The packed concert hall thrilled to be on his Glory train -
as he took
us all on a slow and so rhythmic jazz
train over high ridge mountains, peaceful valleys, and fun soul highways….
He began
with one of his signature tunes
'It’s a
wonderful day for a ‘Moondance …..'
He sang his songs
of optimism, and of blues notes with his power soul voice
Morrison at
71, is as busy as ever and he performed tracks from his two new 2017 albums ‘Roll
with the Punches’ and 'Versatile'. Today Morrison sang songs of his favourite
artists on his Versatile album - such as Cole Porter,
Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra, Righteous Brothers, and Nat King Cole - as
well as his own compositions and several of his favourite hit songs.
Concert *SONGS
– ‘I Can Tell’, ‘Here Comes the Night’, ‘Higher Ground’, ‘Days Like This’, ‘Magic
Time’, ‘Sometimes We Cry’, ‘Ease My Troubles That’s What you do’, ‘Carrying
the Torch’, ‘Don’t Know What it is’, ‘Wild Night is Calling’, ‘Real Love to You’,
He sang ‘One
More for the Road’ - with piano cascades, and his smooth voice and lurching
on loves highways and along with the golden notes of trumpet and sax. He travelled
on to a softer gospel voice and to more contemporary tunes and back again, with
upbeat riffs and beats and rhythms and with spiritual hopes.
Relieved
from flip flop flying, zoom, flip flop fly, Don’t get behind,
In the midnight
hour, and with our musical Holy Guardian angel,
Mood music,
with you my love, when he surprised us all, after walking off the stage, with a
rendition of his biggest ever hit, ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ for a very welcome encore!
Morrison is
the pivotal star with his occasional hand signals to the band.
He sings of
distant vibes, and of hurried tones. Fill my heart.
Morrison is
one of our top songwriters.
*Van was relaxed
and in good voice and form!
Shimmy
dancing from the King of Celtic soul.
Top marks
also to his quality band!
“Recording songs like
these - especially the standards - gave me the chance to stretch out vocally
and get back to the music that originally inspired me to sing - jazz!” Van Morrison on Versatile
On his 2017 album Roll
With the Punches, he has recorded R & B classics that informed his music
(his father had a large collection of these records when he grew up in Belfast
city) – Bo Diddley, Mose Allison, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Lightnin Hopkins, which
he performs with his highly individual, raw and personal interpretations.
“From a very
early age, I connected with the blues. The thing about the blues is you don't
dissect it – you just do it. I've never over-analysed what I do; I just do it.
Music has to be about just doing it and that's the way the blues works – it's
an attitude. I was lucky to have met people who were the real thing – people
like John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Witherspoon, Bo Diddley, Little Walter & Mose
Allison. I got to hang out with them and absorb what they did. They were people
with no ego whatsoever and they helped me learn a lot.”
Van
Morrison, Roll With The Punches
Van continues: “The songs on Roll With The Punches - whether I’ve
written them or not - they’re performance oriented. Each song is like a story
and I’m performing that story. That’s been forgotten over years because people
over-analyse things. I was a performer before I started writing songs and I’ve
always felt like that’s what I do.
Roll With The Punches was produced by Van Morrison and
recorded with an incredible team of studio collaborators including Chris
Farlowe, Georgie Fame, Jeff Beck, Paul Jones and Jason Rebello.
His Astral Weeks album is one of the classic albums of all time, all
tracks written by Van Morrison – Beside you/ Sweet Thing/ Cyprus Avenue/ The
Way Young lovers do / Madame George/ Ballerina / Slim Slow Slider /
