Late Night Revelation #1 - Astral Weeks

My best music listening time comes at night, usually quite late, when I'm putting the last pieces of my day in order before I go to bed. Sometimes I play a nice mellow record, or something of historical importance, but quite often, I just put it on shuffle and let it play.

And this is how Van Morrison continually floors me.

My synthesis into a Van the Man freak happened way back in high school. I was beginning to collect the "important" albums, more out of a need to catalog and learn than to truly appreciate. At the same time, I was having these hour-long phone conversations with a girl I kind of dug. I brought up Van Morrison, and she mentioned her dad owned everything Morrison had ever pressed on to plastic or vinyl.

We started dating.

Now, this move was not related to the hundreds of records in the drawers below the liquor cabinet, but it certainly didn't hurt. When she went away on vacation, I bought Moondance, and when she came back, she burned a copy of Astral Weeks for me.

While we probably played Moondance far more than Astral Weeks, I still think of the latter in conjunction with that time. It's a sweet record, and after an hour, it can make the most time-tested relationship seem as fresh and exciting as first love. There's something in the delivery of the lines, in the music and the soul of the record that makes it more than just an "important" record: it's a record that stills seems to breathe and feel, it's the cypress in Morrison's catalog.

It doesn't hurt that it's such a great record. From the opening notes of the title track, a mixture of jazz and English folk, to Morrison's insistence that your boy "has clean clothes," it's an evocative picture of Morrison's home country, Ireland, and the snapshots of life.

But for me, it doesn't get much better than Sweet Thing

And I will raise my hand into the night time sky,
Count the stars that shine in your eyes
Just to dig it all an not to wonder
Thats just fine
And I'll be satisfied
Not to read in between the lines
And I will walk and talk
In gardens all wet with rain
And I will never, ever, ever, ever
Grow so old again.

Bob Dylan (God bless him) may have been "older than that now," but Morrison could grow old and young at will. To this day, I still drive down country roads with the windows down and my arm out the window while Sweet Thing disturbs the rural peace.

The history of the record is well documented, with Morrison telling the seasoned jazz players to "play what you feel," and there are far too much to be said about each song to include them all: The Way That Young Lovers Do is great off-kilter jazz, and Beside You might just be the most underrated love song ever.

But more than anything, Astral Weeks reminds me of being a teenager. It's grand, but it's subtle: it's a slice of the world that seems like the entire universe.

So, for my money, no matter how many so-so records he puts out in his later years, Van is still the Man of rock 'n' roll.