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Music : Astral Weeks
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Rating: 
- pretty instrumentation, but...
I like the instrumentation of this CD; it's got a lot going on in ways that you don't normally hear, but the actual melodies get kinda boggy about halfway through (or sooner), and if Van Morrison CAN sing (like a pro) he blatantly refuses to do so. Another perfect example of how this "they/we write their/our own songs, so they're/we're better" mentality is ruining music; not that it's a new thing, obviously; this album came out in 1968 after all, before The Beatles broke up, but I think music would be more enjoyable if people would quit trying to do everything themselves and work as a team; i.e.: someone writes the music, someone else arranges it, someone else sings it, someone else performs it...of course it's impressive when someone can do all of that and pull it off without a scratch, but most artists can't.
Rating: - REMASTER AVAILABLE! But ONLY In Japan! Why, Edgar... WHY?
The good news?
20+ years after their debut on CD, FINALLY, there are full remasters of "Moondance", "Street Choir" and "Astral Weeks".
The bad news?
They're not available domestically from Warner Music Group USA: All three are Warner Japan only.
And the really bad news?
As of today, Amazon doesn't stock the remasters (there is a 1996 Japan-released Moondance listed, but it is NOT the remaster, so don't waste your money). Hopefully, Amazon will correct this oversight soon. The catalog numbers for the three Japan Warner remasters are WPCR-75419, -20 and -21, which streeted in Japan on 6/25/08.
These classic albums, which we have all waited so long to be brought properly into the digital world, now, unfortunately, join fellow Warner artists such as Little Feat, The Doobie Brothers, Neil Young, Ry Cooder, Tower Of Power, Cold Blood and several others, whose remastered catalogs are only available off-shore.
Pathetic.
The responsibility for this is ultimately Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the CEO of WMG USA. Instead of focusing on WMG's core music catalog, he's busy extolling the virtues of consumer-oppressive DRM, over-paying P-Diddy tens of millions of dollars, and this week, revealed as losing another $30 million of WMG funds in promoter Joe Meli's mad scheme to charge $15,000 per person to attend a swank, exclusive, five-act concert series in the Hamptons. These are only a few of many excesses this guy has perpetrated at WMG, presiding over a spectacular loss of investor equity since the 2005 WMG IPO, while he and his investors have lined their own pockets.
This year, Universal is staging a 28-title Van Morrison catalog re-release, all remastered with bonus tracks. You'd think SOMEBODY at WMG would be smart enough to pilot-fish that momentum with these three seminal titles. At the very least, how hard can it be to obtain the existing, completed remasters from a Japan subsidiary and make them available in the U.S.?
All of this is no surprise to WMG, or ex-WEA, insiders. Internally, Warner policy was always that the majority of consumers were going purchase popular catalog titles anyway, so why waste profits to remaster them? WEA sales employees were told this directly by Warner management as far back as the early 90's, and Bronfman's regime simply status-quo'd that odious philosophy.
This is what happens when bean-counters run record companies.
But, I guess Edgar & Co, too preoccupied with moguling the mess they've made of a once-great record company, can't see the opportunity: As of this writing, no WMG act has any major position on the charts, and artists, alienated by WMG's all-finance-dominated mentality, are departing for pastures where music still has some modicum of corporate consideration.
What a waste.
WMG could borrow a page from Sony, who established a successful business model out of sonically-upgrading their catalog over a decade ago. The only major Columbia Records artist that comes to mind, whose catalog hasn't been remastered, is Springsteen... and you have to believe that's not by Sony's choice.
Bottom line, Edgar? If you don't believe there's no positive revenue to be generated by offering a better product, then you've no business being in that business.
Rating:
- Ah, some of the astral-Celtic sound
It's hard to think of Van as an introverted mystic, but this is where it all started. Yea, he had a first life as a Belfast bluesman and some time on Bang records when he produced one of the great pop singles of all timee, but this documents Van's summer of guitar. If you don't study this album, you're not a Van fan. As a matter of fact, find it on vinyl and digest it in twenty minute doses of mysticism.
Essential.
Rating:
- Beautiful, Soothing, Soaring, Healing
A friend recommended this to me, knowing I was Irish, a Dylan fan, and contemptuous of contemporary popular music. So I bought it, half expecting the radio Van Morrison of "Brown Eyed Girl", "Moondance", "And It Stoned Me", "Crazy Love", "Domino", "Wild Night".
And at first I hated it.
I hated jazz and I hated hippies too. I was much more in tune with Shane McGowan's punk rock sensibilities than Van's bittersweet reveries. There were moments of the title track I could get and I thought "Sweet Thing" was a nice song. But that was it. The repititions were driving me crazy. After the eighth or ninth "dry your eye for Madame George" I said, "to hell with you, Van" and took the CD out of the player.
The CD gathered dust on my shelf for a while. I don't remember why or when I started listening again. I just know that I was listening at a dark period in my life. I was homesick, there was a failed romance that had me heartbroken, there was the death of a friend at a young age by his own hand. There was too much of the drink and the drink was actually making me feel worse instead of the way it used to make me feel. In short, I wasn't ready for adulthood but adulthood was at the door, whether I was ready or not.
There's a part in the song "Astral Weeks"
"Could you find me,
would you kiss my eyes
and lay me down
in silence easy
to be born again"
that reminded me of the way I'd been with the girl I was still pining over, my first real love. And that part of the song to this day still gets me near to weeping. Well, misty eyed at least. In black and white it doesn't quite get it all, Van's voice, that lovely bass playing, the vibes, the strings, the quiet, gentle guitar. At the time I thought I was torturing myself with it, listening to it over and over again and when he'd say those words I'd think of lying with her and holding and kissing her and remembering that that was over now. I thought I was torturing myself with the song, but in a way I was healing myself as well. I needed to feel that pain. I needed somebody to put that into words and music and Van had done that.
I started "really listening" to the rest of the album as well. Van's voice of course, and as a guitarist myself I'm always interested in good guitar playing. But I think it was when I finally began to listen for the bass lines that I really began to appreciate just how beautiful the music on this CD is. I almost never listen to the bass in bands . The only other bassist I can think of who is that important to a band's sound is John Entwhistle of the Who, and this bass player is the exact opposite of Entwhistle. Entwhistle sounds like a jet engine roaring past your ear. Richard Davis on the other hand is playing accoustic the entire CD. But there is just something so delicate, fluid and expressive about his bass lines. Richard Davis is the unsung hero of this album. People forget him because Van is up there front and center with his voice, guitar and words, but without Richard Davis, "Astral Weeks" isn't "Astral Weeks."
Somewhere along the line I began to "get" Madame George as well. I finally figured out that the song was about a lonely old drag queen, who likes to play dominoes, get high, and listen to music with a bunch of young boys, and they're willing to hang out with him as long as he sends them to the shops for cigarettes with a little of his money and lets them listen to his records and get high on whatever the hell it is he drops out the window. I'm not sure if the cops really are coming through the door for him or if it's just paranoia, but the cops are mentioned. One can imagine what Lou Reed or Nick Cave might have done with the setup. But Van's song is about a glance. When the narrator, another school kid, glances into the eyes of "Madame George" and suddenly realizes that this is a person, a human being not a monster, not a freak. And he has to leave and never come back. In black print on a white page, it sounds sordid and depressing, I realize, but on the CD you have Van's haunting voice and the music and it's beautiful somehow. Transcendant somehow. Transcendant enough to make an avowed hippy-hater use the word transcendant and mean it. I can't really explain it, you'll have to feel it yourself to understand.
I think what this CD is about is leaving home, and leaving childhood.
And looking back at it ALL --- the beauty, the love, the pain, the joy, the sadness, the ugliness, the horror. And loving it all. And missing it all. And saying goodbye to it all and not getting trapped there, but still remembering, even though it hurts so much sometimes.
Then again, maybe the CD isn't about any of that at all, but that's what it's about to me.
Highly recommended to those of you out there who "ain't nothing but a stranger in this world."
Peace be with you.
Rating: - A poet sings
As I recall all that time ago, there was a bifurcation if you will between mainstream music and popular but not well accepted, more like experimental ferment..eveything creative was up for grabs.Jimi Hendrix and Led Zepplin played our town, but to tiny audiences. Likewise recordings as diverse as this early effort by Van Morrison were among the likewise early work of Neil Young,The Band, Leonard Cohen.They were largely poets ,I would call them in one way or another ...all of them unknowns...The icon like status would come later. They all have a rather timeless air about them right at this stage of their recording career.For me its a chance to get aquainted again,a lifetime later.
When Amazon put this album download on sale for under$2, I could not resist.
- pretty instrumentation, but...I like the instrumentation of this CD; it's got a lot going on in ways that you don't normally hear, but the actual melodies get kinda boggy about halfway through (or sooner), and if Van Morrison CAN sing (like a pro) he blatantly refuses to do so. Another perfect example of how this "they/we write their/our own songs, so they're/we're better" mentality is ruining music; not that it's a new thing, obviously; this album came out in 1968 after all, before The Beatles broke up, but I think music would be more enjoyable if people would quit trying to do everything themselves and work as a team; i.e.: someone writes the music, someone else arranges it, someone else sings it, someone else performs it...of course it's impressive when someone can do all of that and pull it off without a scratch, but most artists can't.
Rating:
- REMASTER AVAILABLE! But ONLY In Japan! Why, Edgar... WHY?The good news?
20+ years after their debut on CD, FINALLY, there are full remasters of "Moondance", "Street Choir" and "Astral Weeks".
The bad news?
They're not available domestically from Warner Music Group USA: All three are Warner Japan only.
And the really bad news?
As of today, Amazon doesn't stock the remasters (there is a 1996 Japan-released Moondance listed, but it is NOT the remaster, so don't waste your money). Hopefully, Amazon will correct this oversight soon. The catalog numbers for the three Japan Warner remasters are WPCR-75419, -20 and -21, which streeted in Japan on 6/25/08.
These classic albums, which we have all waited so long to be brought properly into the digital world, now, unfortunately, join fellow Warner artists such as Little Feat, The Doobie Brothers, Neil Young, Ry Cooder, Tower Of Power, Cold Blood and several others, whose remastered catalogs are only available off-shore.
Pathetic.
The responsibility for this is ultimately Edgar Bronfman, Jr., the CEO of WMG USA. Instead of focusing on WMG's core music catalog, he's busy extolling the virtues of consumer-oppressive DRM, over-paying P-Diddy tens of millions of dollars, and this week, revealed as losing another $30 million of WMG funds in promoter Joe Meli's mad scheme to charge $15,000 per person to attend a swank, exclusive, five-act concert series in the Hamptons. These are only a few of many excesses this guy has perpetrated at WMG, presiding over a spectacular loss of investor equity since the 2005 WMG IPO, while he and his investors have lined their own pockets.
This year, Universal is staging a 28-title Van Morrison catalog re-release, all remastered with bonus tracks. You'd think SOMEBODY at WMG would be smart enough to pilot-fish that momentum with these three seminal titles. At the very least, how hard can it be to obtain the existing, completed remasters from a Japan subsidiary and make them available in the U.S.?
All of this is no surprise to WMG, or ex-WEA, insiders. Internally, Warner policy was always that the majority of consumers were going purchase popular catalog titles anyway, so why waste profits to remaster them? WEA sales employees were told this directly by Warner management as far back as the early 90's, and Bronfman's regime simply status-quo'd that odious philosophy.
This is what happens when bean-counters run record companies.
But, I guess Edgar & Co, too preoccupied with moguling the mess they've made of a once-great record company, can't see the opportunity: As of this writing, no WMG act has any major position on the charts, and artists, alienated by WMG's all-finance-dominated mentality, are departing for pastures where music still has some modicum of corporate consideration.
What a waste.
WMG could borrow a page from Sony, who established a successful business model out of sonically-upgrading their catalog over a decade ago. The only major Columbia Records artist that comes to mind, whose catalog hasn't been remastered, is Springsteen... and you have to believe that's not by Sony's choice.
Bottom line, Edgar? If you don't believe there's no positive revenue to be generated by offering a better product, then you've no business being in that business.
Rating:
- Ah, some of the astral-Celtic soundIt's hard to think of Van as an introverted mystic, but this is where it all started. Yea, he had a first life as a Belfast bluesman and some time on Bang records when he produced one of the great pop singles of all timee, but this documents Van's summer of guitar. If you don't study this album, you're not a Van fan. As a matter of fact, find it on vinyl and digest it in twenty minute doses of mysticism.
Essential.
Rating:
- Beautiful, Soothing, Soaring, HealingA friend recommended this to me, knowing I was Irish, a Dylan fan, and contemptuous of contemporary popular music. So I bought it, half expecting the radio Van Morrison of "Brown Eyed Girl", "Moondance", "And It Stoned Me", "Crazy Love", "Domino", "Wild Night".
And at first I hated it.
I hated jazz and I hated hippies too. I was much more in tune with Shane McGowan's punk rock sensibilities than Van's bittersweet reveries. There were moments of the title track I could get and I thought "Sweet Thing" was a nice song. But that was it. The repititions were driving me crazy. After the eighth or ninth "dry your eye for Madame George" I said, "to hell with you, Van" and took the CD out of the player.
The CD gathered dust on my shelf for a while. I don't remember why or when I started listening again. I just know that I was listening at a dark period in my life. I was homesick, there was a failed romance that had me heartbroken, there was the death of a friend at a young age by his own hand. There was too much of the drink and the drink was actually making me feel worse instead of the way it used to make me feel. In short, I wasn't ready for adulthood but adulthood was at the door, whether I was ready or not.
There's a part in the song "Astral Weeks"
"Could you find me,
would you kiss my eyes
and lay me down
in silence easy
to be born again"
that reminded me of the way I'd been with the girl I was still pining over, my first real love. And that part of the song to this day still gets me near to weeping. Well, misty eyed at least. In black and white it doesn't quite get it all, Van's voice, that lovely bass playing, the vibes, the strings, the quiet, gentle guitar. At the time I thought I was torturing myself with it, listening to it over and over again and when he'd say those words I'd think of lying with her and holding and kissing her and remembering that that was over now. I thought I was torturing myself with the song, but in a way I was healing myself as well. I needed to feel that pain. I needed somebody to put that into words and music and Van had done that.
I started "really listening" to the rest of the album as well. Van's voice of course, and as a guitarist myself I'm always interested in good guitar playing. But I think it was when I finally began to listen for the bass lines that I really began to appreciate just how beautiful the music on this CD is. I almost never listen to the bass in bands . The only other bassist I can think of who is that important to a band's sound is John Entwhistle of the Who, and this bass player is the exact opposite of Entwhistle. Entwhistle sounds like a jet engine roaring past your ear. Richard Davis on the other hand is playing accoustic the entire CD. But there is just something so delicate, fluid and expressive about his bass lines. Richard Davis is the unsung hero of this album. People forget him because Van is up there front and center with his voice, guitar and words, but without Richard Davis, "Astral Weeks" isn't "Astral Weeks."
Somewhere along the line I began to "get" Madame George as well. I finally figured out that the song was about a lonely old drag queen, who likes to play dominoes, get high, and listen to music with a bunch of young boys, and they're willing to hang out with him as long as he sends them to the shops for cigarettes with a little of his money and lets them listen to his records and get high on whatever the hell it is he drops out the window. I'm not sure if the cops really are coming through the door for him or if it's just paranoia, but the cops are mentioned. One can imagine what Lou Reed or Nick Cave might have done with the setup. But Van's song is about a glance. When the narrator, another school kid, glances into the eyes of "Madame George" and suddenly realizes that this is a person, a human being not a monster, not a freak. And he has to leave and never come back. In black print on a white page, it sounds sordid and depressing, I realize, but on the CD you have Van's haunting voice and the music and it's beautiful somehow. Transcendant somehow. Transcendant enough to make an avowed hippy-hater use the word transcendant and mean it. I can't really explain it, you'll have to feel it yourself to understand.
I think what this CD is about is leaving home, and leaving childhood.
And looking back at it ALL --- the beauty, the love, the pain, the joy, the sadness, the ugliness, the horror. And loving it all. And missing it all. And saying goodbye to it all and not getting trapped there, but still remembering, even though it hurts so much sometimes.
Then again, maybe the CD isn't about any of that at all, but that's what it's about to me.
Highly recommended to those of you out there who "ain't nothing but a stranger in this world."
Peace be with you.
Rating:
- A poet singsAs I recall all that time ago, there was a bifurcation if you will between mainstream music and popular but not well accepted, more like experimental ferment..eveything creative was up for grabs.Jimi Hendrix and Led Zepplin played our town, but to tiny audiences. Likewise recordings as diverse as this early effort by Van Morrison were among the likewise early work of Neil Young,The Band, Leonard Cohen.They were largely poets ,I would call them in one way or another ...all of them unknowns...The icon like status would come later. They all have a rather timeless air about them right at this stage of their recording career.For me its a chance to get aquainted again,a lifetime later.
When Amazon put this album download on sale for under$2, I could not resist.