Details
Track Listing
1. Medley: Astral Weeks/I Believe I've Transcended
2. Beside You
3. Medley: Slim Slow Slider/I Start Breaking Down
4. Sweet Thing
5. Way Young Lovers Do, The
6. Medley: Cyprus Avenue/You Came Walking Down
7. Medley: Ballerina/Move On Up
8. Madame George
9. Medley: Listen To the Lion/The Lion Speaks
10. Common One
| Details | | Producer: | Van Morrison | | Distributor: | EMI Music Distribution | | Recording Type: | Live | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Personnel: Van Morrison (vocals, guitar, harmonica, Hammond b-3 organ); Sarah Jory, Jay Berliner (guitar); Tony Fitzgibbon (violin, viola); Nancy Ellis (violin); Terry Adams, Michael Graham (cello); Richie Buckley (flute, saxophone); Paul Moran (trumpet, harpsichord); Roger Kellaway (piano); David Hayes (upright bass); Robbie Ruggiero (drums).
Recording information: The Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood , CA.
In 2008, Van Morrison decided to revisit his classic ASTRAL WEEKS album on the occasion of its 40th birthday by performing it in its entirety at a couple of L.A. concerts. Fortunately, the event was documented for posterity. Accompanied by a band that includes a couple of the original musicians from the ASTRAL WEEKS sessions, Morrison digs as deep into the mystic as ever, stirring up a soulful, all-acoustic mix of folk, rock, and jazz that sounds as ground-breaking now as it must have in 1968. If anything, the years in between have only added to Morrison's vocal gravitas, and allowed the Irish troubadour to to dig even further into these poetic, richly evocative tunes and bring out their innate transcendent qualities.
Industry Reviews
3.5 stars out of 5 -- [B]y the time Morrison hits the guttural moans of the bonus track 'Listen to the Lion,' the songs have opened up like a source of eternal life.
The strings, flute, etc., are all present...The deceptively timeless fluidity induces a wonderful mystic fog... -- Grade: A-
3.5 stars out of 5 -- The album is still like nothing else in rock, a quiet union of breathtaking opposites: Morrison's soul-trance reflections on his early life in Belfast and the tension of the chamber-jazz arrangements.
4 stars out of 5 -- [T]his is a tour de force, heady, joyful, ambitious, elegiac and -- as with the 1968 original -- unlike anything else.
4 stars out of 5 -- [T]he singer is in fine fettle returning to his 1969 triumph following forays into country, blues and Mose Allison-inspired jazz.
Morrison uses the performance to breathe new life into the songs with a band that can follow anywhere he leads -- jazz, folk or soul.
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