Lists!

The Guardian scratches a tiny list itch and catalogs five sophomore albums that were better than the artist's debut. The choices were pulled together from suggestions put forth on Facebook and Twitter (blech). What will interest readers of this blog (all three of you) is that the list was inspired by a cursory spin of Astral Weeks. (Acknowledged in the blog post as "possibly one of the best albums of all time and certainly one of the best second albums of all the time.") Have at it.

"Something happened"

Astral Weeks is very place-specific. If one is cataloging its most crucial elements—those specific ingredients that make Astral Weeks Astral Weeks—the album's fixed setting is among the top three on the list. Van Morrison understood, like many distinguished novelists or short story writers, that a setting doesn't merely contain the story. It often is the story.

This short passage from Alice Munro's "Face" is one I recently considered while listening to Astral Weeks: "Something had happened here. In your life there are a few places, or maybe only one place, where something has happened. And then there are the other places, which are just other places."

I also found myself thinking about the writer Liam O'Flaherty, born on the Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands. O'Flaherty was of the opinion that the power of his native land came from the landscape rather than its people—that mankind, even at its most enchanting and unspoiled, is simply no match for the anarchic intensity of the natural world.

I won't say Morrison arrived at the same conclusion regarding Belfast ("Madame George" is an example of the Irishman's belief that the pure influence of the city's people is equal to the power of its landscapes). But he certainly does embrace the idea that throughout the course of an individual life, there are few places where, to quote Munro, "something happened." On Astral Weeks, Morrison acknowledges that these specific places forever nest inside us, vivid and noisy and begging to be revisited. And when our lives become muddled or broken, we venture to these places to recover something—some idea of ourselves, perhaps—and start down those paths to inner peace.

"Probably come to die in this town"

Stating that Big Black's "Kerosene" could have functioned as the musical backdrop to Van Morrison's formative years is hardly a gutsy call, because "Kerosene"'s themes of enmity, disenchantment, and urgency have been widely clutched by young people everywhere. As a middle-aged adult, you can't look "Kerosene" directly in the eye. It's ugly and terrifyingly honest; the song leaves you sore from embarrassment, chiefly because you once felt the same way as the narrator (can you imagine?). But in the throes of adolescence, "Kerosene" is pure magic, the rare anthem that simultaneously delivers you to the precipice of tears (finally—someone who understands me for me; *sniff*) and gets the veins in your forehead angrily pulsing (teenager SMASH).

When I read articles and biographies that detail Morrison's immediate pre-Astral Weeks period, "Kerosene" often hisses in my head. Morrison quit Them in 1966 and resettled in Belfast soon afterward. He stitched together a new band and performed gigs at familiar haunts throughout the city. Friends and acquaintances from that time allude to him being extra sullen and volatile. Morrison's sour temperament was the possible consequence of an individual who believed he had just botched his one big shot at stardom.

"I was born in this town," Big Black vocalist/guitarist Steve Albini sneers in "Kerosene." "Live here my whole life / Probably come to die in this town / Live here my whole life / Never anything to do in this town / Live here my whole life."

It's not difficult to imagine Morrison feeling similarly powerless and pointless. But in time, this moody defeatism would stimulate him to unforeseen creative heights. Morrison was not destined to spend his years sitting around at home and staring at walls, to paraphrase Albini. America would soon beckon. And bigger and better things.

A break from your regularly scheduled programming ...

Here's a new footnote in the Astral Weeks creation narrative, albeit a rather small one: Boston and Belfast have officially become sister cities. Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Belfast's Lord Mayor Mairtin O Muilleoir signed the agreement on May 12. Much pomp and circumstance then followed. A released statement tactfully referenced Belfast's still-healing sectarian wounds ("a world-leader in peace building") and played up Boston's indelible ties to the Emerald Isle (the "Irish-American capital of America").

The signing of the agreement followed recent headlines involving both cities. On April 30, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams was arrested for questioning in connection with the 1972 murder of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 who was abducted from her Belfast home and accused of being a British Army informant. Adams' arrest was based on allegations contained in taped interviews recorded for a Boston College oral history project on the Troubles. The Belfast Project, as it came to be known, brought together interviews from more than 40 former republican and loyalist paramilitaries. Boston College is now being sued by several individuals who participated.

This is this

Because, God damn it, the world doesn't have enough eight-minute, amateurish, saxophone-drenched, drum-laden, Christmas-time-at-the-local-community-center covers of "Slim Slow Slider."

A little stolen moment

"And you know you gotta go / On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row ..."

BBC Radio Ulster produced a wonderful two-part documentary on the cross-border train service between Dublin's Connolly Station in the Republic of Ireland and Belfast's Central Station in Northern Ireland. John Toal ambled from car to car, mastering the well-balanced gait necessary for a moving train, conversing with a myriad of native and foreign workers, shoppers, and tourists.

While chit-chats occasionally veered toward the delightfully mundane—one gentleman was on the train to pick up a secondhand bench vice; it was apparently more economical to have it shipped to Northern Ireland and pick it up in person rather than have it sent directly to his Co. Galway home—the primary purpose of Toal's rail journeys was to consider the border separating the two countries as well as what each "side" thinks of the other.

On the south-to-north excursion, one man alluded to a distinct change in atmosphere after crossing the border. He believed that folk from the Six Counties had a discernible edge, that the average Northerner possessed a finely-sharpened ability to demonstrate caution around strangers. A woman from the Republic classified her compatriots as overly casual and detached before accusing them of too often evoking that oft-heard Irish expression of cheery indifference: "Ah sure, it'll be grand!"

The most welcoming revelation, however, was one passenger's assessment that the border is no more than an "invisible irrelevance." Because such pronounced apathy was largely absent when Van Morrison wrote "Madame George" nearly 50 years ago. Back then, the border was a very real and very severe dividing line. But after Toal interviewed a composer traveling from Belfast to Dublin, I began to ponder whether there were underlying political, social, or cultural contexts to the lyric quoted above or whether Morrison was perhaps simply inspired by the sensual, steady-tempoed aspects of a train ride.

Said this composer about his rail journey: "It's kinda like a little stolen moment ... There's something extremely relaxing about being on the train ... Has something to do with the rhythm of it, the general underlining pulse that flows through everything."

The Catacombs redux

Vocalist/guitarist Van Morrison + bassist Tom Kielbania + flautist John Payne.