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Van Morrison: Roll With The Punches & Versatile
by Doug Collette
Van Morrison's disenchantment with the business underpinnings of his creative output has been a continuing theme of his work over the years. It's always been something of a self-serving state of mind, but never so much so with the release of two very similarly-conceived and executed albums, on two different labels, within three months of each other. Roll With the Punches is the Belfast cowboy's second album on the Caroline Records label (following 2016's Keep Me Singing), while Versatile extends ...
Continue ReadingVan Morrison: The Authorized Bang Collection
by Doug Collette
The casual listener who marvels at the apparent distance Van Morrison covered between “Brown Eyed Girl" and the moody mystical atmosphere of the next year's Astral Weeks (Warner Bros., 1968) will no doubt be astounded to hear The Authorized Bang Collection. As much guidance as the young 'Belfast Cowboy' was absorbing from mentorand label founder Bert Berns, he was nevertheless also plumbing the depths of his soul, not to mention the circumstances in which he found himself in this early ...
Continue ReadingVan Morrison: Keep Me Singing
by C. Michael Bailey
Van Morrison remains a beautifully mercurial creative force. Thirty-six discreet recordings into a 52-year career, Morrison has only Ray Charles and Willie Nelson, as poly-genre conquering peers, each of whose reach has proven to be expansive and penetrating. This is a rarified trio, to be sure, a very selective club that needs be no larger. Morrison's last recording of new material, Born to Sing: No Plan B (Blue Note Records, 2012), was an upbeat effort that was, or course all ...
Continue ReadingVan Morrison: It's Too Late to Stop Now - Volumes II, III, IV & DVD
by Doug Collette
The announcement of the archiving of Van Morrison's considerably lengthy discography through Legacy Music no doubt generated cautious optimism among his fans and musiclovers in general. Previous reissue initiatives consisted of straight remasterings with minimal bonus additions in any form, while the retrospective of thirty unreleased recordings called The Philosopher's Stone (Polydor, 1998) seemed like a concession to the inevitable in the CD age. But the release of The Complete Them 1964-1967 ( Legacy, 2015) augured well for ...
Continue ReadingVan Morrison: …It's Too Late to Stop Now…, Volumes I-IV
by C. Michael Bailey
Genius, Innovation, that “Thing..." oh, and Live Recording... Early in this new century, All About Jazz published my list of the ten best live rock recordings with a second installment addressing “the best of the rest." Ten years of praise and ridicule have led me to accept how naive I was to believe that I could reduce such a list to so few recordings (even in the compressed period of 1969 to 1979). Certainly a worthy addition to ...
Continue ReadingVan Morrison: Another Gloriuos Decade - 1977-1987
by Vic Albani
Van MorrisonAnother Glorious Decade (Under Review 1977-1987) [DVD] Sexy Intellectual* * * * Quando ci sono di mezzo i santi vi è davvero poco da dire. Questo documentario (il seguito della puntata che analizzava il decennio 1964-1974) è dedicato a un periodo della vita artistica di Van Morrison certamente sottovalutato e cioè quello che Morrison attraversò affrontando un mondo musicale in deciso sommovimento, dal punk alle soglie dei Novanta. Mentre crescevano glorie universali come ...
Continue ReadingVan Morrison: Another Wondrous Decade: Under Review 1977-1987
by Doug Collette
Van Morrison Another Wondrous Decade: Under Review 1977-1987 Chrome Dreams 2015 Early on in Another Wondrous Decade, an exploration of Van Morrison's post-hiatus career in the late Seventies and Eighties, recording engineer Gary Ladinsky makes an ever so astute point about The Belfast Cowboy's approach to recordings: ..."he's particular but he's not picky.." This distinction may seem nothing more than semantics, but it is, instead, representative of the erudite insight in the famous Irish-born musician's ...
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