Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl. February, 2009. Van Morrison.

These songs are 40 years old. Van is 63 years old.

A few months back I rediscovered Astral Weeks. I think Julie was the one who found it at a thrift store in some cheap CD bin. She probably paid $2.00 for it. I gave it a listen. I hadn’t heard it in years and it took me back. To college and the army. I traveled around Stuttgart for three years with this cassette close by and usually always on my Walkman.

But Hey-Zues de Christo! This album will give you absolute shivers up your spine. After all these years, this album sounds brand new. And the 22-year-old voice from the original album is present so many years later. The band is superb. The sound is amazing. I don’t think there has been any after show tweaking. This is not the product of some protools monkey-around-mess. This is a live recording and mixed live.

Do I dare say Van seems really happy playing this album? Do I detect a smile as he vamps and scats his way through Cyprus Avenue and Ballerina?

I saw Van when he hit Red Rocks in Morrison, CO a few years back. And it was a great show – but man, oh man – to have been in LA in November 2008 when this was recorded – that would have been show for the ages.

Weeks ago I blogged about Bruce Springsteen and his new album. I declared it the end of music. I pledged to replace all my mp3s in my Zen with non fiction ebooks, focusing on physics and accounting.

Bruce has said that Astral Weeks was one of his most inspirational records and credits Van and the album for much of the Springsteen sound of his early recordings.

But here, in 2009, Van has transcended. He has put the purity back in music and I can go on again and listen to music.

Buy this album. Listen to this music. It will win many awards this year – and deservedly so.

3 Replies to “Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl”

  1. Van the man is actually out doing press. he is doing (gasp) live concerts. he is doing (gasp) late night television.

    then, it gets weirder. he was on CBS Sunday morning. I thought Van was a drunken keebler elf that NEVER went out in public. I am very much enjoying this resurgence. Enough good things can not be said about his music.

  2. Oh, another thing about this new project. He recorded this Hollywood Bowl ‘Astral Week’s’ album with his SAME band he recorded the original with when he was a friggin kid in Ireland 40 years ago.

    I can’t decide if I want the CD or DVD. Best Buy prolly has some kind of combo, right?

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