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Music for
Grown-Ups Newsletter
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24/06/2009 Van the Man – back on top!
Sunday’s Van Morrison show at the Wales Millennium Centre (aka opera house) was a deeply satisfying gig. The setlist was pure gold, drawn largely from little-played minor Morrison masterpieces in the back catalogue - Veedon Fleece, Poetic Champions Compose and No Guru. The performances were exquisite. Morrison’s vocals were expressive, daring, engaged. His voice remains in great shape. His playing – piano, alto sax, two rhythm guitars and harmonica – was a thing of beauty. He commanded the stage with the kind of authority and charisma you only experience with great musicians. The present band marks a return to the standards of his best ensembles. Jay Berliner is an exquisite guitarist, Richie Buckley the most complementary horn foil I’ve seen on a Morrison stage. The new (to me) kids on the block, notably Sara Jory on pedal steel, played beautifully all night long. Van Morrison raised the bar of popular music performance art for much of his career. That’s why I went to over 60 Van shows in the late 1990s. But my last two outings – Larmer Tree 2003 and the Magic Time launch – featured such weak material that I got off that particular train to seek excellence elsewhere, regardless of musical genre. His Astral Weeks journey and recent set lists suggest that, after almost a decade of unsatisfactory searching, Morrison has finally rediscovered the value of his wonderful legacy. Let’s hope so. On this kind of form, Morrison is the pre-eminent live musician of his generation. In any genre. I’d booked the Cardiff show because it was advertised as another of the live Astral Weeks specials. Truth to tell, despite holding the 1968 masterpiece in impossibly high esteem, I was regretting the decision before the gig – I find the live AW album recorded in LA a mite too show biz – the emoting seems artificial, forced. It’s a bit too much of a Baby Boomer NostalgiaFest for my liking. In the event, not a note of Astral Weeks was played in Sunday’s superlative outing. Rave on! Gerry Smith
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