Review: Latest Record Project, Volume 1, by Van Morrison.

Friday: It was with a feeling of trepidation that I set off on Friday afternoon for my local record shop in Warminster. I had read some scathing reviews of Van Morrison’s new album and also lots of negativity from so-called fans who were slagging off the album even before hearing it. When you have been a fan for nearly 50 years you know it is too late to stop now, and I had to hear it even if I didn’t like it. In the shop I opted for the deluxe edition of the 2CD set because it contained a booklet of lyrics and I like reading the lyrics. While I waited patiently in Spoons for my friend Sian to arrive I perused the album cover. It does not exactly inspire confidence in the music because the design looks bland and lazy. It is an arrow made up of lots of dots. If you look closely, you will see that among all the little circles there is one solitary square. Does that mean that Van is a square peg among many round holes? Maybe I am reading too much into it. I was pleased to see that a lot of the songs were recorded near here at Pete Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Box and also at the Bath Spa Hotel. I wish that Van had never sold his nearby Wool Hall studio in Beckington where he made so many great records, but that is another matter. I got Sian to take my photo with the album for publicity purposes. Later that day in the pub in Westbury my friend Curly gave me two positive reviews that he had torn from the Daily Mirror & The Times which cheered me up. That night I listened to about fifteen of the songs and quite liked what I heard.

Me with CD.

Saturday Morning: It was pouring rain and windy, so I sat in my kitchen and listened carefully to all the songs on CD1. This is what I thought. Latest Record Project is a lively upbeat song to start the album. Richard Dunn’s Hammond organ is to the fore on this and many of the other songs. I like the sha la la backing sound of Dana Masters and the Crawford Bell singers. Where Have All The Rebels Gone? Is nice rock n roll with Dave Keary starring on guitar. I am not sure who the rebels are that Van is referring to. Maybe he means people who said they would support his live music campaign during lockdown, and then disappeared when it became clear that it was obviously a mad idea. Psychoanalysts’ Ball is one of the best songs on this album. It is soulful and heartfelt and has a sad world-weary feel. Like someone who has tried all sorts of new age therapy to no avail. Musically it has some delicate vibraphone by Teena Lyle and classical guitar by Dave Keary. An excellent song. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished again has the great organ sound and the excellent backing singers give the song a 1960s feel. The lyrics are a very bitter commentary on the greed of a woman. For someone who has always jealously guarded his private life some of the words of these songs must be quite painful to sing. Tried To Do The Right Thing is another great soul song. Jim Mullen is the guitarist on this song. The harmonies of the backing singers are wonderful, especially on the very last line which reminded me of Brian Wilson. I don’t like The Long Con very much. Van really spilled his guts on this song. Not being able to see his children during lock-down, being drained by lawyers and ex-wife and not being able to have an income must have been exceedingly difficult, but millions of people have suffered in the last year.

Real World Studios.

 He is not the only one. If people part with their cash to hear music, they want to be uplifted, not depressed. Thank God For The Blues is much better and more positive. Big Lie features his old pal Chris Farlowe and is ok I suppose. Richard Dunn again excels. Him and Dave Keary are the stars of this ensemble. I love the groove of A Few Bars Early, it reminds me of the soul sound of Booker T & The MGs or something like that. The lyrics mention a song called ‘It’s Later Than You Think’. There is a song of that name by Louis Prima who Van has long admired. It would be great to hear this track in a small club. It Hurts Me Too is not the song I thought it was, because I love a song with that title by Karen Dalton, but Van has changed most of the words to express his own personal pain about his private life. Somebody said this album was about ‘petty’ grievances. I bet they would not think it was petty if they were in that situation.

Only A Song is a disclaimer pop tune, probably designed to get some radio play. It is ok. I think Van must have been watching a David Attenborough documentary about penguins when he wrote it. I think Diabolic Pressure might have been recorded earlier than most of the songs because it features Paul Moore, Paul Moran, Jeff Lardner, and Chris & Alistair White. Maybe an outtake from an earlier album. I don’t like it much anyway. Deadbeat Saturday Night is a rant about being banged up all alone with nothing to do. He quotes Samuel Beckett with ‘More pricks than kicks’. I quite like this song and find it humorous. The final track on CD1 is Blue Funk which has a good groove and is enlivened by Van’s sax playing. Van complains about the TV junk, well, listen to some music, read a book, or go for a nice walk then.

Saturday afternoon: I played CD2. This is what I thought. I don’t like the opening track Double Agent much. It reminds me a bit of a Van song called ‘Man Has To Struggle’. I don’t understand what the song is about. It seems a bit like a John Le Carre novel. Double Bind has an eerie bluesy organ sound. Is the double bind about being ruled by either Conservatives or Labour? Is the Nigel mentioned, the Farage? I hope not. Van used to say he wouldn’t touch politics with a barge pole. There is mention of ‘weird scenes in the diamond mine’ which is quite similar to the title of a Doors album. Love Should Come With A Warning is co-written with Don Black. Why a person like Van who has written some of the greatest songs of all time needs to work with Don Black baffles me. The sound is great though and reminds me of Ray Charles and also The Isley Brothers ‘This Old Heart Of Mine’. Breaking The Spell is like ‘Meet Me In The Indian Summer’ revisited. An optimistic Van mentions breaking the spell of the ‘lower vibrations’. I have just been reading about that and lower vibrations include fear, sadness, anger, resentment, guilt, jealousy, anxiety, stress and need, so there! 

Up County Down is a jaunty novelty song. Van claims he can remember when there were twelve shillings in a pound. Oh no you can’t. It was twenty shillings in a pound, twelve pence in a shilling. There is another reference to ‘The Doors’ when they played at The Whiskey. Dave Keary plays some nice banjo & mandolin. Duper’s Delight is another outstanding soulful track with the band stripped back to just five players.  Duper’s Delight is a neologism coined by Paul Ekman in his book Telling Lies (1992). It means the pleasure of being able to manipulate someone. It is often made visible to others by flashing a smile at an inappropriate moment. My Time After A While features Van on alto sax and some Jerry Lee Lewis style piano by Stuart McIlroy. Crawford Bell and the other backing singers are great. The lyrics are painful and personal. He’s Not The Kingpin features another old pal PJ Proby, but I don’t think he adds much to the song. There is a lot of percussion and vibraphone provided by Colin Griffin and Teena Lyle. I wonder if the song is about Trump? ‘If He’s a traitor, sooner or later, he’ll take the fall’. I am only guessing at the meanings of these songs. Mistaken Identity is another collaboration with Don Black. It features a famous quote by Socrates ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ which is very profound. Dave Keary plays some tasteful jazzy guitar, but the sound is very ‘easy listening’. I like Stop Bitching, Do Something. It has a rhythm like Buddy Holly or The Stones Not Fade Away. The organ and alto sax are great. I am put off Western Man by the lyric content which is quite paranoid about us being taken over. You would think someone with Van’s supposed wisdom would have a holistic view of the world. There is nothing on this album about climate change, our major problem which can only be solved globally. The words about ‘caretakers taking over the big house’ brings images of the occupation of Congress to me. It is a shame because musically the song has a nice country feel to it and Dave plays banjo for a bit of variety.

 I read that  They Own The Media shows that Van is anti-Semitic. I can’t see anything in the lyrics to suggest that. I agree with him that there are some nasty people manipulating people through the media. You only have to see the rubbish headlines in the tabloid press to realise that. Rupert Murdoch or the Barclay brothers are not Jewish as far as I know. The music reminded me slightly of ‘I Put A Spell On You’. Lots of songs on the album remind me of earlier work. Why Are You On Facebook? Is my least favourite song on the album. I’m not saying that because I’m on Facebook, but because it is boringly repetitive. I think social media has been a godsend during lockdown. When you don’t see anyone apart from shop assistants for weeks on end Facebook is a link to the outside world. Jealousy brings the album to a close. Musically it sounds great with Van’s voice which is as good as ever, the backing singers, and splendid saxophone. It is just the negative lyrics that let the song down.

On Saturday evening I watched a splendid live stream concert by Van which showcased a lot of these songs, and they came to life and sounded better than on the album. That is often the case with Van. The records are just a template for live performance. Blue Funk and Do The Right Thing especially sounded great live. My main criticism of this album is that it is too long. If just the best twelve or fourteen songs were released as a single album I think the critics would be hailing it as Van’s best album this century. Sadly, a lot of people will always point out what is worst, rather than what is best. For a musician of 75 years of age to produce this work under the most difficult circumstances is a great achievement, so well done Van Morrison. 

Van Morrison - Duper's Delight (Official Audio)

Review: Christy Moore, National Concert Hall Dublin, May 1st 2021.

The highlight of Saturday evening for me was watching a live stream of a concert from the National Concert Hall in Dublin by the great Christy Moore. There was no audience of course due to the pandemic, but it was still a wonderful experience and watching at home you got a front row seat. Christy was on great form and you have to admire his energy because in five days’ time he will be celebrating his 76^th birthday. His voice is as good as ever. He didn’t have his usual little band of Declan, Jimmy, Cathal and Vicky with him, probably due to covid, just his son Andy who helped out on three songs. He began with The Song Of Wandering Aengus which was written by W.B. Yeats. 

Then the very humorous All I Remember by Mick Hanley  followed by one of my recent favourite songs Ringing The Bell written by Rob Corcoran. To celebrate Bob Dylan’s upcoming 80^th birthday Christy unveiled a new song which I think is called Zozimus and Zimmerman. Michael J Moran (c. 1794 – 3 April 1846), popularly known as Zozimus, was an Irish street rhymer. He was a resident of Dublin and also known as the "Blind Bard of the Liberties" and the "Last of the Gleemen". Some of Zozimus's rhymes survive as songs, such as Saint Patrick was a Gentleman. Christy said he had seen Bob Dylan play many times, including once in Slattery’s in Cable Street, (but he might have dreamed that one!). I don’t think I have heard the next song before. It is called 1942 and written by Ricky Lynch, a very powerful song about the holocaust. His son Andy then joined him for a beautiful rendition of Bright Blue Rose written by Jimmy McCarthy.

I think Andy might be a Liverpool fan because the next song was Does This Train Stop At Merseyside?, followed by the first song by Ewan McColl that Christy ever learned called Go, Move, Shift. Christy said that he thought that a song he recorded by Paul Doran called The Gardener would be very popular and he even sent it to Monty Don, but didn’t hear back about it. He sang another song by Paul last night which I think is called Green Island and seems very relevant in view of climate change. This was followed by the brilliant and funny Christy song St Bendan’s Voyage. 

I’m not sure of the spelling of the next song by Tom Touhy. It might be called Gossoon. This was followed by a song written by Jim Page who Christy said would be watching in Seattle. The very powerful The Clock Winds Down. It mentions Greta Thunberg. I wonder if Greta has heard it. In three days’ time it is the 40^th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands and Christy marked the occasion by singing Bobby’s song Back Home In Derry. I never tire of hearing the next song, the classic Barney Rush song Nancy Spain. Christy never seems to tire of singing it either. Then he sang a song for his wife Val which was Lawless. Christy is soon to feature on an Irish postage stamp, so he went along to the GPO building in Dublin to record a video to launch the stamp. He sang one of the songs last night which is called Where Is Our James Connolly?. He stood up to sing it unaccompanied. This was followed by Aisling written by the one and only Shane McGowan. The hilarious Delirium Tremens followed, and Christy had changed some of the words to make it more topical. Finally, Christy sang If I Get An Encore in which he mentioned the likes of Pecker Dunne and Margaret Barry. In the absence of live concerts this was the next best thing, so thank you to everyone involved in organising this concert, but most of all, thank you to Christy Moore.

 

Up The Posh!

Sunday afternoon and all is well.  My team Peterborough United (The Posh) secured promotion from Division 1 up to The Championship yesterday. Posh only needed to draw the game against close rivals Lincoln City to get the point they needed for automatic promotion. They did it the hard way though. They were losing 3-0, I was in despair, thinking they had blown their chance. Then late in the game Posh began the fight back. They scored twice to make it 3-2 and in the sixth minute of injury time were awarded a penalty. Jonson Clarke-Harris who is Division 1 player of the season stepped up with nerves of steel to bury the ball in the back of the net and make the final score 3-3. Because of covid there were no fans allowed in the stadium, but there were wild scenes of jubilation outside in the carpark where hundreds of Posh fans had gathered. Fireworks and rockets went off to celebrate one of the greatest days in the history of Peterborough United.

Avebury, Honey Street, & White Horses On Surrounding Hills.

Thursday: It was sunny today, but a bit chilly. I managed to have a little trip outside Westbury for the first time in months. Me and a friend set off in his van about 11.00. Driving along the road at a village called Heddington near Calne we were surprised to see a magnificent pagoda in the middle of the English countryside. When I got home later, I looked it up and it is a Theravada Buddhist meditation centre which was founded by a Burmese Buddhist nun called Mother Sayamagyi and has been situated there since 1978. I thought that was great, it is amazing what you find when you go exploring.

Buddhist Centre.

Then we arrived in Avebury. I have been here many times over the last 40 years, but never tire of visiting the stones. In case you don’t know about Avebury, it is a Neolithic henge monument containing three stone circles. One of the best-known prehistoric sites in Britain, it contains the largest megalithic stone circle in the world. It is both a tourist attraction and a place of religious importance to contemporary pagans.

Constructed over several hundred years in the Third Millennium BC, during the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, the monument comprises a large henge (a bank and a ditch) with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles situated inside the centre of the monument. Its original purpose is unknown, although archaeologists believe that it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony. The Avebury monument is a part of a larger prehistoric landscape containing several older monuments nearby, including West Kennet Long Barrow, Windmill Hill and Silbury Hill. 

Anyway, I took a leisurely walk around and took a few photos. The stones looked great against the April sky. There were quite a few other visitors wandering about. I expect this year we won’t get many visitors from other countries, but hopefully the numbers will be made up by British tourists who will explore their own country, as foreign travel will be out of the question. After that, we repaired to Honey Street which is a little place on the Kennet & Avon canal. I like it because it is mentioned in a Van Morrison song called Pagan Streams. ‘And we walked the pagan streams, And searched for white horses on surrounding hills, We lived where dusk had meaning, And repaired to quiet sleep, where noise abated, In touch with the silence, On Honey Street, on Honey Street’. 

I was pleased to find that the pub The Barge Inn has reopened because it was closed for three years. It used to be a mecca for ‘Croppies’ because you get lots of crop-circles in Wiltshire and ‘cerealogists’ from all over the world came here to study them. I had a bit of a walk along the canal looking at the boats. I think canal holidays will enjoy a boom this summer, so the Barge Inn will have a good year hopefully. As we headed homewards I took a photo of the White Horse at Cherhill which Van also might have been referring to in his song. we stopped off in Devizes because it was market day. 

The market was just starting to close when we got there, so there wasn’t all that much to see or buy. We drove back to Westbury via the back roads and saw some nice villages that I had never seen before. I should mention that I treated my friend to some of my music on this journey. I played him Diversions by Barry Booth, Twelve Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus by Spirit, Parallelograms by Linda Perhacs and We Are Ever So Clean by Blossom Toes. I think he quite liked some of it. It was a really nice afternoon and great to get out and about after being cooped up for so long.

Me at the Barge Inn at Honey Street. Cheers!

Thought For The Day.

 

Wednesday: It has rained steadily all day. I haven’t got anything much to say. I saw on the News that astronaut Michael Collins has died aged 90. He was a great man, the man who orbited the moon on his own while his two friends Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface. I thought I’d just give you one little quote by Michael Collins that has a huge message which sadly the politicians choose to ignore.

“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.”

Supermoon & Other Ramblings.

Tuesday: The sunshine disappeared today, and we had some rain for the first time in ages. I went for a walk uptown and on the way home stopped at Andrea’s flower shop. I bought a dianthus and a fuchsia which I planted in pots. I also got a trailing verbena and a petunia for my hanging baskets. I pottered about in the garden for about an hour until it started raining steadily. Then I went to the pub for a couple of pints. 

This evening I was intently following the football. My team Peterborough United had the chance to secure automatic promotion if they won tonight. Sadly, they only managed a 2-2 draw after leading 2-0. They have a tough game on Saturday against Lincoln which will be a tense game because Lincoln also has a chance of promotion. I will let you know how it all pans out. I just thought I would show you this great photo of the pink supermoon over Stonehenge last night. See you tomorrow.