by a band that includes world-class musicians including band-leader / pianist Roger Kellaway (former band leader of Bobby Darrin) and guitarist John Platania who has played with Morrison since 1970. Other members, guitarist Jay Berliner and bassist Richard Davis, played with Morrison on the original "Astral Weeks" sessions 40 years ago.

Set 1 -Classic VM Material

The Band:

Van Morrison - Musical Arranger / Director, Guitar, Saxophone, Harmonica, the Lion and Vocals

Roger Kellaway - former Music Director for the late great Bobby Darrin is the Straw Boss and on piano

John Platania - from Van Morrison bands 1970 to present, on Lead Guitar

David Hayes - from Van Morrison bands, 1973 to present on Bass

Paul Moran - on Organ and Trumpet

Rick Schlosser - on Drums

Richard Buckley- on Flute and Saxophones

Tony Fitzgibbon - on Violin / Viola



Set 2- Astral Weeks Live, cover to cover

The Band:

Van Morrison - on Guitar and is The Poet, The Sorcerer and The Arranger

Roger Kellaway - former leader of the late great Bobby Darrin Band and is the Straw Boss for the band and on Piano

Jay Berliner - Guitar - Original Astral Weeks band member

Richard Davis - Bass - Original Astral Weeks band member

Peter Erskine - takes the place of the late great Connie Kaye on Drums

Richard Buckley - from The Common One Band is on Flute

Paul Moran - on Organ and Harpsichord

Tony Fitzgibbon - on Violin (And Possibly Viola)

The string section for both bands is to be announced.

Tellement agréable de lire le déroulement de la carrière de cet obscur monsieur si brillant.
Parfois tu parles de périodes que je connais vraiment bien, parfois de période que j'ai moins aimé ou auxquelles j'ai moins accroché, mais merci pour la regularité et la constance de ce feuilleton Mr Horton!

Bon, on y est presque.
C'est cette semaine, vendredi le 7 novembre, pour être précis.
Et samedi aussi, puisqu'ils vont fêter cet anniversaire deux jours de suite.
Sans doute parce que certains considèrent (encore aujourd'hui) qu'il s'agit, roulement de tambours (mais ronflement de tambours serait plus juste, même si l'expression parait moins correcte): d'un des plus beaux albums de tous les temps comme l'a encore souligné Sean O Hagan dans le Guardian récemment (1/11/08)

Having just listened to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks over and over again last week while writing about it for the Observer Review, I am more convinced than ever of its unassailable greatness. Nothing in popular music compares with it in terms of its passionate intensity. No one in popular music has sung like that before or since (A voice as a mixture of "menace and abandonment").

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2008/nov/01/van-morrison-astral-weeks


Van Morrison in concert at Hampton Court Place Music Festival in June this year. Photograph: John Rahim/Rex Features

Having just listened to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks over and over again last week while writing about it for the Observer Review, I am more convinced than ever of its unassailable greatness. Nothing in popular music compares with it in terms of its passionate intensity. No one in popular music has sung like that before or since.

The late Spike Milligan, of all people, once described Van Morrison's voice as a mixture of "menace and abandonment". You can hear what he means on Astral Weeks, but you can also hear joy, angst, celebration, desire and regret. While the lyrics are often impressionistic, the voice is extraordinarily articulate – emotionally articulate. It can shift from the harsh to the tender, the guttural to the gentle often in the space of a single line. All the while, the music ebbs and flows around it, everything sounding heightened and spontaneous. You can hear what Beth Orton is talking about when she says it sounds like a record "that has been willed into being" by Van Morrison. The voice is all, the words, the music the melodies and rhythms all seem to flow from it.

As much as I love certain other classic albums – Revolver, Blonde On Blonde, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Pet Sounds, Kind of Blue, What's Going On?, Five Leaves Left - I have never listed to them as often, or as closely, as I have to Astral Weeks. It always draws me in.

Oddly, it is a record that did not change the course of pop music the way Sgt Pepper's or Pet Sounds did, nor did it impinge on the collective imagination as soon as it appeared. It has slowly gained an audience over the years. I think that has to do with its difference – you won't hear anything else like it even if you trawl though the rest of Van Morrison's epic body of work. It seems to have arrived out of nowhere, and no one has run with its possibilities ever since.

What else can I tell you? Sometimes I wish I knew who Madame George was, if indeed it was one person in particular. The image of her/him "playing dominoes in drag" still intrigues; a whole other, hidden Belfast emerges from that line. And why does the landscape shift from Belfast to Ladbroke Grove in the final song? And who is the girl that's dying? Who knows? Who cares? The songs have their own logic, the strange, ever-shifting logic of dreams and heightened recollections.

Here's a quote from the writer and philosopher George Steiner: "Music means. It is brimful of meanings that will not translate into logical structures or verbal expressions. In music, form is content, content form … In ways so obvious as to make any statement a tired cliché, yet of an undefineable and tremendous nature, music puts our being as men and women in touch with that which transcends the sayable … " Enough said.

Sinon, pour en revenir au concert, c'est le LA Times qui en parle dans la mesure où cela se déroule au Hollywood Bowl et ils ont même interviewé Van pour l'occasion.
Au passage il explique qu'il ne voit pas d'un très bon oeil la dématérialisation de la musique (on s'en serait douté)

"I am lucky I have an audience that is not into the fad of the download," he said. "My fans must intrinsically understand the value of having a record in their hand. With so much standing to kill the record business . . . I think it is great there are still people who appreciate the beauty of a record -- a real record, not a purchase of bad quality air through a wire that can erase with the punch of a button."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-morrison1-2008nov01,0,7113777.story?page=2

The earthly days of 'Astral Weeks'
With a two-night Bowl stand next week, Van Morrison discusses the 'poetry and mythical musings' of a classic.

November 01, 2008|Randy Lewis | Lewis is a Times staff writer.

If necessity is the mother of invention, it might follow that desperation is the father of inspiration. That was certainly the case 40 years ago, when Belfast-bred blue-eyed soul singer Van Morrison found himself broke and stranded on the East Coast despite coming off his first hit as a solo artist, the Top 10 single "Brown Eyed Girl."

"I call that 'The Money Song' -- because they got all the money, and I got none," Morrison, 63, told The Times recently from his home in Northern Ireland in a rare interview. "I was broke and depressed and remained that way for many years after that, and I just decided to make a stand for myself and do things my way, not theirs."

The result of doing things his way was "Astral Weeks," Morrison's widely revered 1968 release. Four decades later it is regularly cited as one of the greatest albums of the rock era, though it never sold enough copies to show up on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart.

So, despite the awe the album inspired among music aficionados for its remarkable depth -- Morrison was only 22 when he made it -- he was never able to go on tour and play the songs live the way he wanted. He'll realize that long-standing wish on Friday and next Saturday when he performs "Astral Weeks" live in its entirety over two nights at the Hollywood Bowl backed by an orchestra and two of the key musicians, bassist Richard Davis and guitarist Jay Berliner, who accompanied him so many years ago.

"I am not 'revisiting' it really, as this is a totally different project," Morrison said, responding by e-mail so he could consider each question put to him. "I had always wanted to do these songs fully orchestrated and live, [but] I never got around to it. Then I thought, well, we have lost the great [drummer] Connie Kay already and Larry Fallon the original arranger, so I thought I should probably get to it now."

He plans to record the Bowl concerts and release them on his own label on vinyl, CD and DVD around the first of the year. Despite its vast size, seating almost 18,000 -- he's usually played indoor theaters with anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000 seats on recent U.S. tours -- the Bowl appealed to Morrison for this event "because it is outdoors and live sound dynamics can be interesting outdoors in the cool fall breeze. And the Hollywood Bowl has a lot of interesting history."

KCRW-FM (89.9) will have its inaugural international live webcast from Friday's show, the first time Morrison has ever allowed one of his shows to be broadcast live.

"They are timeless works that were from another sort of place -- not what is at all obvious," he said of the songs on "Astral Weeks." "They are poetry and mythical musings channeled from my imagination. The songs are poetic stories, so the meaning is the same as always -- timeless and unchanging. The songs are works of fiction that will inherently have a different meaning for different people. People take from it whatever their disposition to take from it is."

In the intervening years, Morrison crafted an astoundingly rich body of work. It encompasses some of the catchiest singles of the rock era ("Moondance," "Domino," "Wild Night," "Jackie Wilson Said," "Bright Side of the Road") as well as some of its deepest musical and spiritual pilgrimages ("Listen to the Lion," "In the Garden," "When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God"). Like Bob Dylan, he's periodically delved into the various strains that have most influenced him: British skiffle, American country music, blues and jazz. Inevitably he finds his way back to his signature amalgam of soul, rock, R&B and Celtic folk.

--

A seminal album

"Astral Weeks" revealed further-flung connections with the free-form song structures of medieval balladry and postwar jazz. In fact, it is one of the earliest albums from a rock-era musician to draw on jazz in a big way. The arrangements featured earthy upright bass, yearning fiddle, gentle flute, colorfulpercolating harpsichord and insistent acoustic guitar, with occasional overdubbed string and horn accents. Morrison's youthfully pliant, athletic voice could have induced a pang of jealousy in Ray Charles.

With him in that studio were Davis, already a repeat winner of Downbeat magazine's jazz bassist of the year title, Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Kay (who played on many of Charles' recordings in the 1950s) and guitarist Berliner, one of Charles Mingus' associates. Impressive company for a musician most fans knew only as the voice of British Invasion band Them ("Here Comes the Night," "Gloria").

"I think I have probably always been more advanced in my head, in my thinking" Morrison responded. "My thinking musically has always been more advanced. It is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now. The music on 'Astral Weeks' required these great musicians because no one else could have pulled it off like they did. They were the ones I insisted on."

Bon il y a même la retranscrïption complète de l'interview mais je vous épargne le résumé: c'est un entretien fleuve et je n'oublie pas que nous sommes sur Le Forum Francophone Consacré à Bruce Springsteen et que je sais me tenir (parfois)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2008/10/van-morrisons-f.html

Van Morrison's full Q&A on 'Astral Weeks'



In-depth interviews with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and two-time Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter Van Morrison are exceedingly few and far between. But in conjunction with his performances Nov. 7 and 8 at the Hollywood Bowl, where he’ll perform his 1968 album “Astral Weeks” in its entirety for the first time anywhere, along with other songs from throughout his career, he agreed to respond by e-mail to questions from Times staff writer Randy Lewis. The feature story will appear in Saturday's Calendar; the following is the full text of that Q&A.

What combination of opportunity and motivation was behind the decision to revisit "Astral Weeks" in a live setting now?

I am not “revisiting” it, as this is a totally different project. I had always wanted to do these songs fully orchestrated and live. I never got around to it -- then I thought, well, we have lost the great [drummer] Connie Kay already and Larry Fallon the original arranger –- so I thought I should probably get to it now. Jay [Berliner] and Richard [Davis] have never done it fully orchestrated and live before either so I see it as a new project.

Update: In the paragraph above, we originally identified Connie Kay as the bassist. He was the drummer on "Astral Weeks."

What's your thought at this stage of your career about the boldness of a 22-year-old Belfast musician with some rock hits to his credit going into a New York studio with the likes of Downbeat's jazz bassist of the year [Richard Davis], the Modern Jazz Quartet's drummer [Connie Kay] and one of Charles Mingus' collaborators [guitarist Jay Berliner]?

Well, first, I think I have probably always been more advanced in my head, in my thinking, than the calendar age of 22. My thinking musically has always been more advanced -- it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now. And the Music on “Astral Weeks” required these great musicians because no one else could have pulled it off like they did. There is another reason, too, and that is the fact I did not settle for anyone other than these guys -- they were the ones I insisted on.

What, if any, contact has there been with Richard Davis and Jay Berliner (or Kay before his death in 1994) over the years?

Connie Kay called me a lot over the years, on a regular basis. He was the drummer on “Tupelo Honey” and “Listen to the Lion.” He is also on several recordings I did in the '80s, numbers I have not released yet. Connie was the best drummer I have run across yet. The original arranger, Larry Fallon, kept in touch with me over the years, but we had lost contact with him, unfortunately. I actually called him for this project, but I found out he had passed away not too long ago. That was a shame -- he was a great arranger. He seemed to understand this music -- which is rare and is not easy to do. I was in touch with Richard a few times over the years.

The circumstances that brought you to the East Coast of the U.S. at the time [in 1968]?

I had been with Bert Berns’ Bang Records label, and I didn’t get paid, so I was living on a shoestring -- a very hand-to-mouth existence at that time -- in Boston and for a long time after that too. I went down to New York and this is when I got the offer from Warner Brothers. They had told me they had to buy out the Bang deal. Then I got involved with [producer Lewis] Merenstein, et al. The real reason I made Astral Weeks Recordings in New York is because I was literally broke and they kept me stranded there.

Did these songs emerge more or less fully formed lyrically and melodically, or did you spend considerable time reworking, shaping and editing them during the live performances that led up to the recording session?

Well, I had already written “Ballerina,” in 1966!, if this tells you anything, and the poetry written on the backside of the “Astral Weeks” album [cover] was an excerpt from something else I had written prior to that! Matter of fact, thinking back, I had previously recorded “Madame George” and “Beside You” well before the '68 Warner release, for Bang Records. But the arrangements were nothing like what I had in mind for those songs. I had also previously played versions of a few of the songs Live at the Catacombs [club] in Boston well before going in and making what became the “Astral Weeks” recordings that ended up as the record. We made that record straight through finally like I wanted them, without stopping. We did it my way in the studio that day.

So, yes it took a very long time and a lot of thinking and arranging and hard work to structure these songs like I wanted them, like I envisioned them in my head. That was the hardest work, but then I found out I then had to work through the people in the music business, and then the people that come around as a result that you are in the music business, and that was even harder, but in a different way. All for the sake of making my music, my song.

What were you reading, listening to, experiencing, feeling after "Brown Eyed Girl" and all the Bert Berns sessions that sent you in this direction musically and philosophically?

“Brown Eyed Girl” is misunderstood. I already had that song down -- so I did not turn anywhere or change direction -- it was already done, just not released. If you listen closely you can hear there is depth to that song; there are layers of arrangement in my original version. Thing is, Bert required a “hit” record. He thought “Brown Eyed Girl” was the hit single. The song sounds catchy and pop, but [it] is really multi-dimensional. I was not happy with it, as the music in my mind is much more sophisticated than that.

I call that 'The Money Song' -- because they got all the money and I got none. What happened after that is I ended up with zero money. I was broke and depressed and remained that way for many years after that, and I just decided to make a stand for myself and do things my way, not theirs, like I was already doing in songs like “TB Sheets” and “Who Drove The Red Sports Car?”— which I guess were over the heads of those who were so-called “in the know.”

I did not ever want to be on a pop label -- I thought Bert was musically beyond that, but it turned out he was more interested in money than musical ability, song craft and poetic artistry. Despite all that, if Bert were not in with a bad crowd, I think he may have been interested in having the ears that hear. He probably did.

How did you settle on Lewis Merenstein to produce “Astral Weeks”?

Merenstein came about when my back was against the wall. I did not have a choice at the time. I was all the way on the ground. People only have a choice when they have money -- I did not have either, they made sure of that. Then I found out when you have success, then come the sharks in disguise -- and those [were] quite obvious. I did most of the [production] work myself, though, if the truth be told. I wrote it all, put it all where it needed to be.

What was the immediate aftermath for you? Was it a natural evolution, or a sharp turn toward the more easily accessible verse-chorus song structures you used in many of the songs on the "Moondance" album?

First of all “Moondance” was written by me in 1965, as an instrumental, so I did not turn toward anything other than what I had already written and done. I have always played what I feel like playing whenever I feel like playing it.

I put out records to this day that are not necessarily in a sequence of anything. Some could be written a while back, some not. There is no set pattern. I just put things out when I decide to put it out; [that] does not mean that it’s what I was thinking or doing or writing in any time frame. It usually comes down to what goes with what else, or what needs to go out whenever. It would be a mistake to think such and such because something comes out or came out when it did. My records do not require a lot of thought of ‘What is this?’ and ‘What is that?’ That would be too contrived for me.

Do you connect differently now with the "Astral Weeks" material, and what is it about these songs that make them feel like they exist outside of time? I've talked to some musicians who say they didn't understand the real meaning of some of their songs until years later; that their music reached beyond their intellectual understanding of themselves at the time.

“Astral Weeks” songs were written over a period of time -– some early 1966 -- and evolved musically. They are timeless works that were from another sort of place -- not what is at all obvious. They are poetry and mythical musings channeled from my imagination.

The songs are poetic stories, so the meaning is the same as always -- timeless and unchanging. The songs are works of fiction that will inherently have a different meaning for different people. People take from it whatever their disposition to take from it is. It is like Tolkien’s “Hobbit” -- the hobbit is what it is. I doubt he would change what the stories [are] just because time went by.

“Astral Weeks” are little poetic stories I made up and set to music. The album is about song craft for me -- making things up and making them fit to a tune I have arranged. The songs were somewhat channeled works -- that is why I called it “Astral Weeks.” As my songwriting has gone on I tend to do the same channeling, so it’s sort of like “Astral Decades,” I guess.

I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music. So, no, I do not see it any differently than it is -- it just is whatever it is.

Did you know what you wanted and what you'd achieved right away?

It is all poetry I made up anyway. It’s like asking "What is art?" It is whatever the beholder decides it is. To this day most all of my music comes from a similar place. I am not exactly sure where the location it comes to me from is located, but it always comes from the realm of the imagination. It is all fiction, and like all art, listeners can take from it what they want from it -- or not.

Like the song “The Way Young Lovers Do.” What is it? I do not know -- I made it up. Anyway, what 90-year-old does not want to feel like young lovers do? Most probably would -- it is as simple as that.

It’s a funny feeling that you actually have the courtesy of asking me about my songs. Did you know there have been numerous books written about my music where none of the authors were interested in my take on my music? None of the authors have ever had the courtesy of asking me to elaborate on my own music -- 500-page books and not one word did they want from me -- on anything, ever. I have tried to offer up help and am refused. They have flat out refused all insight from me. :-)

I guess they all want to make it into something it’s not or was not intended to be by me. Anyway, it’s bizarre to me.

Does it mean anything to you that "Astral Weeks" is so highly regarded -- No. 2 on the Mojo list of all-time greatest works -- yet it took 33 years to go gold?

The music on “Astral Weeks” is sophisticated poetry that is multi-layered in sounds that I do not think the majority take the time to wrap their head around. It’s subjective. I think it would be reductive for me to try to answer why.

I’d guess there are many reasons why it took so long, but yet it is recognized. It’s different than anything then and different still than anything that is obtainable now. Maybe there is not a big market for thoughtful deep music, I do not know. It speaks different things to different people. Maybe it spoke “Don’t buy me” to some –- not sure. I have always been quite sure it is not Top 40 material.

Does "Astral Weeks" represent to you something unique and extraordinary within your own body of work, more than any other album you've made?

Now that I really think about it, this, like all of my work, comes from the collective unconscious, I suppose. That is why it speaks different things to different people. All of my records are unique unto themselves and this one is no different. It is just part of what I do as a songwriter. These are just another set of stories and poetry, like all of them.

Over time has it gotten easier or harder to make your records the way you want to make them, and why?

Harder to find musicians that understand the depth of the arrangements as I originally write them, and harder because my style is a mixture of many elements. But easier because I am my own producer and I make them myself. I have the freedom to create, rather than to be stifled by someone else’s notions or far off-the-mark ideas.

Your albums continue to sell impressive quantities of physical CDs -- nearly 2 million in the last year, I understand -- in an era when the music industry has shifted its attention to downloads and sometimes can't give music away. How do you interpret the continuing success of your music when it's not being played heavily on commercial radio or promoted intensively by record companies?

Yes, I am lucky I have an audience that is not into the fad of the download. I am very grateful for that. My fans must intrinsically understand the value of having a record in their hand. With so much standing to kill the record business and make it extinct, I think it is great there are still people who appreciate the beauty of a record -- a real record, not a purchase of bad quality air through a wire that can erase with a punch of a button :-)

People must really want to save the records -- in spite of the record business that cannot seem to see the forest for the wood.

People in the record business have always been concerned about making money, but when you were a young fan and then started out as a recording artist, there were label owners like Sam Phillips, Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler who actually had ears -- people who knew music inside and out, rather than treating it strictly like a commodity to be marketed for maximum profit. You've made no secret of your disdain for many aspects of the music business -– did you start your own record label at least in part to show what's still possible when music itself is the driving force?

Let’s put it this way: When these men started selling off and moving on it was the beginning of what is now becoming the end of the record business. For the record business to win and win big it has to have people within it that have ears for music and who understand the old greats and respect [them]. With the way things have gone, it looks more and more like there is not much of a chance for new men with ears to emerge in the music business. It’s too money driven and no one seems to know how to really do simple mathematics.

Ahmet knew the value of respecting true ability and those who were there for the long haul. Today record companies are run by 30-year-olds who are more into who “famous” came in the building. They don’t care about selling hard copy CDs, where their real long-term money is. If they did, they would stop shooting themselves in the foot by ignoring the tried and true, and stop betting on so many losing horses. And they would learn how to use a calculator.

I have been independent with my own label since late '70s early '80s. I am really not trying to set any example for anything. It is the only way I can do what I do. It is the only way I can operate.

You've written some of the catchiest pop songs in the history of rock music ("Jackie Wilson Said," "Wild Night," "Bright Side of the Road"), as well as some of the most deeply spiritual ("Listen to the Lion," "In the Garden," "When Will I Ever Learn to Live in God"). Do those come from two different places inside?

No, I think everything comes from the same place in the imagination, just a different topic du jour, so to speak. I have worked with my art of song craft, and the result of that is somewhat of an across-the-board variety. I have experimented with many types of singing and use of voice as well as many types of songs, most ending up a mixture of a lot of different styles. But I prefer writing and crafting the spiritual-leaning songs the most.

Is there a legitimate place for music that simply entertains rather than music like yours that seeks to touch the heart and soul? Conversely, is it inherently destructive to commercialize music, which is fundamentally a sacred form of human expression?

Well, I myself will start playing entertainment-type songs if the audience is not understanding, or if I get a vibe they are not really listening, or if they seem to need to go somewhere else, or if I need to go somewhere else.

When music is commercialized, others tend to copy the formula. Then we end up with the drone of the constant loop of the same old thing over and over.

When music is contrived to the nth degree I do not think it can be sacred in that form. It loses its soul its heartbeat; its freedom to be.

Were you always a spiritual seeker?

Of course. How could I be a musician or write poetry if I am not?

Has all the inner work you've obviously done led you to a deeper understanding or knowledge of your role in life? Is that a never-ending process for you?

I do therefore I am. I do not assume that I have any “role” -- I do not think I do. That word does not feel right to me. I do not wear it well.

Perhaps the better word would be “purpose,” or “mission”?

My spiritual understanding has grown only to the extent [of my knowledge] about myself. But there is no role. That is illusion placed upon me by other people. I have no illusions about who I am. As a writer interested in wordsmith, what I gain spiritually can only help me and my writing or topics of my writing. But I have no role, no role at all. I am on no mission. I am what I am, and I write what I write.

I've always admired your sax playing, because it truly seems to express something you can't get out any other way. So even though you could probably hire whatever session great you wanted --and many times you have -- those where you choose to play sax yourself seem very special. What outlet opens for you when you pick up your horn?

Thank you for the compliment. I really enjoy the sax and [in] fact, I sometimes throw in an ‘entertainment’-type of kick-up song just so I can play it. On the other hand, I like playing very spirit-driven songs like ‘St. James Infirmary’ live on the sax. Can’t beat that feeling of just taking it where it wants to go. There is a freedom in that -- a good feeling, for sure.

I've been told by record execs at Warner Bros. and Rhino that the reason there has never been a Van Morrison CD box set is that you never wanted to stop looking ahead long enough to do it. Is that true, and given this decision to return to "Astral Weeks" now, is that still the case?

Well, Warner Bros. and Rhino don’t speak for me. They do not know me. I have always been forward-thinking, but other than that I have not really thought much about it. Putting “Astral Weeks” live to orchestration is my idea of being forward-thinking.

For all B.B. King has accomplished as a guitarist and a singer, when I talked to him recently, he said "If I could sing like Bobby Bland I'd be a happy man." Do you ever have a similar view of your own abilities as a songwriter, a singer or instrumentalist?

No, I only am what I am. But I sure do like the timbre of John Lee and I wouldn’t mind if I sounded like Leadbelly.

What musicians haven't you worked with that you'd still like to?

I would have loved for Miles Davis to have played on a record of mine. Actually, he said he would, but I didn’t get to him in time. I would have loved to have played with Howlin’ Wolf, Leadbelly, Lightnin’, Mahalia Jackson, Ella, Billie Holiday, so many.

A l'occasion de cet anniversaire, 45 minutes du concert seront retransmises en direct. Et uniquement en direct: le webcast ne sera pas archivé et il faudra donc se lever vers 5h00 du mat' (d'après ma calculette mais je ne suis pas un matheux et ne peux donc rien garantir) pour suivre la diffusion.

Van Morrison
Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl
LIVE WEBCAST on KCRW.com
Friday, November 7 at 8pm

http://www.kcrw.com/events/vanmorrisonlive

Là ou je veux en venir (parce que, figurez vous je veux en venir quelque part ) c'est que, n'ayant pas l'intention de me lever de si bonne heure pour un type aussi imprévisible (capable de quitter la scène à 20h05 parce que, décidément, non, le quatrième violoniste n'a aucun feeling) si quelqu'un devait tomber sur ce truc là ( comme ça, par pur hasard) merci de laisser un commentaire, cela sera grandement apprécié.

A la veille des deux dates du Hollywood Bowl, Van Morrison a accordé un autre entretien à un un journal de Los Angeles (le LA Weekly cette fois).

http://www.laweekly.com/2008-11-06/music/van-morrison-and-astal-weeks-la-weekly-snags-a-rare-one-on-one-interview-with-the-elusive-singer/

Van Morrison and Astral Weeks: LA Weekly Snags a Rare One-on-One Interview with the Elusive Singer
Van Morrison sits down with L.A. Weekly to discuss the alchemy in his past and the enduring allure of his classic album Astral Weeks

When it was announced that Van Morrison would close out the Hollywood Bowl’s fall season with two nights of concerts at which he would perform his seminal 1968 album Astral Weeks from cover to cover, some longtime Morrison fans might have wondered if the mercurial Irish singer-songwriter was taking the piss out of them. It was barely a decade ago, when, in a storied appearance at New York’s intimate Supper Club venue, Morrison had virulently berated the audience for demanding material from his ’60s and ’70s repertoire (which he dubbed “ancient history”) after he opened the floor to requests. And as anyone who has seen Morrison live in the past decade can attest, the set list, while almost never the same twice, consists predominately of songs from Morrison’s two or three most recent albums, with a few token crowd-pleasers (“Moondance” and the rousing R&B anthem “Gloria,” from Morrison’s days fronting the Irish band Them) sprinkled in for good measure. Even the much-loved sing-along ditty “Brown Eyed Girl” returned to regular rotation earlier this decade following a long hiatus, if only to satisfy the fair-weather Morrison fans who had taken to loudly requesting it an nearly every concert. Yet, in the nearly two dozen times I’ve seen Morrison play live since his 1997 triple-header with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, the Astral Weeks material has rarely been given an airing.

Indeed, the only thing seemingly more certain than his ironclad resistance to doing any sort of “greatest hits” show or “nostalgia tour” is the fact that, where Morrison is concerned, you can never predict what he’ll do next — from one measure to the next, one song to the next, one album to the next. Pay close attention during one of his concerts — and there is little reason to suspect the atmosphere is much different in the recording studio — and you can frequently catch sight of Morrison’s band members scurrying to keep apace with their leader as he calls out sudden tempo changes, uses hand gestures to take a swelling crescendo down to a muted whisper and back again, and routinely throws curve balls into the set list. So it comes as no real surprise to hear that Morrison doesn’t view his two upcoming Bowl shows as an exhumation of the past at all but rather as something entirely new.

“I’ve never done any live gigs with those people,” says Morrison, who will perform the Astral Weeks song cycle with the support of two key collaborators from the original recordings: veteran Charles Mingus guitarist Jay Berliner and legendary bass player Richard Davis, now 78. Like many of the Astral Weeks session musicians (including the late drummer Connie Kaye), Berliner and Davis were recruited by Morrison and album producer Lewis Merenstein because of their background in jazz. “It was recorded like a jazz session, which is the way I like to do it,” Morrison recalls. “There was a lot of work put into the songs previously, when I rehearsed them, and I had done some of them live with a trio. So, the basic arrangements I had worked out then, and the rest was added to that. But the whole thing was not just that; it was more the spontaneity of what was going on [in the studio], and the reading of the material by the other people.”

But at the time, Morrison adds, there was no money to organize a proper tour — and so, despite its enduring critical acclaim (it frequently places near the top in critic and reader surveys of the greatest all-time albums: Lester Bangs famously cited it as his favorite record), Astral Weeks remains, along with 1974’s masterful, defiantly uncommercial Veedon Fleece, one of Morrison’s least-performed albums. “It’s never really been done live, and that’s kind of what my music is all about,” he says. “I just wanted to check it out for myself and re-explore it.”

The fact that I’m talking to Morrison, face to face, is nearly as rare a happening as the upcoming concerts, the singer having famously spent much of his career dodging — and, occasionally, confronting head-on — the media. During an interview for Rolling Stone in the early ’90s, he allegedly walked out of a Boston restaurant midway through, leaving the reporter to tail him down the street, while in recent songs like “New Biography” and “Too Many Myths,” Morrison has been harshly critical of the various Web sites and unauthorized pseudo-biographies that have peddled purportedly authoritative accounts of his life and work. Such incidents, coupled with his recalcitrant onstage demeanor, have earned Morrison a reputation for being “difficult,” when in fact they may merely be the telltale signs of a performer who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, pay lip service to sycophants, or buy into the conventional wisdom that someone who suffers the pain of artistic creation is obliged to be “nice” when discussing his craft.

Whatever the case, on this particular Sunday afternoon, Morrison is cordial and forthcoming, as he saunters into his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in a dark blue, large-buttoned coat and one of his signature porkpie hats and proceeds to talk for most of the next hour about his music, musical influences and longstanding bête noire: the music industry. He describes the original Astral Weeks recording sessions, held in late September and early October 1968, as “an alchemical kind of situation, where the people involved could read the situation and come up with stuff spontaneously, and not belabor it, not overproduce or overthink it. Everybody on the sessions was like that, which was uncanny. That’s the way it worked out.”

It has not, however, always been so easy for Morrison to find musicians tuned into his wavelength. “It’s difficult to get them to do ... to go where I’m going,” he says. “That’s what you have to work on. It doesn’t have anything to do with technical ability. Well, it has something to do with it, because they need the technical ability to start with, but then they need to drop that and follow me and break it down into something that’s less complicated than that, so they can follow where I’m going.”

Where he’s going is, as often as not, into a stream-of-consciousness reverie where a single cut from a Morrison album is deconstructed and reassembled by the singer as a trancelike epic lasting as much as a quarter-hour or more. In the ’70s, songs like “Caravan” and “Cyprus Avenue” were regularly subject to such reinvention, while more recently, Morrison has favored the likes of “In the Afternoon” (from the 1995 Days Like This album) and “Burning Ground” (from the 1997 TheHealing Game album). These are the moments — the bedrock of any Morrison gig — in which he seems, per the title of his own 1979 album, to be going deeper “into the music.” Audience members similarly inclined (i.e., not the ones asking for “Brown Eyed Girl”) are invited to follow. It is then that the “healing” about which Morrison has so often sung really begins.

Simply put, it would be anathema for Morrison to appear on a stage and merely re-create a given song — note for note and beat for beat — exactly as it sounded on the album. Which is why those with tickets to see Morrison at the Bowl can be assured that, while they will hear Astral Weeks, they’ll hear it as they’ve likely never heard it before.

“I need change,” Morrison says. “In order to actually do it, it has to evolve for me. Otherwise, I don’t really want to do it; I’ll lose interest.”

The course that any one of his concerts takes, Morrison says, depends on a couple factors. “One is, if you feel like the audience can go with you, then I can stretch out more. [The other is] finding key songs where I can get these particular musicians to go along with me, because every band combination is quite different. A lot of times, you can get musicians, but they don’t have a rapport, so you have to build the set around where we can go. Some bands I’ve had can do anything, go anywhere, you know? Other bands can only do certain songs in a certain way. It just depends.”

With that in mind, for his Hollywood Bowl appearances, Morrison has built two different sets of music around two different groups of musicians. Each night, in addition to the Astral Weeks material, he will also play an introductory set of songs drawn from the breadth of his career, backed by a different band consisting of longtime Morrison accompanists John Platania and David Hayes on guitar and bass. “The first set is going to be more like the kind of band that was on Into the Music or It’s Too Late to Stop Now,” Morrison says, referencing his legendary 1974 live album recorded, in part, at the Troubador and Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. “Then the second set will be Astral Weeks. There’ll be two different bands. I haven’t done that for ... well, I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”

Although I must have heard “Brown Eyed Girl” on the radio as a kid and at any number of high school dances, it was only as a college student in the mid-’90s that I seriously discovered Morrison, my rather telescoped musical horizons up to that point having been limited to heavy metal, Top 40 and the saccharine, easy-listening dreck favored by my mother. Quite by chance, I picked up used copies of 1995’s Days Like This and 1987’s Poetic Champions Compose — neither of them considered by critics or aficionados to be among Morrison’s best albums — and began playing them obsessively, enraptured by their dense networks of interconnected images and allusions, struggling to make some mental geography out of the mystical yet entirely tangible places Morrison was singing about: an ancient highway; a factory on a street called Bread in East Belfast; a town called Paradise. Only later would I realize that many of these tropes dated all the way back to a 1968 Rosetta stone called Astral Weeks, which began with its first-person narrator venturing into the slipstream, detoured through the parlor room of an enigmatic figure named Madame George, and ended some eight tracks later with the funereal assertion: “I know you’re dying/And I know you know it to/Everytime I see you/I just don’t know what to do.”

Whether Morrison was describing the real Belfast he knew as a child or building an imagined, Joycean universe of private meanings upon its foundations, the yearning for a distant, irrecoverable past is profoundly felt, and something that continues to resonate throughout Morrison’s music of the subsequent 40 years, up to and including the epic album-closer “Behind the Ritual,” from the recent Keep It Simple release, where Morrison sings of “drinking wine in the alley ... in the days gone by.” Indeed, if Morrison has rarely seemed eager to look back over the course of his own discography, his music itself is very much about conjuring a personal and collective past, which seems to be quite alive for Morrison, hovering just out of reach, threatening to displace the present. It’s a feeling that extends to the myriad cover/tribute albums Morrison has produced in the past 15 years (including the traditional country Pay the Devil and the jazz How Long Has This Been Going On?), on which he has tipped his porkpie hat to some of the styles and artists (including Mose Allison, Lonnie Donegan, John Lee Hooker and Solomon Burke) who influenced him during his own musical education. It is perhaps the highest compliment one can pay those albums to say that Morrison’s original compositions for them are frequently indistinguishable from the “period” originals written decades earlier.

“Well, if you take it as a river, then it’s got offshoots — this stream and that stream, north stream, south stream, slipstream. All sorts of streams, you know?” Morrison says. “But it’s all connected to the source. All that stuff that I picked up in the formative years is what I’ve been able to put together as my own thing, so to speak. For me, it’s [about] going back to the source. That’s where I first got the word, or heard that sound. You can’t really say it is ‘X,’ because it just ends up being another word or a cliché. But that initial energy was turned on in me, and I was lucky enough to get to know some of the people — like John Lee Hooker, who was a very good friend over the years — and connect with whatever that is, I don’t know, some kind of energy.”

Since Astral Weeks, Morrison has issued more than 30 albums of new material, penned hundreds of songs for himself and other artists, and managed to put an enviable distance between himself and the record-company executives who have been a regular (and hardly undeserved) object of scorn and derision in such Morrison songs as “St. Dominic’s Preview,” “Drumshanbo Hustle” and “Showbusiness.” Having recently parted ways with his latest label, Universal, which he says did little to promote Keep It Simple despite the fact that the album became the highest-charting domestic release of his career, Morrison is poised to start his own label, Listen to the Lion Records, whose first release will be the live recording of Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl. Yet, Morrison remains characteristically circumspect “not so much about the business” itself but “about the kind of people that the business and fame sometimes attract.”

For the man who once sang that “my job is turning lead into gold,” his own celebrity and its attendant pressures seem as much of a double-edged sword as ever. “I never bargained on fame; it’s just something I’ve had to deal with that came along with doing the music,” Morrson tells me. “It’s like I’ve got these scars,” he says, pointing at his back, “and why do I have to keep showing people the scars all the time? You know what I mean? It’s in the songs somewhere there. I still have to turn myself inside-out to do this. It’s still got a price; it’s not free. Doing these gigs — that’s got a price. I have to act. I have to perform.”

“But you still love it, don’t you?” I ask.

“The only thing I love is the music,” he says without missing a beat. “The rest of it is pure shit. The kind of shit that fame attracts is very dark. It’s very dark. I like the music, but that’s it.”

Van Morrison performs Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl on Fri.-Sat., November 7-8.

Rien de nouveau sous le soleil, à part que Van Morrison donne des inteviews à peu près aussi souvent que Dylan parle à son public durant ses concerts

Van en profite pour rappeler que s'il a logiquement toujours eu à composer avec la notoriété, quelque chose d'inhérent à son activité musicale durant toutes ses années, il ne peut toujours pas s'y résoudre vraiment. Presque une allergie.

Sans doute la raison pour laquelle il ne communique pour ainsi dire pas avec son public (autrement que par le biais de sa musique), ne signera jamais d'autographes, ne serre pas de mains, ne pose pas ou peu pour les photos, ne va pas sur les plateaux télés etc...

Il prétend que s'il avait gaspillé du temps avec la célébrité, cela aurait immanquablement été au détriment de sa créativité.

Une gloire qu'il semble mépriser et rejeter sincèrement tellement cette préoccupation revient inlassablement chez lui.

A son crédit il faut dire qu'on l'a assez rarement vu en train de caresser des journalistes, ses musiciens voire son public dans le sens du poil.

“I never bargained on fame; it’s just something I’ve had to deal with that came along with doing the music,” Morrison tells me. “It’s like I’ve got these scars,” he says, pointing at his back, “and why do I have to keep showing people the scars all the time? You know what I mean? It’s in the songs somewhere there. I still have to turn myself inside-out to do this. It’s still got a price; it’s not free. Doing these gigs — that’s got a price. I have to act. I have to perform.”

“But you still love it, don’t you?” I ask.

“The only thing I love is the music,” he says without missing a beat. “The rest of it is pure shit. The kind of shit that fame attracts is very dark. It’s very dark. I like the music, but that’s it.”

Cela aurait été trop beau que tout se déroule sans anicroche, c'est Van Morrison, après tout

Donc, pour commencer, l'Irlandais a refusé, en dernière minute, le webcast pour la plus grande joie de fans européens qui avaient réglé leur réveil sur 5h00 du mat

KCRW is sorry to announce that we will not be broadcasting Van Morrison’s concert tonight from the Hollywood Bowl. We worked tirelessly to make it happen, but in the end, piracy concerns on behalf of the artist trumped the technological advances that made it possible in the first place.

KCRW has great faith in our listeners and online community and we see a future full of exciting opportunities. Stay tuned for more events to come.

We are sorry for the disappointment and inconvenience this cancellation may have caused.

Un malheur n'arrivant jamais seul, le bassiste des sessions originales, Richard Davies ainsi q'une pointure de la batterie, Peter Erskine (pour remplacer feu Connie Kaye) devant être présent, ont finalement été débarqué

Mais ceci dit (malgré ces rebondissements de dernière minute / la routine chez Van), la magie du Belfast Cowboy a visiblement fini par opérer...

It was a magical night...
Van dug deep into his soul tonight. Look for the set list...some surprises. After doing Astral Weeks (new order for the songs) he ended with Listen to the Lion.
It was Video taped lots to star sightings. Robbie Robertson was four rows in front of where I was sitting. It is great to meet so many Van fans from the four corners of the earth.

He did Troubadours from Into the Music along with Angeliou. Highlights for me were Ballerina and Madame George.

Get on the train...this is the train...the train..the train...the train...get on the train.

Spread your wings...angel child...all you got to do is ring a bell...step right up Ballerina

Set 1

1. Inarticulate Speech of the Heat (inst snippet)/Wavelength
2. St. Dominic's Preview (inspired by the Sult version)
3. And the Healing has Begun
4. It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing About
5. Troubadours
6. Angeliou
7. Moondance
8. Brown Eyed Girl
9. Gloria/Who Do You Love/Gloria

Set 2

1. Astral Weeks
2. Beside You
3. Slim Slow Slider
4. Sweet Thing
5. The Way Young Lovers Do
6. Cyprus Avenue
7. Ballerina
8. Madame George

encore
9. Listen To The Lion



Pour terminer deux citations venant illustrer les deux facettes de cette soirée et un lien:

The Band ?
Well, nobody's quite sure, as there were no introductions

As Shannon Vale asked me to tell you, if you have any chance of making it to tomorrow's show, you should do whatever you can to attend.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/van-morrison-revisits-astral-weeks-at-hollywood-bowl-20081110

Van Morrison Revisits "Astral Weeks" at Hollywood Bowl
By Gavin Edwards
November 10, 2008 11:30 AM ET

After four decades, Astral Weeks is still the sweetest slice of mystery in Van Morrison's catalog, but until this past weekend, Morrison had never performed the album live. (Speaking recently with David Wild in Rolling Stone, he blamed Warner Bros. for not providing sufficient promotion back in 1968.) So when he played Astral Weeks in its entirety for two shows at the Hollywood Bowl, everybody present seemed to know they were witnessing history (except for the two teenagers in line for hot dogs who expected they would be seeing Van Halen). Tickets ranged from $75 to $350, and a full camera crew captured the performance for a future DVD. The dozen backing musicians even included the original Astral Weeks guitarist Jay Berliner (Richard Davis, whose elegant work on stand-up bass provided the album's spine, had a family emergency and backed out at the last minute).

After an opening set (generally strong, although Morrison, obviously bored with "Brown-Eyed Girl," now barely bothers with its consonants), Morrison strapped on an acoustic guitar and tackled Astral Weeks. Sometimes he evoked the fragility of the original material, but more often he took charge the music with the authority that comes with four decades of performing, even shuffling the original playing order for no obvious reason. Morrison extended the album to a full hour, leaving lots of room for solos and for his own scatting. It seemed that once he breathed in the perfume of these eight songs, he didn't want them to end — and looking at the enraptured crowd, he wasn't the only one.

Set List:
"Wavelength"
"Saint Dominic's Preview"
"Caravan"
"Heavy Connection"
"Here Comes the Night"
"And the Healing Has Begun"
"Summertime in England"
"Brown-Eyed Girl"
"Gloria" (incorporating "Who Do You Love")

Astral Weeks:
"Astral Weeks"
"Beside You"
"Slim Slow Slider"
"Sweet Thing"
"The Way Young Lovers Do"
"Cyprus Avenue"
"Ballerina"
"Madame George"

Encore:
"Listen to the Lion"

Petite revue des commentaires consacrés au second soir de cet événement
(selon la plupart des avis, 2éme soir réellement extraordinaire mais attendons le dvd officiel pour se faire sa propre idée...)



"All seem in agreement that tonight's phenomenal show made much of last night seem like a rehearsal."

"He sings it and we feel his hurt.
Anyone who has loved and lost knows the hurt he is singing and writing about.
He goes off growling and playing the harmonica.
I turn to Ruth and say, "Now that is Van Morrison."

"He's past sixty. He's not skinny enough to be on a sitcom. But with his hat and sunglasses, his fine clothing, Van Morrison was a star.
You didn't sit in the audience thinking YOU could do this.
You were watching a virtuoso at work.
You thought of how kids might be home in front of a screen, but you were where you were supposed to be, where it was happening, at the show."

"Looking forward to the audio and video recordings of these shows."



http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2008/11/live-review-van.html

Live review: Van Morrison at the Hollywood Bowl

For anyone who wasn't at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night, there'd be little chance of explaining how Van Morrison's repetition of one seemingly innocuous sentence -- "This is a train" -- could turn into a deeply spiritual incantation.

But transcendence is what Morrison has been after with his music from the beginning, and it's what he achieved frequently on Friday, when he played his watershed 1968 album "Astral Weeks" live in its entirety for the first time. That included the repetitive vocal workout on the "train" phrase from "Madame George," one of the cornerstone songs of "Astral Weeks," an empathetic portrait of a transvestite's journey through the streets of Belfast, Morrison's birthplace.

To these ears, it evolved from statement ("This is a train") to question ("Is this a train?") to invitation/command ("Get on the train!"), an intensely moving progression that crystallized his alchemist's approach to music.

He's long known the power of a mantra -- the chanting of a word, phrase or verse has become a potent signature of his music. Every good gospel preacher knows the cumulative power of repetition. Morrison doesn't preach, he seeks -- an answer, or communion -- and the chant becomes his method in relentless pursuit of one or both. When everyday language just wouldn't do, he shifted to syllables, growls, moans, sometimes just phonemes, anything that would take him, and his audience, where he wanted to go.

In "Beside You" it was the phrase "you breathe in/you breathe out" looped back on itself enough to replicate the fundamental life process. For "Cyprus Avenue," he sputtered out words, "My Generation" style, about being tongue-tied in the presence of his beloved. Fiddle player Tony Fitzgibbon paralleled him with skittering bowed runs while pianist Roger Kellaway dribbled out notes accordingly.

And in the climactic "Madame George" it was the circular "the loves to love the loves to love the loves to love."

True to form, he showed no interest in recreating what he did 40 years ago in a New York recording studio, but was focused on revamping the song structure dramatically in service of the present.

The performance opened, as the album does, with the title song, and was followed by "Beside You." He then abandoned the original's song sequence by continuing with the album's closer, "Slim Slow Slider," and then moving into a 1-2 punch created by placing the two jazz waltzes, "Sweet Thing" and "The Way Young Lovers Do" back to back. The arrangement impressively balanced competing time signatures, a ¾ waltz seamlessly working in tandem with a subservient 4/4 pulse.

The wondrous youthful timbre of his voice then has evolved over the years into a richer, fuller instrument , with every bit of its remarkable elasticity very much intact.

The poetic imagery he crafted for "Astral Weeks" was light-years beyond the straightforward narratives of his early rock hits with Them, such as "Here Comes the Night" and "Gloria," or even his first solo hit "Brown Eyed Girl," the latter two reconstructed during the show's career-spanning first half. He reached forward as far as "The Healing Game" but spent most of that first portion tapping the '70s and '80s material he's visited only sporadically in concert in recent years.

It was easy to see why Morrison said he'd always wanted to do "Astral Weeks" live with the kind of large and resourceful band that backed him at the Bowl. As it turned out, that band did not include bassist Richard Davis, who'd been on the original recording sessions, because Davis had a last-minute family matter come up, Kellaway said Saturday. Instead, longtime Morrison band member David Hayes handled the woody stand-up instrument that's so crucial to the album's unique sonic palette.

The jazz-rooted compositions of "Astral Weeks" are poetic stories of young love and the quest to find one's place in life. They were, and remain, ideal source material for musical improvisation that gives way to the sense of wonder for which Morrison has always striven.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110902183.html?sub=AR

Van Morrison, Re-Exploring The Mystery of His 'Astral' Vision
By Tim Page
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, November 10, 2008

LOS ANGELES -- It's always a risky venture for seasoned musicians to revisit the works of their youth. One recalls with dismay the Velvet Underground's "reunion" tour in the early 1990s, and Brian Wilson's live 2002 rerecording of the Beach Boys' 1966 song cycle "Pet Sounds" took a radiant and guileless expression of the heart and smothered it in Vegas cheese.

At age 63, Van Morrison has been a working musician for nearly half a century, during which time he has released some 30 albums of original material. And yet it is the very first recording over which he had any artistic control -- "Astral Weeks," released by Warner Bros. in 1968 -- that remains his masterpiece. Aching, haunted, entranced, obsessed, "Astral Weeks" combines bardic, allusive lyrics; jazz, folk and blues stylings and Morrison's own brand of two-chord minimalism. There is, quite literally, nothing else like it.

And so it was with some trepidation that devoted listeners gathered at the Hollywood Bowl Friday night to hear what was billed as Morrison's first-ever live performance of the entire "Astral Weeks," complete with two of the musicians -- bassist Richard Davis and guitarist Jay Berliner -- who worked with him on the album 40 years ago.

We needn't have worried. To be sure, there were slight differences (in the most notable structural change, he moved the almost unbearably desolate album closer, "Slim Slow Slider," to earlier in the set, and finished with the marginally more cheerful "Madame George") but it was still recognizably -- triumphantly-- "Astral Weeks."

What a paradox this work is: an exploration of emotional healing that never forgets, minimizes or smoothes over the original wounds, an opulently poetic expression of near-autistic inarticulation. Once, in the course of denying that "Madame George" was about a transvestite, Morrison nevertheless admitted that he hadn't "a clue what that song is about." He compared the songs on "Astral Weeks" to short stories: "In terms of what they mean, they're as baffling to me as to anyone else."

Igor Stravinsky famously said that he was not the composer of "The Rite of Spring" but rather the vessel through which it passed; without taking the comparison too far, I might suggest a similar process with Morrison and "Astral Weeks." It stands alone in his catalogue: With the possible exception of the two longest tracks on "St. Dominic's Preview" (1972), Morrison never visited this particular, fiercely reiterative musical territory again.

As it happened, Morrison also performed "St. Dominic's Preview" on Friday night, as well as his two biggest hits, "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Moondance"; the primordial punk rocker "Gloria" (a fun singalong); and a generous portion of another of his best albums, "Into the Music" (1979), in the first half of the program, before intermission. The rest of the evening was devoted to the eight songs of "Astral Weeks." Throughout the whole set, he was terrific -- engaged, nuanced, generous and seemingly tireless in his vocalizing, while offering the occasional masterly saxophone or harmonica solo as lagniappe. The band backed him to the hilt -- a delicious jam on "Ballerina" -- although the sound of Davis's bass was nowhere near so prominent as it is on the original album, where it provides the pulse for everything that follows.

The concert, repeated Saturday night, was recorded for release on CD and DVD by Morrison's own company. Roughly a dozen musicians shared the stage, including three female backup singers for the first half of the show, as well as a flute player and a small string section.

Any number of records released in 1968 outsold "Astral Weeks" many times over, but it never quite went out of print. And year after year, devotees passed on copies to new listeners with evangelical fervor, so that its legion of admirers is unusually multigenerational. Which prompts the question: How is it possible for something to mean so much to so many people without anybody, including its creator, able to say exactly what that meaning is? And how does Van Morrison take this strange motley of seemingly unrelated vignettes -- topics include voyeurism, mortal illness, urban grime and (if Morrison is not to be believed) a party of drag queens -- and make it both unified and curiously holy?

"The poem must resist the intelligence almost successfully," Wallace Stevens, who knew something about such matters, once observed. For 40 years, listeners have been finding their own understandings of "Astral Weeks." May it resist, renew and reward us forever.

http://blogs.laweekly.com/play/live-in-la/van-morrisons-astral-weeks-at-1/

Live in L.A.
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks at the Hollywood Bowl, Night One: Set List for a Stunning Evening

Sell the rest of your portfolio. Forgo fancy dinners for the rest of November. Break your lame date and call your soul mate. Do what you have to do, I swear, to get a ticket to tonight's Van Morrison show at the Hollywood Bowl. If you at all have ever been moved by a Morrison song, if you've wondered whether age has worn his voice, tore away at his heart or passion, you should make a pilgrimage.

Last night he answered. It was everything you'd want out of such a performance: he played his 1968 album Astral Weeks with a what seemed like a 144-piece orchestra -- strings and brass and bells and flutes and guitars. (I think I counted 18 or so, but it's a blur.) Xylophone tones cascaded up the slope of the Bowl as if carried on chariots, strings slithered and swirled through the air, horns brayed. At one point Morrison cranked on his white acoustic guitar like he was Joe Strummer.

And, of course, that voice, purer, stronger, heartier, and way way crazier than ever. He went places no sane human could visit: deep, gutteral, angry, cornered-prize-fighter places. He whinnied, he honked, he trilled, he baaa-ed like a baby lamb, machine-gunned. He pushed mumbles through his harmonica solos, conjured Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, grunted out lyrics. During "Slim Slow Slider," the words rolled out of his mouth with anguish: "I know you're dying baby/and I know you know it too/everytime I see you I just don't know what to do." During "Cyprus Avenue," his "tuh-tuh-t-t-tuh-t-tongue" got "ta-t-t-t-ta-tied" as he spit out his story.

What made it so magical, though, was the beauty that surrounded Morrison's voice, the lush yet loose arrangements that simultaneously drew on Nashville and Memphis, London and Dublin, New Orleans, New York and Chicago. The trio of vocalists doubled on bells and guitars, the band offered xylophones (granted, they were synthesized), a harpsichord, piano, precise percussion (that ever present high-hat, grooving above the fray), stand-up bass, violin. They didn't miss a note.

I'm angling for a ticket for tonight's show, so if anybody's got an extra, holler. Because if he plays "T.B. Sheets" in that first set and I miss it, I just don't know what I'd do.

Need further incentive? LA Weekly film critic Scott Foundas sat down with Morrison at the Beverly Hills Hotel last week. It's a fantastic piece. Also: check Lester Bangs' brilliant essay on Astral Weeks.

Van Morrison, Hollywood Bowl, November 7, 2008

1. Wavelength
2. Saint Dominic's Preview
3. And the Healing Has Begun
4. All in the Game/You Know What They're Writing About
5. Troubadours
6. Angelou
7. Moondance
8. Brown Eyed Girl
9. Gloria

break

Astral Weeks
10. Astral Weeks
11. Beside You
12. Slim Slow Slider
13. Sweet Thing
14. The Way Young Lovers Do
15. Cyprus Avenue
16. Ballerina
17. Madame George

encore
18. Listen to the Lion

Editor's note: Morrison jumbled the order of Astral Weeks on Friday night; my initial setlist copied the album's order, but I've corrected it above. This is the order in which he played the album.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/van-morrison-astral-2222615-week-hollywood?slideshow=1

Van Morrison ventures into the mystic once more
His return to the groundbreaking classic 'Astral Weeks' four decades since its release was a thing of rare beauty at the Bowl.

By BEN WENER / The Orange County Register


PREPARING FOR HISTORY: Van Morrison warms up with selections from "Wavelength," "Saint Dominic's Preview" and "Into the Music" Friday night at the Hollywood Bowl before returning to play his 1968 masterpiece "Astral Weeks" in its entirety for the first time ever.

So much has been said about Van Morrison's 1968 mystical masterpiece "Astral Weeks," so many accolades heaped upon it by every bastion of rock journalism, it almost seems redundant to extol its virtues all over again, even when Morrison's revival of it this weekend at the Hollywood Bowl demands it.

Recorded 40 years ago in roughly two sessions by a difficult, down-on-his-luck 22-year-old from Belfast, a budding visionary who up to that point was known only for the sweet single "Brown Eyed Girl" and (to a lesser degree) as the frontman for Them, "Astral Weeks" remains an unquestionably astonishing achievement.

A singular, impressionistic fusion of jazz and folk and spirituality with transformative power - a nocturnal stream-of-consciousness song cycle as rapturous as a sudden burst of sunshine after a thunderstorm - the work is all of a piece, with all but the haunting "Beside You" and the feverish feel of "The Way Young Lovers Do" roughly built out of the same three chords transposed to different keys. Yet pluck any of its eight meditative songs out of context and each stands as its own deep listening experience.

It's one of few truly perfect albums worthy of descriptors like "inspired" and "groundbreaking," and it consistently and justifiably places in at least the Top 20 (often the Top 10) of most any credible list of the greatest albums of all-time.

Elvis Costello has described it as "still the most adventurous record made in the rock medium." The critic Lester Bangs, in selecting it his "desert island disc" in the 1979 collection of essays "Stranded," once said of its tortured pain and devotional release that "there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work." At the time of its release, tumultuous both for its creator and the world in general, "It was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction."

Yet for all its significance, "Astral Weeks," like the Velvet Underground's output during that era, never sold especially well, failing to crack Billboard's Top 200 albums chart. And though some songs became part of Morrison's regular repertoire - particularly "Cypress Avenue," long his show-closer during the '70s - he was never able to properly tour behind it.

"It received no promotion from Warner Bros. - that's why I never got to play the songs live," he recently told Rolling Stone. "I had always wanted to play the record live and fully orchestrated - that is what this is all about. I always like live recording and I like listening to live records, too. I'm not too fond of being in a studio - it's too contrived and too confining. I like the freedom of live, in-the-moment sound."

Which brings us to these Bowl shows, in which Morrison played "Astral Weeks" in its entirety for the first time - and also to the ever-present question of just how in-the-moment Van would get while revisiting such heady material.

Answer: very, although not so much in the first half of Friday's opener.

Morrison has rarely been the sort of performer to burn from the get-go. Unsurprisingly, then, though his first set was loaded with thematically complementary selections - "Saint Dominic's Preview," the whole second side of 1979's "Into the Music," "the greatest side of music Morrison has created since 'Astral Weeks,'" critic Dave Marsh once declared - much of it felt like prolonged warm-up, enjoyably workmanlike rather than reinvigorating. (Click here for a complete set list.)

Entertaining as it was to watch the stoic, suit-stuffed 63-year-old conclude that opening portion with an unusually generous triptych of "Moondance" (played cooler, like Sting's "Consider Me Gone") and "Brown Eyed Girl" (blissful as ever) and "Gloria" (which never found its forcefulness), it nonetheless felt like it was done somewhat out of obligation, perhaps for having charged $350 for choice seats. ("OK, so that's what you want," he said after "Moondance." "I get the picture.")

The "Astral Weeks" set, however, was subtly magical, surely evoking memories for everyone in attendance of that first time they felt the album wash over them. In large part that sensation can be attributed to Morrison's attention to detail, starting with the inclusion of upright bassist Richard Davis and guitarist Jay Berliner, whose unmistakable styles were featured on the original recording.

Likewise, despite how Morrison brought his usual instinctive flair for expansion and clearer definition to these long-neglected pieces, he made sure to keep to set structures. When these concerts come out on vinyl (by Christmas, we're told) and CD and DVD (by January, most likely), compare his increasingly overcome vamping here on "Madame George" or "Ballerina" to the real thing. Check the way his "t-t-t-tongue gets t-t-t-t-t- every time I t-t-t-try to s-s-s-speak" in "Cypress Avenue" to how it got all tied up in '68. I suspect the similarities will be striking.

How long, I wondered, has it been since some of these songs have been performed live? Were some of them ever played? And how far back at times did Van journey in his mind, to that place "way down home in the backstreets" where he ventured "in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dreams," found Madame George playing dominos in drag and came across a "sugar baby with champagne eyes pink champagne eyes who stole my heart away"?

And just what was the meaning behind rearranging the running order? Side 1's finisher "Cypress Avenue" was moved to Side 2. Album closer "Slim Slow Slider" became the third track of the set, and "Madame George" was its goodbye, before a brief encore of "Listen to the Lion." (The Greek Theatre-size crowd wanted at least one more song; they stood clapping for five minutes after the house lights came up, trying to make the ultimate rarity - a genuine encore - a reality, but to no avail.)

Who knows why he did that? It's hard enough to properly assess why he felt compelled to revisit "Astral Weeks" so many decades later in the first place (though might I recommend "Moondance" gets its due in 2010?). As a lifelong fan of the album, though, I'm grateful he did return to it. This experience may not have been as profound an accomplishment as, say, Brian Wilson completing and performing his lost masterwork "SMiLE" after almost as long in the dark. But it was every bit as beautiful a thing to witness.

1st set:

Wavelength
St. Dominic's Preview
Caravan
It's All In The Game / You Know What They're Writing About
Here Comes The Night
And The Healing Has Begun
Summertime In England
Brown Eyed Girl
Gloria



2nd set:

Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
The Way Young Lovers Do
Cyprus Avenue
Ballerina
Madame George

(Encore)
Listen To The Lion

Les fans et les critiques étaient assez d'accord -pour une fois- afin de reconnaître que les deux soirées de recréation d'"Astral Weeks" au Hollywood Bowl étaient de vraies réussites.

Ce qui est un chouïa plus étonnant est que Van Morrison lui même semble partager cet avis et ce malgré une unique rehearsal, qui ne s'est pas révélée très concluante...

En tout cas c'est ce qu'il confie dans une interview au L.A. Times

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/music/la-et-morrison9-2009jan09,0,7244840.story?track=rss

"It was pure magic for me," Morrison told The Times this week in an interview conducted by e-mail. "I really had no expectations prior to the show. We had one rehearsal and some magic wand must have been waved, because I felt it -- I felt the current of magic, the power. It was more than I could have hoped for."

"There was an alchemy that took place," Morrison noted. "I could feel it, and other people tell me they could literally see it occurring. I thought it was just going on within me. But apparently I was not alone. By the looks of it, far from it."

"I do not consciously aim to take the listener anywhere," Morrison said. "If anything, I aim to take myself there in my music. If the listener catches the wavelength of what I am saying or singing, or gets whatever point whatever line means to them, then I guess as a writer I may have done a day's work...

"During the 'Astral Weeks' live in Hollywood performances, that emotionality, transcendence and tangible alchemy was 100% organic and grew itself spontaneously . . . ," he continued. "I think God must have wanted it to happen -- my higher-power instinct -- I am not sure, but it was not a conscious effort. It was a matter of getting back to doing 'me' -- what I like, what comes naturally from me when I have an interest in what I am creating."

Van Morrison takes listeners on his spiritual journey
With a live album combining 'Astral Weeks' and more recent material, he steps aside to let his soul express itself.



By Randy Lewis

January 9, 2009
One of the conundrums facing anyone who makes music for a living is that live music frequently isn't. Truly alive, that is.

The brutal reality of mounting a major concert tour is that it requires intensive rehearsals and meticulous planning of sound, lighting and staging effects, often leaving music itself as just another element of a tightly organized script that's repeated night in and night out with little room for deviation.

Some artists, of course, make an art out of veering from the script mentality. Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen hold court atop the list of rockers who strive for liberation with every performance. Jazz as a genre also counts spontaneity among its core values, just as gospel at its most inspired seeks something higher through performance.

You could hear Van Morrison drawing on all three traditions when he performed his 1968 album, "Astral Weeks," live for the first time last November at the Hollywood Bowl, transcendent concerts preserved faithfully in "Astral Weeks Live," which will be released Feb. 10 on Morrison's new Listen to the Lion record label.

Because of the largely ecstatic response to those performances, Morrison has decided to do two more "Astral Weeks" shows Feb. 27 and 28 at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The two Bowl shows came after only one rehearsal of the "Astral Weeks" material, which blended jazz, folk, rock, soul and Irish traditional music elements into one of the most revered albums in pop music history.

"It was pure magic for me," Morrison told The Times this week in an interview conducted by e-mail. "I really had no expectations prior to the show. We had one rehearsal and some magic wand must have been waved, because I felt it -- I felt the current of magic, the power. It was more than I could have hoped for."

Rather than re-creating the album precisely, Morrison used it as a springboard to music in and of-the-moment, stretching phrases with his signature melismatic vocals, altering lyrics, shifting the song order and allowing the players around him to feed off one another.

From the first notes of the defining run-up, run-down bass line of the song "Astral Weeks," the live version becomes something new entirely, making it all the more clear why Morrison said he'd always envisioned presenting this set of poetically evocative ruminations live with a full orchestra.

He turns the word "Caledonia" into a mantra as that first song unfolds, spontaneously interpolating new lyrics including the phrase "I believe I've transcended," which he repeats like a gospel preacher on fire. The audience cheers, as if offering a collective "Amen."

In revamping the song sequence from the album, what had been separate jazz waltz-tempo numbers, "Sweet Thing" and "The Way Young Lovers Do," now merge and further build on each other. And upon completing the original batch of songs with "Madame George," he encored with "Listen to the Lion," from 1972's "St. Dominic's Preview," and "Common One," the title track of his 1980 album, both included on the live album.

"There was an alchemy that took place," Morrison noted. "I could feel it, and other people tell me they could literally see it occurring. I thought it was just going on within me. But apparently I was not alone. By the looks of it, far from it."

As for appending "Listen to the Lion" to the "Astral Weeks" material, Morrison said, "I wanted to end the 'Astral Weeks' set with 'Madame George.' I wanted to tell people at the end these songs are a 'train of thought' and leave it at that. I think 'Lion' is a song that is all me, as well, so I ended with that. . . . It's a song I guess about me -- probably the only one about me.

"The second bit I do on the harp is 'the lion speaks.' If you listen to that, I am playing as if the lion is trying to speak with no voice. He only has his soul and I think -- I hope -- that came across. It's about getting out of one's way so the soul can be heard, I suppose. The lion speaks. . . . I decided to end the show on a spiritual note."

He said that whether the audience senses that spirituality or not is almost incidental.

"I do not consciously aim to take the listener anywhere," Morrison said. "If anything, I aim to take myself there in my music. If the listener catches the wavelength of what I am saying or singing, or gets whatever point whatever line means to them, then I guess as a writer I may have done a day's work. . . .

"During the 'Astral Weeks' live in Hollywood performances, that emotionality, transcendence and tangible alchemy was 100% organic and grew itself spontaneously . . . ," he continued. "I think God must have wanted it to happen -- my higher-power instinct -- I am not sure, but it was not a conscious effort. It was a matter of getting back to doing 'me' -- what I like, what comes naturally from me when I have an interest in what I am creating."

randy.lewis@latimes.com

Un album que j'attends vraiment, c'est rien de le dire, avec beaucoup d'impatience afin de voir ce qu'il en retourne...

C’est finalement EMI qui distribuera l’album “Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl” de Van Morrison (qui semble changer de maison de disques plus souvent que de chemises depuis les débuts de la crise du disque )



On connaît à présent le tracklisting et la date de sortie, 10/02/2009, de cet album tiré des deux concerts que l’Irlandais avait donné à Los Angeles les 7 et 8 novembre derniers pour fêter les 40 ans d’Astral Weeks.

Tracks

1. Astral Weeks - I Believe I've Transcended
2. Beside You
3. Slim Slow Slider - I Start Breaking Down
4. Sweet Thing
5. The Way Young Lovers Do
6. Cyprus Avenue - You Came Walking Down
7. Ballerina - Move On Up
8. Madame George
9. Listen To The Lion - The Lion Speaks
10. Common One

Bonus Track (LP)
Gloria



Si ce truc est aussi bon que le suggérait la plupart des compte-rendus, on peut s’attendre à un beau disque.

Il devrait aussi y avoir une version dvd (ces concerts ayant été filmés) mais cela reste à confirmer pour l'instant.

un petit up, parce que je découvre en ce moment même ce merveilleux album live sur lequel le monsieur reprend intégralement "Astral Week".

Que ce soit dit tout simplement: quelle beauté!
C'est très haut perché.

Merci Bill.

dd38 a dit : Jean-Louis Murat serait-il notre Van Morrison Français ? Je parle du caractère bien sur, pas de la musique

Non, je pense qu'ils n'ont strictement rien à voir, mais merci de rebondir dans ce topic dans lequel je me sens parfois si seul
Concernant leur caractère respectif, je ne connais évidemment ni Murat ni Morrison et je m'en fous.

Ce qui m'intéresse, en revanche, c'est que, dans une petite semaine, sort Astral Weeks revisited dont j'ai déjà eu l'occasion de vous rebattre les oreilles (revisité en concert par Van Morrison himself pour ceux qui ont raté des épisodes ).

Et ça a l'air achement bien.

En tout cas, je n'ai plus été aussi avide et curieux d'un album depuis quelques temps et j'ai vraiment envie de partager cet enthousiasme.

Je vous propose donc (et vous recommande même chaudement) de vous rendre sur le site d'El Pais de Deezer et de prendre le temps d'écouter

Sweet Thing

Astral Weeks

Beside You

Slim Slow Slider

Si vous êtes pas emballé vous pouvez effectivement retourner écouter WOAD

Non c'est méchant (mais c'était tentant aussi)
Oublionns ça mais sans dec' allez jeter une oreille sur le site d'El Pais

http://www.deezer.com/fr/search/van%20morrison%20astral%20weeks

Vous n'entendrez peut être pas des extraits d'un grand disque mais, en revanche, des extraits de l'idée que je me fait d'un grand disque, ça sans aucun doute

Thank God for Van Morrison

Effectivement, depuis le temps que je me dis qu'il faudrait que je m'intéresse à ce monsieur, il faudrait que je m'y mette...

Merci de recharger les batteries!

Tu peux acheter son Astral Weeks les yeux fermés ...



Ce truc est un concentré de beauté à l'état pur, le genre de disque qui fait voyager très loin et très haut.

Tu trouves ça relativement facilement et pour une bouché de pain ...

D'ailleurs comme le dit christophe la version "Live" qui vient de sortir est une pure merveille

Ca fait longtemps que me le dis.J'ai tellement entendu parler de cet album, et par des personnes tout à fait fiables (d'après mes critères...).

Allez, c'est dit, c'est fait!

C’est en effet un très beau disque que nous propose là Van Morrison.

Je n’en ai pas encore fait le tour et ce n’est pourtant pas faute de l’avoir fait tourner depuis sa sortie le mois dernier.
Le disque fourmille d'arrangements et regorge de sons assez fabuleux. C’est plein de vie ce qui est un bon début pour un live.

Quand on songe qu’il y a eu tout juste deux répétitions informelles avant l’enregistrement de cet album, qui plus est avec un groupe hétéroclite, formé à la fois de musiciens ayant participé aux sessions originales, d’anciens musiciens ayant accompagné Van et d’autres qui font partie de son groupe de scène actuel, on se dit que le résultat est assez miraculeux.



Mais Van a toujours préféré le risque des imperfections, du flottement voire des errements aux choses impeccablement lisses (même pour son travail studio, enregistré dans les conditions du live aussi).




Ici Van a réussi le truc improbable qu’il ne faut pas rater quand on s’essaye à ce genre de projet : ainsi ce live est à la fois complètement Astral Weeks tout en ne l’étant pas tout à fait voire pas du tout.

Parfois c’est comme si l’on était le témoin d’un dialogue entre le jeune Van Morrison (celui qui à 22 ans composait et enregistrait l’album original) et le Van Morrison d’aujourd’hui qui, 40 ans plus tard, revisite cette œuvre sans escamoter le poids des années qui ont passé mais, au contraire, en y incorporant l’expérience qui en découle…pour finalement tenter de se soustraire au temps.

Il faut par exemple l’ entendre énoncer “I know you’re dying and I know and I know and I know that you kow it too”. Une mise en abyme assez vertigineuse.



Par ailleurs, quand on l’entend chanter au milieu de Madame George:

Say goodbye in the wind and the rain on the backstreet
In the backstreet, in the backstreet
Say goodbye to madame george
In the backstreet, in the backstreet, in the backstreet
Down home, down home in the backstreet
Gotta go
Say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Dry your eye your eye your eye your eye your eye...
Say goodbye to madame george


On ne peut s’empêcher de se rappeler qu’il a été une des grandes influences du Springsteen du début (influence dont on peut suivre la trace sans doute jusqu’à la version live de Backstreets- Sad Eyes)

Mais avec son « And the love that loves to love the loves to love that loves to love...” Van reste inimitable.


« I’m nothing but a stranger in this world » nous dit il d’emblée sur la première plage de ce cd, un peu comme nous tous la plupart du temps, sauf quand on rencontre ce type de musique et ce type d’artiste.

Thank god for Van Morrison.



En tout cas Van était suffisamment satisfait pour renouveler l’expérience depuis. Toujours sur le même principe de 2 nights / 2 bands / 2 sets. Cette fois à New York et cela valait le déplacement (selon ceux qui l’ont fait ).
Prochaine étape le royal Albert Hall de Londres.

Un exemple de setlist :

Set One:
Northern Muse
Spirit
Moondance
Wild Night
Jackie Wilson Said
Baby Please Don’t Go
I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You
And it Stoned Me
Comfortably Numb
Queen of the Slipstream
And the Healing has Begun
Domino
Brown Eyed Girl
Common One

Set Two:
Astral Weeks
Beside You
Slim Slow Slider
Sweet Thing
Cyprus Avenue
The Way Young Lovers Do
Ballerina
Madame George
Listen to the Lion
Mystic Eyes>Gloria

Enfin, signalons encore qu’a été mis en ligne un nouveau "site officiel", tout nouveau tout beau et toujours en construction, comme ceux d’avant. Visiblement pas une priorité du Belfast Cowboy

http://www.vanmorrison.com/

A noter encore que ce Astral Weeks Live va sortir très prochainement en dvd aussi, espérons qu'ils pensent à ajouter dans les éventuels bonus des titres du premier set qui ne figure par sur le cd. Parce qu'on aimerait bien entendre ça aussi.

Bon, j'ai commencé à écouter... Pas de révélation pour l'instant concernant "Astral Weeks" (j'ai préféré "Moondance"), mais bien envie de m'y replonger. De toutes façons, je suis un esprit lent, j'aime prendre mon temps avant de me faire une idée.

La voix dans un premier temps m'a "perturbé", c'est toujours un bon signe...

Kashka from Baghdad a dit : Bon, j'ai commencé à écouter... Pas de révélation pour l'instant concernant "Astral Weeks" (j'ai préféré "Moondance")

Moondance est très certainement mieux maîtrisé qu’Astral Weeks et s’approche probablement davantage de l’intention de Van alors qu'il imaginait son deuxième album solo.

Moondance est un grand disque éveillé, conscient, contrôlé...

Astral Weeks a quelque chose d’un songe, d’une méditation et d’un merveilleux accident dont le public et les critiques n’ont pas forcément fait grand cas lors de sa sortie (pas toujours évident d’entrer dans le rêve, là ou la raison s'achève... )

Le chant aussi est révélateur de ce point de vue là : Van ne chante évidemment plus comme avec les Them mais sa voix est très différente de ce qu’elle deviendra par la suite aussi...
Elle est en équilibre instable et semble venir d’ailleurs, même si cet ailleurs semble avant tout intérieur.

Ce sont les éléments qui peuvent laisser perplexe (y compris son auteur de son propre aveu) lors de la découverte de ces enregistrements .

Plus tard, pas mal d'années après (plus d’une dizaine en fait) Lester Bangs a fait un retour marquant sur cet album et pas mal de gens l’ont découvert et redécouvert à cette occasion là .

"It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, but there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work."

D’objet culte du fait de son originalité et de sa singularité (on adhère ou pas mais peu –ou pas- d’album(s) ressemble(nt) à Astral Weeks), l'album est devenu, avec le temps, un incontournable voire un classique (notamment quand se sont développées les classements de meilleurs disques dans les différentes publications musicales puis généralistes)

Ceci dit moi aussi je préfère Moondance, la plupart du temps

De manière subsidiaire, on peut signaler aussi qu’Astral Weeks est un album qui s’accommode particulièrement mal du format cd - qui ne lui rend pas vraiment justice (mais rien de grave puisque Warner vient de rééditer l’album en vinyl 180g/ Rti)


Steven Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band) has said: "Astral Weeks was like a religion to us.

Bill Horton a dit :
Moondance est très certainement mieux maîtrisé qu’Astral Weeks et s’approche probablement davantage de l’intention de Van alors qu'il imaginait son deuxième album solo.

Moondance est un grand disque éveillé, conscient, contrôlé...

Ce doit être ça...

Ceci-dit, ne t'inquiète pas (si tant est que tu doives t'inquiéter): je reviendrai sans problème à "Astral Weeks" car je l'ai trouvé intéressant, c'est juste que "spontanément", a-priori, ça ne me correspond pas, mais c'est déjà arrivé avec tellement de choses que j'ai fini par adorer. A partir de là, tout est permis!

En tous cas, merci encore de tes conseils "Bill", et surtout pour savoir défendre si passionnément et de façon si éloquente ce que tu aimes.