Search - Van Morrison :: Great

For all the Nicholas Brauns

Leslie Berg | st.leonard, md United States | 03/24/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"I hope that Nicholas Braun re visits this page and sees my review. You are right; they are not songs, not the songs that Van Morrison really writes from his heart and soul. After about one third of the way through each disc, you get to the songs that are known as his contract breaking material. Van's first recording contract was with Bert Berns' Bang Label from which Brown Eyed Girl was born. Things quickly went bad between Van and Berns due to differences on how to best present Van's work. To make matters worse Bang released an album without Van's knowledge. Van wanted out but Bang owned the rights to Van's next X amount of songs so On December 30, 1967, Van was able to get out of his contract by handing in a tape that included a bunch of throwaway nonsense songs. The Bang material is limited but keeps showing up under different names such as Blowin Your Mind or T.B Sheets. There are about 15-20 of these compilations and the song order and selection varies slightly, and of course the covers and titles are completely different. Sneaky, huh? The 2 CD versions often include the lost tapes or the contract breaking material. I have about 30 Van CD's including some Bang material, he is an awesome artist. I have never heard any of the contract breaking songs nor do I intend to. I know they are crap. I hope that this review will keep others from making the same mistake Nicholas Braun made. And Nicholas, if you read this, give Van another try. Van is a versatile, eclectic singer songwriter who practically has made his own genre. His musical talents include (but are not limited to) R&B, Soul, Rock and Roll, Jazz, Country, Celtic, Folk and Spiritual. Maybe one of the best CD's to start your Van collection is The Best of Van Morrison from Polydor, Ltd 1990. You can get 20 songs at a great price. The song Queen of The Slipstream is worth the purchase of the CD and many others for that matter. That is where I started. Hope this helps."

I thought it would be a good value...

Nicholas Braun | 03/07/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"but it was the worst music purchase i ever made...

i gave it one star only because theres no option for zero stars.

3 cds for only 15 bucks. i wanted the most vam morrison songs i could get for the least amount of money. what a terrible idea... mots of the songs arent even songs. theyre like 60 seconds of him mumbling and playing the same chords over and over. some trakcks are exactly the same except he changes one word... its like a bunch of twelve bar blues progressions with the same melody using different words... i dont know much about van morrison but hes supposed to be a great songwriter so i bought the set. i cant imagine he ever intended for any of this stuff to really be released. maybe he did and hes just not as good as i thought he was, but i doubt that. anyway, this set is crap. dont buy it."