Beautiful Vision

Customer Reviews:

• Moved to tears: If a piece of music can move you to tears, it has to be special. The song that does that do me every time is Across the bridge where angels dwell. The place where we can only hope to end up someday. Thank you Van.
• Frank Bee Good: There's a novelty clothes shop in the Bronx called Frank Bee Costume and it's actually run by a dude named Frank Bee. I read a Halloween-related snippet about him in The Daily News where he was bemoaning a sales slump with certain outfits this year. Frank Bee. That made me larf that did--reminded me of Parker Posey freaking out over the stuffed chew toy in Best in Show. I too pretend to work in the Bronx and twice yesterday, once more right after the first time, I listened to Surfer Rosa turned up kinda high on my earphones. What a gas gas gas this record is. Where Is My Mind? is not only a good question but a great farking song. Ditto Ed is Dead. I remember when I bought this Pixies debut I got a discount on two purchases so I shelled out an additional bushel of kopeks for that Dinosaur jr album with the great picture on the front of the young chick readjusting some kind of beach apparel and having a smoke like what's the big bleeding deal. I reckon even if I didn't own and love Bug I would've picked up this J. Mascis disk on account of that cover. For some reason every time I play Surfer Rosa I almost always follow it up with Green Mind. Call me a victim of habit. I do. The contrast in any case is not nearly the point as it happens, especially given I suppose that the lead dudes involved here--the aforementioned guitar uberhombre Jimmy Jay J Mascis and the robustly enigmatic Frank Black--haven't hardly it seems one single thing in common, except maybe a penchant for loud and rowdy electric noise once the lyrics have run their course. I'm guessing that must be the reason. There I was then, locked in and labouring, and I listened to Surfer Rosa twice in a row and then reached immediately for the Dinosaur Jr and all this as it turned out while I was also surreptitiously reading that massy chapter in Tom Jones, Book IX Chapter iii I believe--this being the second frankly hilarious scrap Henry Fielding has ringsided in the funniest possible detail. The earlier hand-to-hand smackdown in the cemetary with Molly Seagrim versus everyone else might be the more satisfying of the two rumbles but still The Great Battle of Upton is not to be sneezed at for the gleeful ferocity of the mixed-sex fisticuffs. This book's a riot and no mistake. But lookit now, is that Kim Deal in there singing Caribou? She done a Breeders song once, Cannonball, off of Last Splash I think, which should never ever not get spun. Caribou neither I rather think, nor Gigantic nor the rest of this magnificent Bronx Cheer from Black Francis. It's a source of great comfort to me that I can actively dig all this rollicking headbust while slouching down in my cubicle at work. Multitasking I believe they call it. Then it was Paris buns and a break for a cuppa tea brewed to the sounds of George Ivan Morrison. The cover art though on Beautiful Vision is anything but--really kinda unspeakable actually in a Celestial Celtic Upchuck sort of way--but this record does have among many other wondrous numbers the song Cleaning Windows on it which discovers Van the Man memorably fine-tuning his younger years. As perfect a song this as Mister Morrison ever wrote I'd be prepared to wager. Put this one on in a juke joint sometime when you've detoured off somewhere on your way back home after clocking out. Halloween on a Friday. Dressed up as meself. A working man in my prime. The Belfast Cowboy getting to an age where he can openly pen and warble an outrageously snappy and authentic ode to nostalgia.
  
  I really do love The Daily News. I've had occasion before to mention it but just look at this for one further final instance:
  
  Busts at Colo. nude run
  
  BOULDER, Colo. - Boulder cops over the weekend ticketed about a dozen people running naked on the street while sporting freshly gutted pumpkins on their heads.
  
  The event is part of the annual Naked Pumpkin Run, now in its 10th year.
  
  Boulder police Chief Mark Beckner said officers "wanted to do something before (the event) got out of hand."
  
  10th year? (The event)? I do believe I can honestly say that stories like this one helped lay a firm foundation upon which I built my appreciation of a writer like Henry Fielding. It's not just the seamless blend of high and low in Tom Jones either, neither yet the impossibly early date--1749 for the love of Great Scott Oof!--nor still the enduring comic splendour of the prose, it's rather that it's impossible some of the more contemporary scribes and scribblers I happen to admire haven't also read this stupendous book and laughed their d--n pants off.
  
  The other reviewer here of Beautiful Vision in general and Cleaning Windows in particular isn't half wrong either when he speaks of Van putting his original accent back on at the end of Cleaning Windows: Number a hundred and thirty six? Yeah, we'll be there tomorrow. A rare old hoot from a felly not exactly known for cracking up your average punter.
• Celtic Soul Brother #1: This belongs in the category of Van's great Celtic Soul albums like Astral Weeks, Common One and Veedon Fleece. Van expresses his Northern Irish roots in titles like "Northern Muse" and "Cleaning Windows". The latter song is as down-home and funny as Van has ever allowed himself to get since the out-takes from the Bang sessions. The closing improv where he raps in a broad Belfast accent about finding a "tanner and a three D bit" on the windowsill and having to "go down the dole" are classic stuff. In the same song, Van fills in his early musical and mystical history. "I heard Leadbelly and Blind Lemon on the street where I was born" "I went home and read my Christmas Humphries book on Zen". "Celtic Ray" is a beautiful evocation of life in Ireland, "When the coal brick man comes around, on a cold November day, You'll be on the Celtic ray, are you ready?" Yeah Van, I'm ready. Rock on celtic soul brother #1.
• Sounds from somewhere above the clouds: think this may be my favourite Morrison album...but I am still not sure. "Poetic Champions", "Moondance" and "Into the Music" are also favourites, how can I narrrow it down to one? Well, either way this one is special - "Beautiful Vision" really does descend into the meditation and etheral zones and delivers some of the most uplifting popular music ever composed. In this way I see connections with other VM albums (Into the Music's "Healing has begun" and "its all in the Game/You know what they are talking about" and Common one's " summertime in England"). But this one is more consistent in its main themes of love, happiness, nature and spiritual nourishment. The listener may suspend the harsh realities of the modern world and just maybe "chill out" with the aspirational views and sounds. "Celtic Ray" celebrates the links between the Celts of the home countries. "Dweller on the Threshold" may be linked to hope and bravery of choice. "She gives me religion" opens us up to many possibilities but it takes joy in the simple but extemely powerful act of love. Then there a number of jewels that convey the joy of vision through music - "Beautiful Vision", "Aryan Mist" "Vanlose Stairways" and "Scandinavia". These songs are "bridged" by one of Van's most joyful, triumphant and hope-inspiring songs "Across the Bridge where Angels dwell". It's a place I definately want to be. The album ends with the oddity "Cleaning windows", a song that is misplaced on this album. Music for a cold winter's night with the lights down low. Beautiful Vision, Beautiful music.
  
• van again.: This one is also gentle jazz, a little celtic rhythm too. And may I also recommend "Into the Music", which I just found recently. All good, middle era Van Morrisoon: mellow, mystic, celtic, lovely.