Van Morrison - Talk about Pop, RTE Television Studios, Dublin, Ireland, 11-2-1973

Here's something very interesting by Van Morrison. As far as I know, it's the one and only time he's given a solo acoustic performance, and it happened when he was young and in his musical prime. It was done for a short-lived Irish TV show called "Talk about Pop," in late 1973.

The good news is that a very good sounding bootleg recording of this performance exists. There was no audience, so that helps the sound quality. The song list is also interesting. He played some songs that didn't get released at the time, like "Drumshanbo Hustle" and the cover "The Wild Side of Life." Plus, he did some very rare songs, like "I Shall Sing," which he always did with a big band including horns.

The bad news is that there was considerable dialogue between Morrison and a TV host between songs, and there doesn't seem to be any audio of that. However, there's a transcript of most of it. Here it is:

https://www.oocities.org/tracybjazz/hayward/van-the-man.info/reviews/1973rte.html

The other bummer is the last two songs - "Snow in San Anselmo" and "Beside You" -  didn't make it to the bootleg either. They were the last two songs played, and perhaps the performance ran too long for the length of the TV show. By that still leaves 45 minutes of Morrison's only "unplugged" performance.

I've posted a bunch of early 1970s live music from him here already. I was careful not to include anything from this show though, because I knew I would want to post it here eventually.

01 Wild Children (Van Morrison)
02 Slim Slow Slider (Van Morrison)
03 Warm Love (Van Morrison)
04 Drumshanbo Hustle (Van Morrison)
05 Autumn Song (Van Morrison)
06 St. Dominic's Preview (Van Morrison)
07 Purple Heather [Wild Mountain Thyme] (Van Morrison)
08 Madame George (Van Morrison)
09 The Wild Side of Life (Van Morrison)
10 I Shall Sing (Van Morrison)
11 And It Stoned Me (Van Morrison)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dcBv6

Although this comes from a TV show, I haven't been able to find any video or photos from it. So I used a photo of Van Morrison in concert in Amsterdam in April 1974. At least it shows him by himself playing the acoustic guitar.