Let's face it: as much as we all know and love about music, everyone has at least some blind spots. In our new series, "How To Be Smarter About…" Soundcheck aims to help you become a more impressive conversation partner at cocktail parties and around the water cooler.
When Soundcheck put out the call to the audience asking for musical blind spots they wanted to know more about, one listener, Darren in Paramus, New Jersey, wrote us about a classic album:
"Astral Weeks is Van Morrison's greatly acclaimed and highly influential second album released in 1968. It consistently makes All Time Top 10 Rock Album lists -- still after 45 years. What is it about this album (and Van Morrison as an artist) that makes so many place this album at the very pinnacle?”
To help answer Darren's inquiry, Soundcheck host John Schaefer turns to Joe Levy, editor at large for Billboard Magazine -- who says he did not like Astral Weeks upon first listen.
"I came to it from Moondance," Levy says, "I was in high school -- I loved that record. I was on a mission: me and my friends were buying every five-star record in the original Rolling Stone album guide -- the one with the red cover. And I got this, I was super excited, I went to our high school band room -- they had this massive stereo. I put it on, and I can't say exactly what I said, cuz that would be impolite, but I said 'What is this?' I didn't understand it. It made no sense."
Now, many listens later, Levy relishes in Astral Weeks' strange instrumentation and transcendental lyrics.
What's the appeal of Astral Weeks?
"It's inexhaustible," says Levy. "There's not another record like it, it is singular. It's a beautiful sounding record. Go a little deeper -- it's full of desperation, full of longing, full of misery. And yet these things are so tangled up, they'll take a lifetime to unravel. But what do we need to know about it? It's weird."
"Van Morrison is a 23-year-old Irish guy who's obsessed with American rhythm-and-blues, who comes to New York City, walks into a studio with these jazz musicians... and he makes this unheard-before fusion of soul, jazz, blues, folk. Nobody had done it."
Give us some Van Morrison 101. Where is this all coming from?
What are the standout songs I need to hear on Astral Weeks?
"Astral Weeks" -- "[On this record] Morrison becomes someone who works the way James Joyce or Gertrude Stein would," Levy explains, "using language as a sound effect. This is a record very much about Belfast: Cypress Avenue is a real place; there's a song called 'Cypress Avenue,' [and] 'Madame George' begins with '[Down] on Cypress Avenue.' But it's made by a guy who's dislocated. He's adrift in New York City, he's adrift in his life, he's been desperate, he's been lost, he's been lonely, he's made a new marriage. And he's working through these memories of Ireland -- an Ireland that literally doesn't exist anymore, it's in the past for him, but also, he's not there. He's working through all of this on this record, and it's incredibly potent. So this introductory moment, [the song] 'Astral Weeks,' this setting of the tone, this is a really a slipping into a dream state of mind."