So what happened to Sony's plans to reissue the Van Morrison catalog?

Thanks. I knew it was at least one of them. I've found that most used Van albums are cheap in record stores - I have probably about 20 of his CDs and apart from the ones I bought brand-new, I didn't pay more than five bucks for any of them because I found them in the used bins. I remember seeing Back On Top for $3.99 in the used bin (it had some water damage to the inserts but the disc was fine) and went home and saw that Amazon wanted $43. But I have about 15 albums from the '80s to the 2000s and the only one I paid more than five dollars for was Keep It Simple (which was eight). If you don't want to wait, check the used bins and you should find 'em cheap.

I believe A Sense Of Wonder made it out in the 2008 reissues as well. Unless you mean "didn't get released" by "escaped Van's clutches".
Van Morrison - A Sense Of Wonder

 

I see Back on Top for just a few bucks on Ebay! Same with Sense of Wonder....

 

I'm not a huge Van fan -- I only have about a half dozen of his albums and plan to buy only a few more -- but I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Veedon Fleece remaster. I hope I won't have to wait until 2019 (or longer)!

Although I enjoy an amusing contract-fulfilling song as much as the next guy, I can't help think that Sony's priorities are a little misguided if they're giving us "Ring Worm" and "Nose in Your Blow" before they give us "Streets of Arklow" and "You Don't Pull No Punches...."

 

The Healing Game deluxe edition was announced earlier this year. There is a thread dedicated to it on here. Scheduled for September although that now seems unlikely what with the new record due then.

Very much up for a Van discussion on here.

 

So you're suggesting great songs before national treasures!?

The Bang set came about because it was the 50th anniversary and Van apparently stopped despising the material enough to not only write an essay for it, but to praise the man who introduced him to the concept of the music industry ripping off the artists. I never thought I'd see the day.

Legacy is incredibly, incredibly slow to announce and (hopefully eventually) release new product (two Kinks reissues in four years), and Van has, what, 30 albums to be reissued? I sincerely hope that if they are going to reissue them, they do them in batches, similar to (but not ending like) the unfinished series from 2008. They've expressed an interest in doing Legacy editions for three albums - I believe they were Hard Nose The Highway, Saint Dominic's Preview, and Enlightenment, although I could be wrong; suffice it to say, if the remasters do get released, we'll be waiting the longest for those.

The one trade-off with Legacy is that the end result is always worth the wait. I hope and I pray that they don't do these things one at a time (please, no more than four batches over no more than 12 months) or else much of the target demographic will unfortunately no longer be with us (not a knock on the ages of his fans - hell, I'm 21 and at the rate Legacy releases product, I'll be dead before they get halfway through his catalog!)

But we have to take the good with the bad. Thus far, they've given us the Essential collection, the complete recordings of Them, the complete Bang sessions, four whole volumes of It's Too Late To Stop Now... in addition to the Warner reissues of Astral Weeks, Street Choir, and (if you were lucky/smart enough to grab one when they were $32, unlike me) the complete Moondance sessions (anybody want to sell me theirs?). All of this has been of the highest quality I've encountered in a long time.

But when they announce that they're going to do something and two years later have barely made it past the starting line... especially given an artist whose re-release history is as spotty as Van's... with a catalog that huge... coming from a company who takes their sweet, sweet time on their products (with reason, but still)... yeah, the impatience is understood.

I worry that, with Roll With The Punches occupying 2017, the reissue of Healing Game will no longer be "20th anniversary", and it will get postponed even further (possibly while they think of a new title).

These things always seem to happen in Van-land...

Unrelated - does anybody know if Warner/Rhino owns the rights to Tupelo Honey? Or is that one still in Van's iron grip? Would love a quality reissue of that one. I have the 1998 remaster or whenever it was on Polydor and it's a bit too brash for this type of music. I loved Chris Bellman's work on the standalone CDs, if Warner's got the rights to Tupelo Honey I'd love one last reissue from them. Would help tide me over.

 

Apparently Van does not want Tupelo Honey in print (this was discussed in another thread somewhere). The original WB cd is not too hard to find and will cure your brashness issues.

 

Odd. Wonder why?

Guess I'll track down an original then. Thanks. How does it compare to the 2015 Warner CDs?

 

You mean the expanded reissues of Astral Weeks and Moondance? I have heard Astral Weeks and did not really care for it. Of course, I don't really like the original Astral Weeks cd either. (I'm a fan of the Rhino lp cut by Kevin Gray.) The original Tupelo Honey cd is good though.

 

Last time I looked jpc had it pushed out to February 2018. You've got to love Van Morrison ... not!

 

My theory is that Van dislikes the way he is perceived as someone with a glorious past and a less interesting present/future.

He will do everything within his power to counter this perception and that includes sitting on his back catalogue.

He cannot do anything about the Bang/Warner releases (and he must gnash his teeth about that) but he has a lot of power, he is independently wealthy and he doesn't care what his fans think.

 

The other one I meant was Street Choir. I guess the EQ can seem bloated, I have terrible gear so it sounded fine to me. It's for that reason that I wanted a comparison, I find a lot of early CDs to sound thin and lifeless. I really can't afford any better gear though, my main playback system also acts as my societal communications device (and it sucks at doing both). I could easily tweak the EQ to my liking, but since the Bellman CD had fine dynamics, I wondered if the EQ sounded similar.

 

I forgot they did Street Choir too. Haven't heard that one either. I think the original WB Street Choir cd is decent, but it needs to be cranked to come across so I can see why your criticism of early cds may fit.

 

IMO the remaster of Street Choir has less of the bass bloat than Astral Weeks, might be a bit more treble. I like the sound of both, although those are the only ones I've listened to, the ones I "grew up with", so to speak. I grew accustomed to that sound for that album and a more "accurate" sound might seem alien to me.

But, like I said, my gear is crap: an iPhone and $20 Sony earbuds with one channel half-dead and the other only running at half of that, or those same earbuds with a laptop whose headphone jack is partially busted. I am in no position to review or criticize sound quality. However I don't care, I think they sound fine and I have no interest in investing in more expensive gear when 99% of the time I'm listening on the go anyway. My turntable setup is much better but most people here would probably die if they listened to it for two seconds.

And even to those who dislike the sound, I don't think anyone will argue that it could be a whole lot worse!

 

I missed this last night but I think you hit the nail on the head. His classic albums are considered among the best albums ever, and with maybe one or two rocky moments most of his albums are exceptionally strong. But as he's been recording for more than five decades, most people dismiss him as a "classic" artist and if they have any interest, they'll check out the best-regarded of the early stuff - as they do with most artists.

I think you're wrong on the Bang stuff considering he was not only involved in the reissue but actually allowed it to come out (or vice versa, which ever is more shock-worthy), his opinion has softened. I hope the royalties are going to him now. And he has softened toward the early stuff a bit, as evidenced by the 2009 live Astral Weeks. I know he blasted the complete Moondance box, can't remember if there was a reason.

But no, you're absolutely right: he sees no difference between the stuff he did in 1970 and the stuff he's doing now. He doesn't want to be remembered as the guy who did "Into The Mystic", he wants to be remembered as the guy who still put out quality stuff consistently over more than 50 years. That's admirable and understandable when you get down to it.

That said, Moondance IS still friggin' great.

 

Might have been the sound, which I found to be unnecessarily compressed.

Otherwise, great package & amazing album.

 

I follow this line of thinking but then the new album about to arrive is stuffed with covers which seems a weird move ... particularly following Keep Me Singing which was a consistently strong release.

 

He's had previous released and remasters which were much worse. Maybe he didn't specifically give the okay to release everything. Or maybe he just changed his mind on the whole thing. He does that a lot.

 

I wasn't aware of his involvement in the reissue of the Bang material. That does surprise me, I must admit. Brown Eyed Girl is far and away his most popular individual song (he's probably an annual millionaire on royalties/licensing from that one song).

The 2009 Live Astral Weeks - with its 'strange' picture of a smiling Van on the cover - has long been deleted from the catalogue, at Van's request and I think it was deleted long before the remaster of the studio album was released - which would appear to nix the idea that he had to delete it for legal reasons.

 

Well the thing with "Brown Eyed Girl" is that, per the contract with Bert Berns, he didn't get the royalties for it (see "The Big Royalty Check"). That's what sparked his hatred for the record industry and likely is why he's making sure they have as little access to his music for reissues as possible - fans be damned. That's why I was so shocked that he wrote the essay for the new Bang set, which painted Bert in a positive light. I can only assume that Legacy is now making sure the royalties for "Brown Eyed Girl" are going to him now.

As for the 2009 Astral Weeks, I'd not heard that the live album was intentionally deleted, I assumed it had fallen out of print as all his music did until Legacy scooped up the bulk of his catalog. Van works in mysterious ways.

 

Who knows? Maybe Van has softened toward Bert Berns in recent years. BB is long, long dead, after all - and he did give Van a leg-up at a point in his career (post-Them) when he needed one.

 

While waiting for the new reissues that may or may not happen, I came across 3 albums from the 2008 series today in a record store. Tupelo Honey, Veedon Fleece, Into the Music. Very reasonable prices so an instant buy.

 

The alt version of Wild Night on that Tupelo cd is great. Almost makes me annoyed that the LP version doesn't have the extra 2mins.

 

I go back and forth on this, but I think ultimately the producer made the right call on the original edit. Makes for a more powerful song.

 

The blanket statement in the first post

 

Nice score, and given the issues with Tupelo Honey, it may never come back in print.