Customer Reviews

Playlist: The Very Best of Van Morrison

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Anyone familiar with the discography and history of Van Morrison's amazing career will quickly recognize this cd for what it is: just one more compilation of tracks from the Bang recording sessions. There are so many others out there -- all under different names -- some purporting to be "best of" compilations, which they clearly are not. It's disconcerting that people in the music industry will continue to release cds like this . . . and I wouldn't care to comment further on it if it were not possible that someone unfamiliar with Morrison's body of work could be misled by these Bang session rip-offs thinking that they actually are some kind of greatest hits collection. If you would like to add the Bang material to your Van Morrison collection, probably "The Bang Masters" is the best single compilation, or you could look at "Blowing Your Mind" for a re-release of material from the Bang sessions as it was originally released in the late sixties (1967, I think). (Yes, this cd has "Brown Eyed Girl" but you can get this along with an alternative track on "Bang Masters" or just the original released version on "Blowing Your Mind.") Since we can't keep some people in the music industry from continually re-releasing this material under misleading titles, let's at least not purchase these rip-offs. I would urge you to stay away from this cd and its many clones out there under different names . . . out of respect for Van Morrison, the artist, and the integrity of his body of work spanning more than four decades.

I enjoy Van Morrison, this best of is a good collection of the Bang series.

Creating a single-CD summary of a colossus like Van Morrison, a man with an imposing 40-year back catalogue, is an impossible task. There are several Van Morrison compilations out there already, none of them great, but most better than this random selection. The very best? No way.