It was Lester Bangs who put it best: 'Astral Weeks, insofar as it can be pinned down, is a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralysed by the enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend,' he wrote. It was one of those albums that seemed to be about everything and nothing, the past and the now, the vital and the fleeting, and that somehow stood quite complete in its vision. We find the bewitching Madame George, the ecstatic Sweet Thing, the great knee-deep tangle of reminiscence that made up Cyprus Avenue. And so we find memories of viaducts and slipstreams, ferry boats and cadillacs and cherry wine, mingling with talk of Huddie Ledbetter and little red shoes. Morrison himself described Astral Weeks as an opera of sorts, a story with definite characters, a song-cycle of 'poetry and mythical musings channelled from my imagination'. It marries folk and rock and blues and jazz and gospel, flute, harpsichord, vibraphone – to create these eight songs that don't so much play as wrap themselves around your legs, that get stuck beneath your fingernails. 7 and 8 performances, kinetically photographed and edited for an even more succulent taste.This is an album heavy with yearning, with an aching for the streets of Belfast, for the 'gardens all misty and wet with rain', for being 'conquered in a car seat'. Mike Clark with USA Today called it: 'A preservation of last year's rhapsodically received Nov.

Reception Professional ratings Review scores As producer of the CD and DVD, Morrison insisted on no post-production engineering so that the sound would be as close as possible to the live concert performances. Some of the songs on the DVD have new sections that were added during the live performances on stage at the Hollywood Bowl. Included as a trailer and entitled 'To Be Born Again' is an interview conducted by Scott Foundas with Morrison explaining some of the meaning behind Astral Weeks and other footage behind the scenes.

Morrison also released an album on CD and vinyl on February 24, 2009, entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl with material from these two concerts. The DVD is featured as an Exclusive in the United States with a release date of May 19, 2009. The live performances on the DVD were filmed from two separate concerts by Van Morrison at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California with a fourteen-member band. It features the songs from his 1968 classic album, Astral Weeks. November 7, November 8, 2008, at Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CaliforniaĪstral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert FilmĪstral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film is the second official DVD by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison.

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