VAN MORRISON : ROCKS HIS GYPSY SOUL - VAN MORRISON GETS HIS CHANCE TO WAIL VOL. 3

  1. Moondance
  2. Glad Tidings
  3. Crazy Love
  4. Come Running
  5. The Way Young Lovers Do
  6. Everyone
  7. Brown Eyed Girl
  8. And It Stoned Me
  9. These Dreams Of You
  10. Caravan
  11. Cypress Avenue
  12. Into The Mystic
    Bonus Tracks :
  13. Stormy Monday Blues
  14. Don't Start Crying Now
  15. All By Myself
  16. Caledonia
  17. What's Up, Crazy Pup?

Label : Gold Standard

Time : 74:42

Venue : Fillmore West, San Francisco, California, USA

Date : April 26, 1970

Quality : Soundboard recording (A+)

Review (Russell Parkinson) : The Fillmore West one hour show features Van and what will be the Caledonia Soul Orchestra performing all the Moondance album except for "Brand New Day". Also included are two songs from Astral Weeks and an obligatory "Brown Eyed Girl". The sound is either radio broadcast or soundboard and is very good, especially considering the recording is nearly 30 years old. The show kicks off with an excellent lively rendition of "Moondance". "Glad Tidings" follows and although a quicker version than on the album this song remains, for me anyway, filler. A lovely soulful "Crazy Love" is next. Van sings this in his normal voice rather than falsetto. A six minute improvised "Come Running" misses rather than hits. In the middle of this song the band and Van move off into a sixties rock organ/guitar kind of thing with some improvised lyrics. On first listening it sounds great bit after a while I find it disrupts a good song. Interesting but ultimately a bit disappointing. "The Way Young Lovers Do" is a blast, a great lively version with excellent horns and piano. Everyone joins Glad Tidings in the filler category. "Brown Eyed Girl" is pretty standard. A good "And it Stoned Me" runs into an equally good "These Dreams of You". The Last Waltz version of "Caravan" has always been my favorite but this one comes close. A thoroughly enjoyable version of a great song. Van winds up with the longest "Cypress Avenue" I've heard. Heavy on organ and guitar you get to hear the ending twice! After the usual "its too late to stop now!" van introduces the band and reprises the whole ending from "and you were standing there." amazing. Van then encores with a superb version of "Into The Mystic". Very soulful, this must be close to being the best version of this song out there. That organ/guitar thing sometimes dates this show but overall its a great boot. Not quite essential, mainly due to the narrow range of material played, I would give this a "Highly Recommended". If you are a big "Moondance" fan then it's probably a must.

Review (AllMusic) : Recorded live at the Fillmore West on April 26, 1970, this bootleg is a fine performance with release-quality sound - excellent for a boot, that's for sure. The dozen songs include solid concert versions of much of Van Morrison's finest early material, among them "Moondance," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Into the Mystic," "Caravan," "The Way Young Lovers Do," and "And It Stoned Me" (there's nothing from his Them days, though). These aren't mere re-creations of the studio arrangements, either - a nearly seven-minute "Crazy Love" goes into some improvised sections, "The Way Young Lovers Do" is done sans string arrangement with emphasis on horns and piano, and "Cypress Avenue" stretches out to 12 minutes. Unfortunately, the very last part of "Caravan" chops off abruptly, though it's a fairly minor flaw in a fine set. If Morrison ever does decide to release in-concert documents of his early career in a single-disc or multi-disc fashion (and he had not as of this writing in 2004), this would be a solid contender for official exposure. In whatever form you find it, it's a testament to his sometimes brilliant skills as a live performer during this era, which have been somewhat undervalued in the absence of an official live album. After the concert finishes, the CD tags on five bonus tracks. The first three are two 1964 Them demos and a 1965 BBC Them performance of "All by Myself," which are interesting, but better heard in the context of the bootleg The Genuine Philosophers Stone One, which focuses solely on Them rarities and 1968 Morrison solo publishing demos. The final two bonuses are "Caledonia" and "What's Up, Crazy Pup?," both listed as live performances with the Caledonia Soul Orchestra in 1973; the sound on those is superb, though there are ticks that sound like these might have been transferred from vinyl, not to mention a suspicious lack of crowd noise.