In the context of recent posts about The Beatles and Neil Young (and sort of Pink Floyd), let’s give this old Afterword chestnut another canter around the paddock before it’s sent to the glue factory!
Simply complete the following sentence in your own words on a postcard and pop it in the postbox! No address necessary!
“I think Van Morrison lost the plot after …”
I think Van Morrison lost the plot after Scrappy Doo joined the Caledonia Soul Orchestra.
….wasn’t it when Niles told Daphne “Have I Told You lately that I Love You”?
In answering this question you may use the following list as a reference source:
Accentuate The Positive
Moving On Skiffle
March 10, 2023
What’s It Gonna Take?
May 20, 2022
Latest Record Project, Volume 1
May 7, 2021
Three Chords & the Truth
October 25, 2019
The Healing Game (Deluxe Edition)
March 22, 2019
The Prophet Speaks
December 7, 2018
You’re Driving Me Crazy
April 27, 2018
Versatile
December 1, 2017
Roll with the Punches
September 22, 2017
Keep Me Singing
September 30, 2016
The Essential Van Morrison
August 28, 2015
Duets: Re-working the Catalogue
March 13, 2015
Born to Sing: No Plan B
October 2, 2012
Keep It Simple
March 17, 2008
Pay the Devil
March 6, 2006
Magic Time
May 17, 2005
What’s Wrong with This Picture?
October 21, 2003
Down the Road
May 14, 2002
You Win Again
October 3, 2000
The Skiffle Sessions: Live in Belfast 1998
January 18, 2000
New York Sessions ’67
November 1, 1999
Back on Top
March 9, 1999
In Session
January 1, 1999
The Philosopher’s Stone
June 16, 1998
The Healing Game
March 4, 1997
Tell Me Something: The Songs of Mose Allison
October 8, 1996
How Long Has This Been Going On
December 1995
Days Like This
June 5, 1995
Too Long in Exile
June 8, 1993
Together
1992
Hymns to the Silence
September 1991
Enlightenment
October 1990
Avalon Sunset
May 19, 1989
Poetic Champions Compose
September 1987
No Guru, No Method, No Teacher
July 1986
A Sense of Wonder
January 10, 1985
Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast
February 1984
Inarticulate Speech of the Heart
March 1983
Beautiful Vision
February 16, 1982
Common One
August 1980
Into the Music
August 1979
Wavelength
September 1978
A Period of Transition
April 1977
Veedon Fleece
October 5, 1974
It’s Too Late to Stop Now
February 1, 1974
Hard Nose the Highway
August 15, 1973
Saint Dominic’s Preview
July 1972
Tupelo Honey
October 15, 1971
His Band and the Street Choir
November 15, 1970
Moondance
January 27, 1970
Astral Weeks
November 29, 1968
Blowin’ Your Mind!
September 1967
Accentuate The Positive
Qualitatively I nominate Hymns To The Silence as the last great record. There were good uns -Too Long in Exile, the leftover tracks Philosopher’s Stone and some interesting byways ie Skiffle Sessions. But that is where the stream began to trickle.
Stream? This brings me to taking the piss – possibly heretical but Astral Weeks live. It was a record I really liked on release. But now it sits unloved on the shelf whilst my well worn Astral Weeks album continues to get airplay. The album he diminished for so many years ,mainly due to diminished royalties I expect, the new teeth, it just seemed to be a marker of ok, whatever it takes to amass the royalties.
And what did we get – those stupid titles Born To Sing, No Plan B , Keep It Simple, Roll With The Punches etc. All have some merit and most get 4 stars on All Music but… meh.
Yep, this is my take too. There’s an odd few wonderful songs dotted around on subsequent albums, but I fell so many times for the ubiquitous ‘return to form’ line until I got wise some time in the late 90s.
Days like these and Healing game the last two great ones for me
I adore his output up to Veedon Fleece and like/tolerate it from there to Common One. Once the alto sax kicked with force in he lost me. I have Beautiful Vision and Inarticulate Speech of the Heart and can barely believe they are by the same artist. I have dipped into the occasional later recommendation, usually from advice on here, but nothing has grabbed me.
Podicle gets the right answer and renders all other comments superfluous (unless they agree with him).
Have you been reading my end of year performance review?
It’s on my desk. I’m hearing good things about it.
Love those albums.
Beautiful Vision is a top 5 Van album for me. Van had an excellent 80s, and 90s were pretty good too. Plenty of worth until Magic Time, but last masterpiece was The Healing Game
I’m on a 1CD-a-day ‘keeper or not keeper’ inventory right now – finally got round to it, if anyone can drag out a process like this to its nth degree, a middle-aged man can – and, frankly, the existence of much Grumpy Van, Boring Neil and Joni Mitchell (so dull I can’t actually think of a pithy moniker for her) on my shelf this time next year looks extremely unlikely.
Meanwhile, every single Rock ‘n’ Roll record c. 1957/58 beloved by John, Paul, George, Brian, Jimi etc. is ensured a safe passage. The Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Ricky Nelson and Carl Perkins’ CDs are going absolutely nowhere near a chazzer.
For Van, the only absolute ‘keepers’ are the two Them albums and the 2-CD Them Anthology.
On the above list, I’m gratified to say that my favourite is the one which would get shortest shrift from anyone else on here… namely, ‘The Skiffle Sessions’, but then Lonnie Donegan steals the show so completely from under his nose, it’s almost as if His Grumpiness isn’t even in the room.
What’s your method, DD?
Choose a CD;
Listen to it once or repeatedly over the course of the day?
Then make a decision – keep or add to the chazza pile?
Regular trip to the chazza? I’d have to – or the discarded CDs might end up being reprieved and back on the shelf again.
I forgot to answer the Van question – but I’m with DD.
I haven’t heard the Skiffle Sessions, so I’ll stick with the recorded output of Them – and stop there.
Tupelo Honey. After that I was irritated by cryptic and/or pretentious elpee titles and everything started to sound the same.
Oddly VTM himself despises TH
@Jaygee was it the album or something tangential. Astral he bagged ( i think) really coz he didnt get what he thought we mre enough royalties and wanted people to buy more financially rewarding albums. Did he break up with Janet Planet around then?. She is on the cover.
@Junior-Wells
IIRC his animus towards TH is due to the fact that most of the songs are about his ex-wife, Janet Planet (there on the cover with VTM and the horse).
Until very recently – and quite possibly even to this day, TH remains one of only two albums that don’t feature on his re-release schedule – the other one being the late 90s/early 00s You Win Again album he did with Jerry Lee Lewis’ sister/half- sister Linda Gail who famously sued him for harassment.
Around the time he was cavorting with Cliff, on TOTP. He made even Cliff look cool.
Very funny story about his being mistaken for a mini-cab driver when he broke the habit of a lifetime and pitched up for a post-show party at some festival.
Believe he was also mistaken for a tramp when touring Irish Heartbeat with the Chieftans in the late 80s
Not something that would happen to the Chieftains. Very respectably turned out, as if for a Sunday afternoon at the garden centre.
Bloody ‘ell HP, not had an ‘amper for a few days?
QUIET in the back there.
Are we nearly there yet??
Things started to get erratic after Beautiful vision IMHO – No Guru, No Method, No Teacher and Poetic Champions Compose seemed to promise some sort of creative resurgence but nothing subsequent seemed consistent, and some of it was downright embarrassing. So, 1987 is my cut-off point.
Inarticulate Speech of the Heart was the last one I enjoyed until The Skiffle Sessions came along.
Nothing of note in between those two and nothing after.
But I don’t listen to Van at all, these days.
I lost him after Tupelo Honey and could never get my head around all that Celtic mystic bollox that he began to ramble on about at length almost immediately afterwards, although he did come under my radar again recently with his rather enjoyable bollox-free rock and roll covers album.
Healing Game last great record. After that virtually everything has a least one belter but surrounded by Van-by-Numbers drosszzz.
The last one of his I own on physical is Sense of Wonder. By the end of the eighties I am done, and Philosopher’s Stone though released later stops in 1988 as well. Seems an end point. But really the last album of his I unreservedly love would be Into The Music. From then on great songs rather than great albums, Irish Heartbeat excepted.
Yeah, it’s been strictly three good songs at most per album since Days Like This, 1995.
Why doesn’t he put out an album called that. “Strictly 3 good songs – that’s the rule”
Would fit in perfectly with the recent catalogue.
Or better still, an EP
Days Like This (this) is where I gave up (up).
Actually I did review one here a few years ago which was ok AFAICR.
… which means you haven’t listened to it since, and that says it all!
‘Twang… TWANG… TWANNNNNGGGG!!!!!!!!!! Down by the Afterword, reviewin’ bad albums by VanTheMan, VanTheMan, Jethro Tull comin’ through the ether, aspidistras and hatstands, Gerry Rafferty comebacks an’ Bob Holness playin’ jazz… Sham 69 an’ the Rejects, Neil Young goin’ off the boil… er…. hang on, where am I? What is this place?!? LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!’
Big hand for The Belfast (Not So) Coy Boy,
Mr Colin Harper, laydeez and gennermen!
Arf (arf) Colin (Colin).
WILLIAM BLAKE (BLAKE).
Before there was Stephen King, there was Colin Harper, who shamelessly stole my Van Morrison pastiche and became celebrated for it. I don’t mind – in fact I’ve forgotten all about it.
Not another case of “copycats ripped off my words”, HP
Back in the old days
Before the Afterword
Bakelite wireless, fishpaste sandwiches
Bob and Dogfacedboy, the Wanking Dentist!
Rosbif! Hannah!
The immortals spoke
When the Word was young
Touched by genius
Hepworth’s face appearin’ through the clouds
Like a face in the sky (in the sky)
Be-doot-doot-doopy-do
There was the Word
An’ the Word was good
News! Views! Reviews!
Your man Frasier – Fraser? I forget
His wise hand on the tiller
An’ the sweet rain, the sweet rain
Hilversum, Rockall
Best take me Pac-A-Mac
An’ down the pub doin’ the crossword
With Archie an’ that bloke that measured HIS HEAD
An’ minibreakast in a red dress
It might of been blue, or jeans
Never forget, never forget
The Word was young
Er … will this do? Only I got to be down the clinic
For me knee
For me knee
Noticed today in HMV Norwich, the CD of Accentuate The Positive was in the Big Sale at a mere £2.99.
I had to have it, just to satisfy the completist in me but I bet it’s going to be dreadful.
I hope you’ll come back here and tell us what you thought of it…
We want to know HOW dreadful.
The joy(?) of recent Van is that it perks the interest of Cover Me:
https://www.covermesongs.com/2023/12/review-van-morrisons-accentuate-the-positive.html
Accentuate the Covid Positive?
Was just thinking about the original thread title and how the sharks must have been licking their lips/lip equivalents at the prospect of the gobby, oompah-loompah-hued and proportioned Ulsterman attempting to clear a body of water with such predators circling beneath him
Cleaning Windows. Not as good as George Formby.
But better than Max Wall
It all ends with Enlightenment. Would have been a good last record album.
What’s the sound of one man crapping?
21st Century Paranoid Van…
Rather than pump out mostly forgettable albums every six months or so,
I wish he’d do some kind of archives project or at the very least Philosopher’s
Stone II.
I can’t think of any other major artist with less respect or regard for his back catalogue.
It’s too late to stop now.
I don’t think anything can compare to Frank Zappa’s tampering of his back catalogue forty-odd years ago. Maybe, if he was still with us, it would still be in a diabolical state.
Just to bring it back to topic, here’s Frank and Van, Van and Frank together
Ironically, that’s one of the few that did get a multi-disc re-release.
Never understood why the Pacific Heights radio broadcast from – iirc Sept 71 – didn’t get a retrospective release