Astral Weeks Moondance The Healing Game Into The Music Beautiful Vision - a much over looked Van album, with surely one of his beautiful tunes 'Vanlose Stairway'
Inarticulate Speech of the Heart His Band and Street Choir Veedon Fleece Too Late To Stop Now Live at the Grand Opera House Belfast
His Band and Street Choir Tupelo Honey Into the Music Common One Irish Heartbeat. Very hard to narrow it to 5. As far as comps go I like Still On Top 3CD set Van Morrison At the Movies The Philospher’s Stone - The Unreleased Tapes.
I stopped around the early 1990s but would go with these. Astral Weeks Moondance St Dominics Preview Beautiful Vision Irish Heartbeat Good to see some choosing Beautiful Vision - I saw VM twice during that period which were superb gigs. Irish Heartbeat almost deserves its place purely for "Carrickfergus" which is just lovely.
Tupelo Honey is an album that just doesn’t hit the spot for me either. It does seem to be quite divisive within Van fans.
Van is my favorite artist, and I probably have listened to him more than anyone else over the last 30+ years. As a matter of fact, I bought my first CD player on New Year’s Day 1986, only after I saw “Into the Music” on CD in a store. That was my first CD purchase the very next day. All that said, here are my current top 5. At any one time the top 3 are likely to be in my overall top 10. Into the Music Astral Weeks Moondance Common One Veedon Fleece
With honorable mention to: Hymns to the Silence His Band and the Street Choir Tupelo Honey Poetic Champions Compose Enlightenment
Inarticulate Speech of The Heart Moondance Veedon Fleece Tupelo Honey St Dominic's Preview Followed very close by: Beautiful Vision Into The Music Hard Nose The Highway His Band & Street Choir Hymns To The Silence
Here are two sets of five, both nearly equal in quality, spanning '68 - '80. That's a damn impressive run. Astral Weeks Moondance His Band and the Street Choir Tupelo Honey Saint Dominic's Preview Hard Nose the Highway Veedon Fleece It's Too Late to Stop Now Into the Music Common One
We had a similar discussion at January's Newcastle Bob Dylan meeting: list Van's top 10 albums. My top 5, for what it's worth - Moondance, Veedon Fleece, Astral Weeks, Into The Music, No Guru. But what came up in the debate which was very interesting was how many people had Hymns to the Silence in their top 10. Now, what if Hymns had been condensed to a single cd? Surely that could have been a top 5 contender?
i’ve gone on record (1) as thinking Astral Weeks is the best album ever made. I also thought that Van was one a handful of artists who had never made a bad album, until he put out Keep Me Singing which, for me, was the audio equivalent of the picture in his attic. I do like his stuff-a lot-but essentially, his oeuvre is AW, a collection of terrific but essentially interchangeable albums and one outright clunker. 1. Astral Weeks 2. Keep It Simple 3. Common One 4. Poetic Champions Compose 5. Irish Heartbeat Magic Time and Back On Top could have been there if he’d parked the curmudgeonliness. Into The Music and Veedon Fleece are bubbling under. (1) Well, an Amazon review and occasional posts here.
I consider Hymns to the Silence to be his last interesting album. I'd also agree it's overlong, and the average material brings the overall rating down. Would it make it into the top 5 if it was a single album? It wouldn't make my list, but I'd certainly play it more often.
Not necessarily on Hymns. Knowing Van - he might have picked the wrong songs to keep. It very well could have depended on his mood on the day they were choosing what to keep and what to set aside.
The problem is how do you cut it down? I am always surprised at how HTTS seems to be a cut off for some Van fans.
I agree that cutting songs is easier said than done. As it is, the album is fairly divided between love songs (earthbound, deity), nostalgia for a simpler time, and the usual complaints. Nothing new in that respect. But for me at least, things tend to bog down considerably on the second half of the second disc. In retrospect, maybe Van was right all along. Here's a bit too much of everything, find what you like.
Big Van fan here.... super tough question... I think my gut honest first reaction is prob the most obvious... Astral Weeks Moondance St. Dominics Preview Veedon Fleece Into the Music
Veedon Fleece Astral Weeks Moondance I don't pull Van off the shelf too often, but I could play "You Don't Pull No Punches" on repeat all day.
1 Astral Week - 68 Us warner brothers LP 2 Astral Weeks - 96 Japanese CD 3. Astral Weeks US cd any version 4. Astral Weeks- German Lp Repress 5. Moondance - BMG club edition CD
