Van Morrison

[Clarkophile]

For Van's purposes, it's a case of wanting to be able to own and distribute his Astral Weeks because he doesn't own the masters for the '68 album. A consummate control freak, Van likes to decide what happens to his records. The deadlock has never been resolved--no expanded/remastered treatment has ever surfaced, in spite of a wealth of material which could be appended to it--so the way out of this was to create his own version of the album.

For my purposes, as a fan, if this had been a note-for-note replication of the '68 album it would have been a major letdown. Van is still capable of conjuring some pretty impressive things onstage, changing arrangements, cues, set lists---oftentimes while actually on the stage---in an effort to keep things fresh.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but I admire him for taking those chances.
Astral Weeks live has him changing the song orders, messing with arrangements, and improvising, as in the spirit of the original. And he's eschewed the pretentious division of the album into two sections, "In the Beginning" and "Afterward" ---something which had been imposed upon the original LP sides by Lewis Merenstein.
It's reminiscent of the earlier work without ever feeling slavishly tethered to the original. I'm not certain this was true to the Pet Sounds thing.

[Prez!]

As an aside, I've always wondered why someone would want to buy a CD of a live version of an album. I mean, if I want to listen to 'Astral Weeks', I'll always reach for the real deal. The same goes for stuff like the live 'Pet Sounds' or the 'Forever Changes' one which came out a few years back. I can see how it might be good to see them performed in the moment though.

A couple of years ago, ironically almost to the day, a Mate and I went to see John Martyn at The Roundhouse, where "Solid Air" was to be the core of the show (here I go, contradicting myself again, , oh, the irony!). The Roundhouse was crawling with cameras and four months later, I bought the DVD, though stopped short of buying the album.
Ironically, we went to see JM as part of our Hovis series, people we wanted to see before they carked it. The previous October, we'd seen Willie Nelson at the Shepherds Bush Empire. Now, I wonder what the odds are on him...........................?

[Six String]

Red Headed Stranger here we come!

[Charlie O.]

Astral Weeks live has him changing the song orders, messing with arrangements, and improvising, as in the spirit of the original. And he's eschewed the pretentious division of the album into two sections, "In the Beginning" and "Afterward" ---something which had been imposed upon the original LP sides by Lewis Merenstein.

Oddly enough, the new live CD (I'm listening to it now) still has the "In The Beginning" and "Afterwards" divisions... even though the songs are in a different order. Which is odd. Maybe that division was Van's idea, and Merenstein just scrambled the song order. But I kinda doubt it.

[bobzilla77]

As an aside, I've always wondered why someone would want to buy a CD of a live version of an album. I mean, if I want to listen to 'Astral Weeks', I'll always reach for the real deal. The same goes for stuff like the live 'Pet Sounds' or the 'Forever Changes' one which came out a few years back. I can see how it might be good to see them performed in the moment though.

In the case of Sparks' latest Exotic Creatures of the Deep and Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE , a well-recorded live performance would be highly preferable to the studio counterpart. Luckily there's a good live DVD of SMiLE and I truly hope Sparks release the UCLA show I saw last weekend.

Both studio LPs sounded really precious and thin while the live versions were a lot fleshier. That's more to do with the studio version being poorly produced though. In the case of Astral Weeks, Pet Sounds or Forever Changes I guess the appeal is hearing something highly familiar being given a new performance. If I owned either one though, I'd probably listen once and file it away.