Van Morrison - It's Too Late to Stop Now Vol. I, II, III & IV Caledonia Soul Reverie & Worship Thread

I say I as place my order for my father

andwesailedandwesailed....andwesailedandwesailed-uh...andweailedandwesailed away from Denmark...all the way to Caledonia....AWAY FROM DENMARK...all the way to Caledonia....lookinforabrandnewstart....lookinforabrandnewstart...

"pure swagger" otm

This looks fantastic obviously. But would it have killed him to play Astral Weeks or And It Stoned Me or Saint Dominic's Preview fer cryin out loud?

a performance of "saint dominic's preview" is on the original lp

i was watching this recently. i dig the stripped-down set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHBnAtGjBG8

honestly i feel like he had the whole live band thing down by 1970. if you listen to stuff that far back its still so impressive. and he was what like 25 years old? that boggles my mind. 25 is like 10 now. which means he was around 28 in 1973. i don't know how you look and sound like that and be that young. and uh write songs like that...

His maturity is kinda staggering - if maturity is the right word. Without it you end up with words like sagacity and wisdom which sound kinda hokey but they feel closer somehow. Dunno.

Just having first listen to the new editions and they're glorious. There's a version of Into the Mystic that just damn near made me levitate.

i'm about 4 listens into vol I, and will soon proceed into II-IV. previous to this, i did multiple multiples of Pacific High/Inner Mystic sets. though the Caledonia Soul Orch is fucking wonderful and amazing in itltsn vol I, and also though his vol I performance is energetic and fully engaged and great in it, i don't love the show nearly in the way that i love inner mystic. at first i hoped that the problem was that my headphones were inadequately producing the depth of the pieces. so after switching to ok speakers, and then back to better phones, i just don't like the arrangements all that much. they're wonderfully done, but they're too much for me. and the string section, i just don't want that in this r&b. and i really want to, i'm listening to caravan now, but i don't need or want that. (i really love his respectful ID of his band, which is awesome and deserved).

THere are some early and mid 70s live sets turning up on Tradersden recently, also several from much later.
I was listening to him from '71 yesterday which was really great It had Platanaia onboard but I'm not sure how much of the rest of the Caledonia Soul orchestra.
Also had some '75 sets turned up which sounded great.

BUt I weish the cds of the mid 70s stuff would appear.

I picked up band and Street choir recently too cos it was down to €4.99 in a local shop. Nice stuff.