Totally Into This Mystic

Sir George Ivan Morrison--perhaps better known to you as "Van"--turns 70 tomorrow, and by damn I'm going to acknowledge that and celebrate it.  I've been a Van Fan since "Brown-Eyed Girl," in 1967, a song I'd be happy never to hear again.

The great Irish tenor John McCormack was once asked what was needed to become a great singer.  "The 'yaargh,'" he replied.  That is, the ability to convey thoughts and emotions in a way which moves an audience emotionally.  It's imagination, passion, intelligence, integrity mixed with a little madness.  Van Morrison could sing the phone book and make it interesting and moving.  Of course no one under the age of 30 has any idea what a phone book is, but still.

I could say much more about Van's artistry and my fandom, about the fact that he has a well-deserved reputation at one of music's most curmudgeonly curmudgeons, and the fact that he's written more than 350 songs, but I frankly just don't feel like it.  What I've decided to do this week is to play the title song from each of his 34 studio albums, an undertaking that will put my show nearer to 4 hours than 2.  I was surprised that there were only 2 albums that didn't have a title track or at least the title in a line from the song; in those cases I chose something representative of the album and title, I thought.  Here's the exhaustive track listing, in chronological order:

T.B. Sheets
Astral Weeks
Moondance
Street Choir
Tupelo Honey
Saint Dominic's Preview
Hard Nose The Highway
You Don't Pull No Punches, But You Don't Push The River
You Gotta Make It Through The World
Wavelength
And The Healing Has Begun
Summertime In England
Beautiful Vision
Inarticulate Speech Of The Heart 1
A Sense Of Wonder
In The Garden
Queen Of The Slipstream
Irish Heartbeat
Avalon Of The Heart
Enlightenment
Hymns To The Silence
Too Long In Exile
Days Like This
How Long Has This Been Going On?
Tell Me Something
The Healing Game
Philosophers Stone
Back On Top
Down The Road
What's Wrong With This Picture?
Magic Time
Pay The Devil
Keep It Simple
Born To Sing

See you Tuesday from noon til whenever on WOOL FM, 91.5, or wool.fm.