On a sunny morning (or a cloudy, rainy or snowy morning) pop Astral Weeks into your car cd player (or ipod, or hifi stereo system or tape deck) on your way to work (or school, or a friend's house or on a walk or sitting in your living room).
Because it's so good.
Van Morrison achieved perfection with this album. With the poetry, the strings, the reminder that being a stranger in this world is pure and true and redemptive. The celebration of everything that can't be named or held on to and which is the essence and adventure of being alive. It's all there and it's as hot as it was 40 years ago.
4 comments:
Astral Weeks is a great album. Two things.
2) I read John Densmore's (he was The Doors' drummer) autobiography and he mentions a party that he was at shortly after The Doors got big where Van is sitting sullenly on a couch and then just busts out an acoustic guitar and plays Astral Weeks. Densmore wrote that it was the greatest thing he had ever seen.
2) I read recently that Van is playing this whole album in its entirety as a one time gig in LA sometime soon. It was in a recent issue of the Rolling Stone magazine - the one with Angus and Malcolm Young and Brian Johnson on the cover.
Anyone know when Rolling Stone went to a conventional size magazine from their oversized size?
Oh, and can I just say that your line "the celebration of everything that can't be named" is so evocative and perfect. It should be in a poem.
Rolling Stone changed its layout only 2 or 3 issues ago -- I believe it had Obama onthe cover.
I read that about Van doing that AW gigs in LA and they're going to make a recording. (For some reason I've been getting RS for about 6 months and I don't know why. I don't love it, but thumb through it when I'm taking a crap). That's probably what made me think to get out the cd and play it. On the one hand, I'm worried that he won't be able to do it justice 40 years later. On the other hand, the live recording of Cypress Avenue on It's Too Late To Stop Now is one of the hottest songs I've ever heard, so maybe it will be great and amazing.
Auntie S., since when do you read Rolling Stone AND notice the format change? But you're right.
But honestly, that whole album is such a great poem, right from the first line. If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dream. I mean gimme a break.
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