The Chris Moeller Archives

It's Not High Finance, It's Called Heart and Soul - by Aaron Moeller

The A-Train 2007 Concert Series made its final stop last week at the Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis. Irish bard Van Morrison will have made only six appearances in the States this year and he saved them all for the holiday season, possibly as a deliberate (and thoughtful) Christmas gift to me. The Northrop is a lustrous old building built in 1929 (back when buildings had character) and has impeccable sound. Incredibly intimate - our seats in the lower balcony were ideal. I've been there one time previously - for Bruce Springsteen's Ghost of Tom Joad solo acoustic tour in 1996.

Van Morrison made his name initially, of course, from his brief run as a founding godfather of garage-rock. (Birthing the songs "Gloria" and "Here Comes the Night" alone would cement anyone's rock and roll reputation, even if "Brown-Eyed Girl" wasn't one of the most popular songs on the planet.) But at the dawn of the 1970s, Morrison gave the world the twin masterpieces Astral Weeks and Moondance and the artist was essentially delivered into a different realm, one in which names like William Blake and W.B. Yeats intermingle freely with names like John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams and Bob Dylan. He's been playing with mystical variations of jazz and rhythm and blues ever since, with plenty of excursions into his Irish folk roots, too, for good measure. This hybrid sound - and all the dream-like beauty contained within - is the Van Morrison Sound.

Morrison's reclusive nature and prickly reputation, as well as his nearly pathological disgust with the trappings of "show business" (nearly every album contains at least one song seemingly directed toward the record industry figures and "big time operators" that are intent on ruining him) has fed the image of an inconsistent live performer who often gives the impression he'd rather be anywhere else. And nary a print interview has ever been granted.

With no opening act, Morrison and his ten-piece band took the stage at the exact 7:30 start time listed on our tickets. The lines "Don't want to discuss it, think it's time for a change" seem a fitting way to start any of his shows, and it's those lines that delivered the radio classic "Domino" to the full house of 4800-plus. Van, you could tell, had a cold, and I wondered if the night would find him in good spirits. His vocal range, such as his occasional falsetto, is long gone, and the voice is gruffer, but it's still an ideal vehicle for his earthy, mystical, Celtic-flavored blues. On the opening tune, he also took the first of numerous solos on his saxophone.

"Magic Time" is the title cut from his second-most recent album, an underrated little gem of a song collection that also happens to be about the tenth Morrison album in succession to be dubbed "a return to form" by the mainstream music press. "Tear Your Playhouse Down" is where Van the Man seemed to overcome his cold and it was clear we were in for a night of energized music, a fantabulous night to make romance. The tune is from Pay the Devil, Morrison's newest album and first consisting entirely of straight-ahead country tunes. It was this album sound that dominated the proceedings. This most recent Morrison touring band lacks the R&B-flavored horns of his mid-70s Caledonia Soul Orchestra (in fact, Van's own sax was the night's only horn) nor did it contain the traditional Irish instrumentation that the man is equally known for. The sound is heavy on pedal steel guitar, fiddle, banjo and the other glorious trappings of traditional country music.

Despite the recent foray into country music, the jazz-influenced vocalizing remains. He's always scatting and dropping occasional, random lyrics from his own back catalog of songs. "Talking all out of my mind", he once called it in song. As with many of the tunes from the set list, the "Magic Time" solos in particular called to mind recognizable melodies from the jazz standards that Morrison has clearly been in love with his entire life. Jazz is improvisation, and becomes, by definition, Music of the Moment, but when it's at its best, nothing is an accident. Nothing is incidental.

"Stranded" is the lead song from Magic Time, and found Morrison lamenting that everyday is "hustle time" and one always has "one more mountain to climb". Everything is a journey to Mr. Morrison, and everything has an element of yearning and searching for the healing spirit. "Have I Told You Lately" brought a roar of recognition from the Great North faithful. A monster hit when covered by Rod Stewart, the tune first appeared on Van's peerless album of spiritual bliss, Avalon Sunset. Do you own this album? Seek it out if you want to feel as human you ever have in your life. I'll lend you my copy.

This was not a show of highlights, but a seamless, almost hypnotic show of one great groove bleeding into the next. Beyond the songs' lyrics, Van had no verbal exchanges with the crowd. A straight jazz reading of "Moondance" with nearly every band member taking a solo thrilled the crowd, but Van backed off many of the vocals and let his background singers take over the song with their mannered sound. He even wandered off the stage for the first of three times on the night and didn't return until the band introductions had been completed in his absence. Morrison, of course, is often his own band. Whether taking a turn on the harmonica, strumming an acoustic guitar, saddling up to his organist three or four times a night to play an adjacent electric piano, or taking a sax solo (as he did on at least half the songs), to the end, Van is the consummate musician's musician.

"Bright Side of the Road" and "Jackie Wilson Said" received rave reviews from the assembled masses, likely from their inclusion on Best-of compilations, but Van seemed to save his most impassioned vocals for his most recent (and more obscure) songs. The man could have retired in the mid-1970s and still been rock and roll royalty for a lifetime, alongside only a handful of peers. But far from being one to rest on his laurels, or a decades old songbook of nostalgia, the last seven songs performed at this show contained none older than 1991.

When I was fresh out of college and returned home (jobless) to the Moeller family homestead, I used to stay up late, flexing my writing muscles, and despite taking some fiction and memoir writing courses in school, I still felt as though I was taking my first stabs at creative writing. But sometimes - once in a great while - I'd put down something that felt right, that felt like I'd created something. These were mostly poems that (more than anything else) represented my life as a frustrated songwriter trapped in a body void of musical talent, as well as some short stories that may still exist today in one form or another. (Email me for copies!) After writing these pieces, I would dive into a six-pack and start proofreading - occasionally both cringing and being reluctantly satisfied by the results. I would relentlessly edit and rewrite all my literary children for posterity. As I did this, my bedroom soundtrack was always Days Like This and Hymns to the Silence, Van Morrison's finest 90's albums. It was with great satisfaction and a renewed faith in kismet that on December 20th, 2007, on a night when I should happen to be in attendance, the Belfast Cowboy would play "In the Afternoon" from Days Like This, which morphed into a medley including two of my other obscure favorites from that album, "Raincheck" ("Call me Raincheck, in the afternoon/ My name is Raincheck, need a shot of rhythm and blues") and the ethereal, forever-effervescent "Ancient Highway".

"Precious Time", like "In the Midnight", is from 1999's Back on Top. I've never lucked into a copy of this album, so though I didn't know these songs, most in attendance seemed to. "Precious Time", in particular, brought the night's warmest response.

"Have......have to get back, have to get back to basics" is the familiar opening line of "I'm Not Feeling It Anymore" - that bastard Hymns to the Silence ode to creative frustration. "I can feel it in my throat, that's all she wrote" keeps things underscored with that forceful, rollicking piano-and-bass riff, even more immediate than in it's dynamite album incarnation. The song miraculously managed to find even more momentum: "When I was high at the party, everything looked good." Yup - pretty sure I been there, too. Then a minor rewrite: "Like the great Paul McCartney said, 'Money, it can't buy you love'." Everyone is sitting up in their chairs, moving, bouncing in their seats. The well-dressed crowd can't sit still. "You have to look for happiness within yourself/ And don't go chasin', thinkin' that it's somewhere else", reminds the lyric, and then, with a groove that helps transcend any simple platitudes or cliches: "All you need is the truth and the truth will set you free".

Amen. And transcendence again. Talking all out of my mind...

Indian Summer. In the woods. Deep in the trees. Half a mile from the county fair, and the rain keep pourin' down. If I don't see you through the week, see you through the window. Whether in Ireland. On Cyprus Avenue. On Hyndford Street. In Banbridge Town in the County Down. Whether gazing out on St. Dominic's Preview. Or singing the Gloriana tune. The lips that you kiss will say Christmas and switch on your electric light. Whether I'm in the States. In Louisiana, talkin' to Huddie Ludbetter. Or when I'm down in Bourbon Street, singing "Jack of Diamonds". If you don't see me when I'm on my lucky streak, then I'll see you in the Celtic New Year.

High-ho silver, tit for tat, I love you for that.
Happy New Year, everyone.

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