Gelling with Elling
Bookended by Van Morrison big band tracks
A Sense of Wonder 80s classic 'The Master's Eyes' leads off the Friday marlbank 10 playlist.
We've kept the best to last in the list
New Arrangements and Duets out today also has a fabulous duet with Kurt Elling on Van's 'Ain’t Gonna Moan No More.’
'Willy the Shake said that life is what you make it. Somebody else said fake it 'til you make it' - Van Morrison
Stocked full of jazzer and blues great namechecks - Jon Hendricks, Satchmo, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters - that upbeat song goes back to 2018's The Prophet Speaks put out before all the grim rockbottom antivax tat that we draw a swift veil over.
Let's hope Van can return to Ronnie's some time soon before his 80th next summer preferably with a big band - it's been too long since Hyndford Street's finest played Frith.
The new album big band arrangements are very on the ball - the work of the Geordie keys merchant Paul Moran and Chris White.
Also on the new album - not in the playlist 10 - check out Curtis Stigers on 'Close Enough for Jazz'.
President Bill Clinton switched on the Christmas lights not far from the hidden Feirste heartbeat of the city and ninety odd miles from the ancestral Fermanagh home in Roslea back in 1995. It was a night full of hope.
Van and Curtis were both present playing on stage in front of Belfast City Hall that night.
Eamonn Holmes, MC that night, cracked jokes at Stigers' expense we seem to recall, not that anyone seemed to mind. Stigers was a cult comedy hero in those days on Shooting Stars.
'There's nobody on this planet that can ever be so meek/And I can't bleed for you.'
A night to remember - goosebumps when the man sang his Days Like This classic 'No Religion' that night as apt a choice for a night as any. Van keeps it real in the song in his dead on way as the ''bard of Belfast,'' to use Paul Muldoon's moniker for the icon.
Comments