A great early moment in Sweet Thing occurs at 0:06, when Richard Davis's enormous double bass tone like gentle thunder rumbling in, that full earth moving tone. A combination of Herbie Flowers's bass in Lou Reed's Walk On the Wild Side, and Nathan Watts's on Stevie Wonder's I Wish. A heavy woody tone with lots of jazzy travels around the fretboard. Fantastic elastic.
Another! great moment occurs at 0:16 with the little chimes, just a brief twinkle, but a moment that indicates the curtains have parted and you've crossed into a new world, a very natural one, like Narnia. The narrator blissfully wanders all around; he's young and in love. Like Mr. Spock in This Side of Paradise. Everything is perfect: jumping the hedges, clean clear water, watching the ferry-boats, gardens wet with rain.
My favorite passage is:
'And I shall drive my chariot
Down your streets and cry
'Hey, it's me, I'm dynamite
And I don't know why''
That's true passion. For Van Morrison and his musicians to be able to catch that feeling and translate it so well into music is truly amazing. (And he always seems so grumpy on the outside. Huh.) Most of Astral Weeks feels similar in nature, and ode to the mystic beauty of life and love found in hidden places, like platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter.
Things get turned up a notch at the 2:44 mark, when the ride cymbals skip in and the guitar alters its course. The strings are swooping in and out, Mr. Tumnus with his flute is dancing about, and eventually we all happily wander off into the sunset.
No comments:
Post a Comment