Customer Reviews

Blowin' Your Mind

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

 

 

I love Van. I like most everything he has done but I love this CD. I do not know if it is the roughness of the recording or the fact that it is his first solo album, but I always end up listening to this CD the most.

this cd is the great "lost" VAN MORRISON album. recorded in 1967, it's a bridge between his BELFAST rock band THEM and his first official solo album ASTRAL WEEKS. for some reason VAN objected to this album's release. probably it was some problem with the producer BERT BURNS. maybe it was the silly album title, who knows. after some delay it was released anyway and it produced one hit single; the great, classic song BROWN EYED GIRL. all the rest of the songs on the album (except maybe SPANISH ROSE) are very good as well. this cd includes 5 alternate takes (recorded at the same time) which are different but just about as good as the originals. overall it's one of MORRISON'S best, most straight forward rock albums. at 8.99 it's a steal. you'll love it.

1967 was a good year for Van Morrison musically. He had just left the Belfast group Them in order to pursue a solo career that would begin with Astral Weeks. Unfortunately he had to clear up a contract dispute with his former producer,Bert Berns. The result of that disagreement led to the release of Blowin' Your Mind an eight song album that is best known for the original of Brown Eyed Girl. There is however much more to the record than this single.

The CD features ome of Morrison's rawest and most powerful blues recordings. He Ain't Give You None is raw blues a tale "of lust, jealousy and sexual disgust" T.B Sheets is a sprawling tone poem dedicated to a victim of tuberculosis. Steve Labate commented on the theme of the song: "'T.B. Sheets' is one of the most real songs about death you'll ever hear. As life saps steadily from the singer's beloved, tuberculosis-ridden Julie, there is no trite drama, no nostalgic sugar coating or grand deathbed epiphany, but rather an 'Is That All There Is?' fatalism--a mild, detached, slowly-suffocating bleakness. 'The sunlight shining through the crack in the window pane numbs my brain,' Morrison moans over a skittering Hammond organ."

Side two features the classic Midnight Special and Spanish Rose along with the bluesy Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye). While it does not live up to the promise of side one it does make good listening. THis album stands as a beginning of a now forty year career that would see highs and lows but would never compromise.