Help me! Pull out your Van Morrison MOONDANCE LP, give a listen to "Into The Mystic"

Really? Too bad, in my mind's ear it was always a bass sax.

 

I believe what you have there is the ORIGINAL CANADIAN pressing.

For record companies like Columbia, Reprise and Warner, the Canadian pressings changed their label design much later than the US. Also, on many of these, the records were actually pressed in the US (just like the US pressings) or they used the same metal parts, stampers or whatever (as evidenced by the exact same looking dead wax matrix).

I am willing to bet without looking that your copy is on "thicker" vinyl (thicker than a typical US 70's vinyl) and may even have the same handwriting for the dead wax matrix as the US original pressings. I am also willing to bet that your copy sounds identical to the US original.

 

It's definitely on the thicker vinyl. I'll get the matrix numbers and post them later.

Thanks.

 

A vibrophone is essentially an amplified marimba. For clavinet (an electronic keyboard instrument), think Stevie Wonder's "Superstition".

 

Ask a very esoteric simple question, get 7 pages of answers. Only on the SH Forum.

 

Agree, but we don't know if Van also ordered this to be changed. Michael Jackson did this with two songs on Off the Wall - on vinyl, only the early copies have all originally released album mixes intact.

 

Learn your instruments. Vibes cannot produce anything close to the foghorn sound, and the clavinet is obviously the instrument playing the long solo introduction to "Everyone."

They're saxes bro - which ARE in the credits, and obviously are played elsewhere on the track.

I'll check my W7 again tonight and get back to you on the vinyl thickness.

 

You beat me to it. Vibraphone and saxophone only share a suffix. ;-)

I just gave it another thorough listening, and it might indeed be a bass sax, doubled with an organ, maybe even a Farfisa. If you listen carefully as the "foghorn" begins to fade there is definitely another horn that is audible.

However, I will pretend none of this ever happened so I can keep my 30 year old cello illusion!

 

There's no question that the saxes are integral to the "foghorn". There is definitely something else in there too. Listen to the dying notes of the song to hear it clearly. It reminds me of that keyboard sound Bowie had on "The Bewlay Brothers". What was that - piano through a Chet Atkins style tremolo or something?

Paging Ken Scott........

 

Great!

 

Okay, just checked vinyl thickness. There seems to be no appreciable difference in thickness between my green label W7 "Moondance", my W7 "Astral Weeks", my W7 "Aoxomoxoa", or my WB "His Band and Street Choir". My green label WB "Tupelo Honey" is the first one where I notice a slight thinning.

So - so much for that theory, unless you think ALL my W7's are somehow these phantom later pressings...

And that's all I have to say until we here back from Steve on his discoveries.

 

Now that I listen closely again I can hear sax in at the end of each "horn" but the tremelo at the beginning sounds very much like a string instrument. Mind you, at the very end of the song, the saxes end with a similar tremelo flourish so I guess it is possible.

 

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