Over three hundred albums, and this is the first one that I approached with a sense of reluctance. Van Morrison just doesn’t click with me; I’m not sure why. It’s a combination of the timbre of his voice (too much nose/throat) and the light jazz of the music, that does very little for me. And to experience a live double album of that; well, I wasn’t looking forward to it.
But, it was painless enough. It feels like it’s not until Disc Two that Morrison really relaxes into the performance (but this could be an illusion, since like most live albums it’s actually culled from several performances). The songs get a bit longer and more improvisational, with Morrison doing some nice call/response work with guitarist John Platania, and getting a bit more freeform in the longer tracks at the end – Caravan, and Cyprus Avenue.
Most notable in the band after Platania is Jeff Labes on piano, and there’s a string quartet as well. Morrison apparently would give them cues to head in certain improvisational directions, giving the whole a jazz feel without being full out jazz. The recording mix is a little odd, though, sounding as if the instruments were all quite far apart. Once you get used to the sparse feel, it’s not so bad, but I couldn’t shake the feeling throughout that I’ve heard better engineered live albums.
Well. I survived, and it wasn’t such an ordeal as I worried. But it didn’t convert me.
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