This isn't as exciting as some other recent releases from the Bob Matthews collection, because this performance had already been released as a soundboard. In fact, I was planning on posting it in a few days, inspired by the other Medicine Ball Caravan releases, when I saw this got posted. This is the same music as the existing version, but with markedly better sound quality. Both versions are soundboards, but the other one had probably passed through different hands, with copying and loss of quality along the way. By contrast, this sounds like it was locked in a vault from then until now, which is probably more or less exactly what happened, thanks to sound engineer Bob Matthews. So even if you have this already, please do get this version instead.
It was known Matthews was involved the audio of the British concert mentioned above. It was said to have unusually good sound for an outdoor concert as a result. But the fact that this has also been released from the Matthews collection leaves open the exciting possibly that we'll get recordings of some or most of the rest of the short tour. As I mentioned in a previous write-up, that could mean sets by B.B. King, Doug Kershaw, Hot Tuna, Alice Cooper, Stoneground, possibly Joni Mitchell (there are conflicting accounts of that), and unknown others. Time will tell, hopefully soon.
One can tell that this performance (at a random golf course in Ohio, apparently!) was done primarily for the film footage. At one point after "Crazy Love," a voice got on the microphone and explained there was a short pause in order to change film reels. That makes me wonder where the heck is the footage of this concert, not to mention the rest of the tour? What came out in the movie was generally very disappointing, with many great musical acts, including Morrison, not included at all. I haven't seen it, but people say that only a couple of songs performed by B.B. King were impressive. Let's hope the footage of this prime Van Morrison concert still exists in the vaults somewhere.
Morrison was a couple of months away from releasing his second album in 1970, the classic "His Band and Street Choir." So a couple of songs here are from that ("I've Been Working" and "Domino"), with most of the rest from "Moondance." Note that there's a verse of "Domino" that didn't make it onto the album version.
I made a couple of improvements. The first five seconds or so of "Brown Eyed Girl" was missing. Luckily, that was a repeated riff, so I was able to patch in the missing bit from elsewhere. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title. Also, the audience applause was rather low in the mix. Not nearly as low as in the British Medicine Ball Caravan concert, but still, I used MVSEP to remix all the songs, boosting the applause. I also cut out some dead air between songs.
This album is 36 minutes long.
01 Brown Eyed Girl [Edit] (Van Morrison)
02 Moondance (Van Morrison)
03 Crazy Love (Van Morrison)
04 talk (Van Morrison)
05 Come Running (Van Morrison)
06 I've Been Working (Van Morrison)
07 Domino (Van Morrison)
08 Cyprus Avenue (Van Morrison)
09 talk by emcee (Van Morrison)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/AtAuwJUi
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/hSaP7PRp8r7NTst/file
I don't know where the cover image is from, but I got the impression that it's from around 1969, give or take a year. The original was in black and white. But I used the Ask Gemini program to colorize it.
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