Today I am adding a reproduction of a not-easily-legible writer's handwriting spontaneous music review of the Astral Weeks Live At The Hollywood Bowl work by Van Morrison: succinctly -- I may like the original work better, except for cuts such as "Slim Slow Slider." To paraphrase Mr. McKinley Morganfield, don't be cheap, spend some cash and get this work, and the as-they-say seminal original, recorded in New York City in 1968, reputedly in two days, and featuring great work by many, including Modern Jazz Quartet drummer Connie Kay, who is no longer with us.
After reading Rolling Stone magazine's second recent mention of Van Morrison's live recording of Astral Weeks in L.A. last month, I wanted to write: I have been a fan of this great work since I first heard it, in a little cafe on a beautiful -- then pristine -- beach in Matala, Crete, Greece. If you do not have the CD version of Astral Weeks, get it (or in MP3 format, or whatever), and then get this live version when it is released. Van Morrison figures importantly into my novel CHASING FREEDOM, available at www.amazon.com and www.bn.com, etc. You can read book excerpts by going to www.books.google.com and searching for CHASING FREEDOM by Paul Heidelberg. Then go to the book preview link and enter Astral Weeks in the search field (and later, you might search for The Blues, etc.) The first hit involves hearing Astral Weeks for the first time. Later hits involve San Francisco during "The Sixties." I consider this book to be a neo-nonfiction novel of the Internet Age (if you read about a musician you are not familiar with, for example, such as Sam Lightnin' Hopkins, then use the Internet to search and learn). Note: the book's cover illustration is artwork created by using modern computer software to alter a 35mm photo slide taken in the studios of the San Francisco Art Institute, where Jerry Garcia studied painting in the 1960s and Ansel Adams founded the photography department in the 1940s. (Don't miss the original bell bottoms the woman on the cover is wearing -- when I see the work I usually think of Eric Clapton's Bell Bottom Blues.) I wrote the book while living in a little village in the highest mountains in Spain; to "reward myself" when I had finished the project, I treated myself to the great performance by Van The Man in Granada I describe in an earlier blog below. Note: the book's cover is suitable for framing, as they say. I have had photography and paintings shown in galleries across the U.S., including San Francisco and South Florida, and I would not sell the book's cover artwork for anything near what you can get the book for. So, two suggestions: get Astral Weeks, studio version, and live version to come, and check out my novel CHASING FREEDOM at www.books.google.com and get it at www.amazon.com, www.bn.com, etc. (Third blog at this site in as many days, hmmmmm.)
