BELFAST COWBOY AS SMOOTH AS TUPELO HONEY WITH THE CHICKS

He`s got a reputation for being a smooth talking ladies man
and also for being an overbearing, moody and even a mildly
psychotic grouch who has a hair trigger split personality. He
has made a tonne of records since the late 60`s and has sold
a tonne of records. He writes slick and precise contemporary
songs that are predominantly influenced by delta blues, jazz
and celtic folk. He is renowned for playing a saxophone near-
ly as much as his well documented dummy spits with fellow
musicians when they dont play to his exact and all too often
unrealistic expectations in the studio and even on stage in a
few instances. Most musicians die to play with him and most
musicians think he is a tosser and dont want to go anywhere
near him. He`s a walking paradox & a walking contradiction.
His name is Van Morrison, also known as the Belfast Cowboy
and Van the Man. Van the Man has a lot of well known songs
which i wont bother mentioning, because this blog is all about
Lost Treasures. I really like a lot of Van Morrison songs, cer-
tainly two dozen or so of his songs which have been commer-
cially successful over the years have deserved the accolades
which they`ve been given. Ironically, the one album of Van
the Man which i have always found to be boring and a com-
plete non-event is the critically acclaimed `Astral Weeks`,
his 60`s debut as a solo artist. Goes to show that a lot of
music critics always were a bit weird. My favourite Van
Morrison complete album is the more folk inspired and
less contemporary gem from 1971 called `Tupelo Honey`.
For someone who normally likes a more rock and sophis-
ticated edge to their music, i have to admit that i have al-
ways wondered a bit why this album done it for me more
than some of Van`s more atmospheric albums in the late
70`s and early to mid 80`s. It just does for some reason,
i think its because the songs on `Tupelo Honey` are just
so sincere and incredibly simple. The album begins with
the most untempo tune on it, `Wild Nights`, the second
song `(Straight To Your Heart) Like A Cannonball` is a
wonderful piece of funky folk. The acoustic masterpiece
`Starting A New Life` is uncomplicated easy to listen to
Irish soul music, if there were such a music genre. The
title track of the album is the soppiest and most melo-
dramatic of them all, if you cant get a woman feeling a
bit horny after playing her this song then chances are
she never will be or your aftershave ain`t working too
well. It is the most multi-instrumental and atmospher-
ic song of them all. Van the Man then gets back into the
swing of things with `I Wanna Roo You`, either he was
listening to Rolf Harris too much or his record company
made him turn a root into a jumping marsupial, or may-
be it was just a misprint (yeah right). My favourite song
is`When That Evening Sun Goes Down`, which is a more
honky tonk jazzed up bluesey thing, what else would you
expect from a blues nut like me. Women might have giv-
en me the shits for the past 20 years, but `Tupelo Hon-
ey` is an album which even brings out the die-hard ro-
mantic side in some battleweary and henpecked bache-
lor like me. If you buy the album on CD, watch out for
watermarks OK. All of my Van Morrison CD`s are to-
tally worthless as a collectors item because obviously
the CD`s were very cheap and nasty to begin with.