Customer Reviews

Blowin Your Mind

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think "Brown Eyed Girl" is a great pop radio hit, but my favorite song on the album is "TB Sheets". Probably Van Morrison's all time best song, "TB Sheets" is about how Van watches his girlfriend die from tuberculosis and all the feelings that go through his mind at that time. This song is very personal to me because I've had a similar event happen to me in the past few days.

Sure, it's Van Morrison. With his raspy blues voice and swaggering lyrics, that seem to get lost numerous times in the music within this album. It's a raw record, with many of the songs recorded on improv, but still, it's worth a listen. If only for the Berns number Goodbye Baby, which is a 3 minute CCR rave up, before Fogerty was every humming about Suzie Q or that crazy Proud Mary prowling down the Mississippi River. If not for undeniably one of the greatest rock songs ever, Brown Eyed Girl. If only for the excellent remastering Legacy did when they cleaned this record up. The quality is tremendous, and the songs come alive like they never did on the older T.B.'s Sheets and the numerous bootlegs that offer the same thing here, but with a minimal quality. If you love Them, you must pickup this record. There are numerous improv blues numbers, and Morrison's lyrics may not be poetic, but they'll get a laugh or two. "I've done more for you, than your daddy's already done". Recomended, but pick up Astral Weeks & Moondance first.

Brown-eyed girl ws always my favorite. You just have to love his music now. He has eaten the dirtand now he spits it out he is so changed and his music and lyrics say so. His music now as always is so beautiful that I could cry. You have to be able to relate to this man in order to appreciate his message. I have never heard a song of his that I did not like.This cd is excellent.

A lower-tier release with some truly high points, most notably the wonderful pop tune "Brown Eyed Girl" - still today his most famous song; the claustrophobic, melancholic, drawn-out blues "T.B. Sheets"; and the rocker "Goodbye Baby", which makes up for its idiotic lyrics and cheesy backup vocals with a stingni guitar riff. Elsewhere, there are all kinds of ill-advised, clunky experiments, including Latin ("Spanish Rose") and psychedelic blues ("He Ain't Give You None"), as well as a miserable "La Bamba" rip-off with clumsy acid guitar ("Ro Ro Rosey"), and the turgid blues "Who Drove the Red Sports Car"; the cover of "Midnight Special" has a bass line remarkably similar to "Get Ready"'s, and is laced with really cheesy backing vocals. Van gives his all on the track, but the fact is it's not much of a song at all: that, and I've heard way too many covers of it. For those curious, these same recordings have been repackaged under a huge variety of different names - most of them contain awful early versions of "Madame George" and "Beside You", without the mystique the takes on Astral Weeks would have: the former is remade as a ho-hum psychedelic rocker with frustrating shouts from partygoers, and the latter is a dorky soul-blues hybrid. The fact is that very few of the Bang recordings are worth investigating in the first place, so it's annoying that they were re-released so often, and it doesn't help that the record company gluttons most likely keep all the money they make off them from Van, the guy who deserves them. Morrison would jump leaps and bounds above this one on the next album (Astral Weeks) alone. Not a single song on this album really points in that direction, so it's of minimal interest to collectors either. Since you've heard "Brown Eyed Girl" a quagagoolion times on the radio anyway (and the fact is I absolutely adore that one - never get tired of it), the only real find is "T.B. Sheets". I would definitely pick Astral Weeks, Moondance, His Band and the Street Choir, Tupelo Honey, Veedon Fleece and Magic Time above this one as starting points.

Van Morrison was actually an excellent vocalist, and a few cuts on this album prove his abilities. Unfortunately, he makes an early attempt at rap, which adds nothing to the program. Brown-Eyed Girl is a classic, and there are a few other cuts nearly as good. If you collect classic rock, this album is a must, even though it is mediocre. However, Van Morrison is NOT a mediocre performer or songwriter. The CD is worth buying.

Since I've heard that song Ten thousand bagillion times since I was like two years old, I can't say that BROWN EYED GIRL really gets me all that excited. You know, its cool.
VAN MORRISONs first solo record is probably my favorite of VANS. I like others, (though definatley not all of his highly ecclectic collection).
This is an "on-the-fly" sounding album, where BROWN EYED is the only song that actually sounds produced. DONT BE FOOOLED, this was no accident. This is how it was s'posed to sound.
VAN still had the raw voice in him from his THEM days ( check out a THEM collection also, very cool ) yet was becoming more refined. Somewhere in the middle we get these rambling, half singing, half talking rants where the band rocks on half blues half jazz jams. Together it makes a hell of a package.
THERE ARE PACKAGES out there that contain this album, less BROWN EYED and more jam material under different names but BLOWIN YOUR MIND is the original cut.

NOTEWORTHY:
TB SHEETS: is absolutely the JAM! I cant say anymore, you may have seen it featured in the opening credits of BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, the movie with Nicholas cage.
RO RO ROSY: another good jam
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: good stuff.

SHAME on the bonus cuts, there are a lot of tracks that can be found on other mixes of this album that are not here and instead of all alternate cuts there could have been some of these. IN THE BACKROOM is a track that is greatly missed here.

P.S the one star rating was a mistake, I'd change it if I could, but it actually gets 4 1/2. The only reason it ain't five is cuz no IN THE BACKROOM.