"This colossal work"

Back in January of 2008, music journalist Stuart Bailie celebrated the 40th anniversary of Astral Weeks with a pair of live shows in Van Morrison's native Belfast. Bailie, chief executive of the Oh Yeah Music Centre and a BBC Radio Ulster presenter, gathered Irish artists to cover the album's eight tracks. In between songs, Bailie spent time, to quote his own words, "sketching out the history of the record, celebrating the references to Belfast and the amazing cultural confidence that had led a 23-year-old artist to write this colossal work." The "Astral Weeks Revisited" shows, as they came to be called, were held at Oh Yeah and the Black Box.

The video posted above is from one of the gigs. This is Matt McGinn playing "Cyprus Avenue." I'm in the process of tracking down more video or at the very least, some audio files. Stay tuned ...