If You're Only Going to Buy One Greatest Hits Set From... Van Morrison

My friend Tom suggested I take on Van Morrison this week.  He’s a huge fan – if he doesn’t have all of Morrison’s albums, he’s not far off.  I’m very much the same way with Neil Young, whose attitude toward the music industry is fairly similar (“If you like it, great, if you don’t, your loss – I’m not making any changes”).  Anyway, Tom told me today “it could be short, I don't think he has many... Best of, Best of Volume II, [At] the Movies... it might not even be worth it.  But you could knock it out quickly, noting the scarcity of choices!”

I wish.  I found stuff he didn’t even know existed, and the disks he listed are now out of print.  To start with, there’s only one best-of available on iTunes, and none available for download on Amazon.  I’m not 100 percent certain of this, but here’s my guess as to what’s going on:

• Morrison owns his own catalogue from Astral Weeks, which came out in 1968, onward.  He doesn’t own the Them tracks, or the albums he did for Bert Berns’ Bang label in 1967 (more on that later).
• It looks like the distribution rights have switched from Universal (which had them for about 30 years – his classic albums in the late 1960s and 1970s came out on Warner Brothers, but they dropped him around 1985) to Sony/Columbia.  His most recent album, Duets: Reworking the Catalogue (which is exactly what it sounds like, rerecordings of his old hits done as duets) is listed on Amazon as on the Exile/RCA label.  RCA’s catalogue was acquired by Sony a few years back.
• He’s releasing new greatest hits sets slowly, to get fans to drop a few more bucks.
• Accordingly, here’s my choice – because it’s apparently the only one now available:

The Essential Van Morrison

Generally speaking, I like what Sony has been doing with reissues – Warner Brothers has also been pretty good for the most part, while Universal’s reissue program is, to put it kindly, scummy.  This Sony release is pretty good – 37 songs crammed onto two disks, neatly divided into the hit years (60s and 70s) and the more introspective years (80s and onward).  It also includes what’s worth including from his first band, Them (“Gloria” and “Here Comes the Night”), as well as a few of the Bang songs, which are owned (or were owned) by Sony anyway.  I wouldn’t have chosen the songs selected here from Astral Weeks (the title track and “The Way Young Lovers Do”), but that’s personal preference – many of Morrison’s anthologies ignore this crucial album altogether because it contained no AM radio hits.

Right now, this is available for $14.99 for the download off iTunes (but not from Amazon yet!), or you can order the two-CD set from Amazon (which will not be available until this Friday, October 30 – I told you it was new!).  I saw it at Best Buy last week, if you have to have this right now; I think the price was around $13.99.

Here’s what was available, and may still be new in record stores if you look carefully (and if you can find a record store, I guess).  Links are to the Wikipedia listings:

• T. B. Sheets (1973) and Bang Masters (1991) are two official names for the music Morrison recorded for Bang in 1967.  Bert Berns, who ran the label, died December 30, 1967, at which point Bang had two major artists under contract:  Morrison and Neil Diamond.  Diamond apparently used an out clause in his contract to sign with Uni (later MCA) Records the following year, and Morrison also split for Warner Brothers, after a series of arguments with Berns’ widow, Ilene (who blamed Morrison’s battles with Berns for his husband’s death).  Morrison was required to submit 36 songs, mostly recorded in one session, to gain his release; the “revenge” songs were mostly unreleasable.  Anyway, the legit Bang sessions and bits and pieces of the “revenge” songs all seem to be on a pile of releases today – anything from the perfectly legitimate Playlist: The Best of Van Morrison (The Bang Masters) on Sony, to The Essential Van Morrison (not to be confused with the album listed above, so be careful about what you download!) on the Purple Pyramid label – they seem to specialize mostly in rerecordings.  I’ve also seen the lengthier The Complete Bang Sessions and The 1967 New York Sessions.  The sound quality of all of them seems the same, so here are my thoughts:  1) get one cheaply, 2) listen to a few tracks first to make sure it’s not a super cheap remaster, 3) at least “Brown-Eyed Girl” is the original hit, 4) the versions of “Madame George” and “Beside You” are not the ones you’ll find on Astral Weeks, released the following year.  (I’m listening to the earlier version of “Madame George” now; the lyrics are the same, but the music is vastly different.)
• The Best of Van Morrison (1990) was released after Morrison had issued 19 solo studio albums, so he wasn’t lacking for material.  Apparently he wasn’t thrilled about having a best-of come out under his name, but it actually exposed him to a whole new audience, who probably loved his hits but wasn’t thrilled about slogging through his more idiosyncratic albums.  If you want the hits, they’re all here.  Now out of print.
• The Best of Van Morrison, Volume Two (1994) was selected by Van the Man himself, and focuses on releases between 1984 to 1991.  As a result, many listeners will find the music unrecognizable, because only “Real Real Gone” was a radio hit.  (Morrison hasn’t hit the U.S. pop charts since 1978’s “Wavelength” – which inexplicably isn’t on any of these sets – but has been charting more regularly in the U.K. since the 1990s.)  Also out of print.
• Van Morrison at the Movies (2007) takes all of the songs U.S. listeners should be familiar with – the songs reused in one movie or another – and shuffles them together on one disk.  A few live versions are included, and although I’d quibble with a few selections (where’s “Tupelo Honey”?), it’s a good place for the uninitiated to start.  Again, out of print.
• The Best of Van Morrison, Volume Three (2007) is a two-disk set with 31 songs, primarily from 1991 onward.  A few alternate versions and live in concert pieces round out the set.  Out of print.
• Still on Top – The Greatest Hits (2007) makes me think Van was trying to finance a vacation house or something in 2007; I can’t think of another reason why he would be willing to release three anthologies in the same year.  One-disk set that covers his entire career; this would be a nifty purchase for the novice, except (stop me if you’ve heard this one) it’s out of print.

I'm hoping sometime in 2016, Sony and Morrison will release a one-disk set encompassing his entire career, for those who think two disks are too much.  Also, if anybody could fill a box set, this is the guy.  After all, Neil Young released a 10-disk box set in 2009, and it only covered the first decade of his career.  (I may have to start taking money from my son's college education fund if Young brings out any more of them.)
 
For the infatuated, The Story of Them (1997), featuring 50 songs from Morrison’s mid-1960s band, is out of print but should be reasonably easy to find (warning:  I have this myself, and 50 songs for this band is way too much for most people).  Be careful about downloading their studio albums; many of them were recorded after Morrison left the band.

If You're Only Going to Buy One Greatest Hits Set From... The Byrds

The Byrds were the first folk-rock act to hit the big time – their first #1 hit, “Mr. Tambourine Man” (written by Bob Dylan, which gave it some cachet among folk purists) hit the top in late June of 1965, a full six months before Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence.”  The good news is The Byrds were quite talented on their own, with two good songwriters to start with (Gene Clark and Jim McGuinn, who would change his name to Roger a couple of years later) and two that developed over time (David Crosby and Chris Hillman).  (Drummer Michael Clarke was not a songwriter; he was primarily recruited for his resemblance to Rolling Stone Brian Jones.)  The bad news is they self-destructed pretty quickly – Clark bailed out after two albums, Crosby was bounced a year after that, and Hillman split after their foray into a more pure country sound, Sweetheart of the Rodeo.  McGuinn carried on for a long time after that with a variety of musicians, but they put out so much product over that time (eleven studio albums over five and a half years?) that the name wound up being sullied.  After a half-hearted reunion of the original five members in 1973, the group stayed apart almost for good (more on that later).

With the exceptions of some early recordings released under various titles and the 1973 album Byrds, all of their recordings were for Columbia.  That means getting a good greatest hits set isn’t a problem – and compilations are probably preferable to all but two or three of the studio albums.  Of course, it also means there are a lot of hits sets out there, so finding the right one can be a challenge.

Here's my choice, and it's kind of an odd one:

20 Essential Tracks from the Boxed Set: 1965-1990

The band’s output consists of five albums with most of the original group, five albums with McGuinn and a bunch of other guys, and Sweethearts of the Rodeo, which sounded like nothing that came before or after.  This is the only single-disk set that contains everything great from the first half of their career and everything that’s worth having afterward.  The bad news:  it contains nothing from Sweetheart of the Rodeo (possibly because the box set contained songs from that album as originally recorded with Gram Parsons singing lead, and no doubt Columbia wanted buyers to drop a bigger chunk of change on that), and three meh songs from a short reunion between McGuinn, Crosby, and Hillman in 1990 (to establish claim to the name over Clark and Michael Clarke, who had both toured in recent years with ersatz bands billed under the Byrds name).

This brings up another side issue - I'm not altogether sure why these reunion tracks were billed as "The Byrds" but no songs from the 1979-1980 McGuinn, Clark, and Hillman experiment are on any of these greatest hits sets.  Just guessing, but I would say it's any or all of the following three reasons: 1) McGuinn and Crosby agreed at the time not to call the band The Byrds because all five weren't involved, and stuck to it, 2) McG, C & H albums were on Capitol, so Columbia didn't want to lease any of the music, 3) they're not very good.

Getting back to this CD, I do like the price ($9.99 for the download on Amazon, but I saw it tonight for $5.99 at Best Buy), so I’m willing to overlook these flaws – if you’re desperate for the Sweetheart of the Rodeo stuff, look (and be ready to pay more) for The Essential Byrds or buy this and the actual Sweetheart album.

Here’s the rest, in chronological order (links are to the Wikipedia listings):

• The Byrds Greatest Hits (1967) – The first greatest hits set with all the classic songs, and if you’re in your late 40s or older, the one you most likely already own.  Columbia deserves a bit of credit for adding three Gene Clark songs to the compilation, but at $11.99 for 14 songs it’s not much of a bargain.

• Preflyte/In the Beginning/The Preflyte Sessions (1969 and onward) – a pile of tracks recorded before the band was signed by Columbia (they had gone under the names The Jet Set and The Beefeaters), which I’ve crunched into one listing.  Some of the material eventually showed up on official albums, but not all.  Reviews have been quite kind on the whole, and since In the Beginning was a Rhino release (they’re usually very careful about making sure their releases are no less than decent), they might be worth checking out.  That said, these are not the hit versions, and in some cases the record labels are minor.  

• The Best of The Byrds: Greatest Hits, Volume II (1972) – If you ever wondered if a record label would dare release a greatest hits set without any actual, you know, hits (three charted singles here from Sweetheart of the Rodeo and beyond, none of which made it higher than #65), your answer is right here.  Inexplicably still in print and available for download; you’re better off getting these songs as part of a full-career compilation.

• The Byrds Play Dylan (1979) – Not a hits set, but a compilation of Dylan covers.  The 1982 version had 13 songs and a hideous cover; the 2002 rerelease has 20 songs (so you can have the studio and live versions of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “Chimes of Freedom” – joy!) and a slightly less hideous cover.  At least it’s only $8.99 for the download.

• The Original Singles: 1965-1967, Volume 1 (1980) – Man, Columbia had some lousy cover designs in this era.  16 songs, obviously from the McGuinn/Crosby/Hillman/sometimes Clark years.  A decent enough selection for an $8.99 download, but I’ve been warned the CD version sounds pretty lousy.  Volume 2 (songs from 1967-1969) was released only in Europe, and there was never a Volume 3 (it would have been much like Greatest Hits, Volume II listed above).

• The Byrds (box set) (1990) – I bought this in 1998 because I somehow felt it was out of print and would stay that way, and, well, I wish I hadn’t been so anxious.  There’s nothing bad about the music – it’s got a pile of alternate takes, the aforementioned Gram Parsons lead vocals from Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the 1990 reunion songs (including a live version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” with Dylan), and it sounds fine.  That said, anything written by Gene Clark that wasn’t a hit is omitted (probably because of the legal battles at the time between Clark & Clarke and the other three), and there’s nothing from the Preflyte years or the 1973 bomb Byrds.  Finally, whoever designed the booklet really needs a good talking to – probably to save money, the text is printed in three colors (cyan, magenta, black), which saves almost no money and resulted in a bunch of pictures being done as faux duotones, plus a text design that looks like I did it (I’m not a designer).  20 Essential Tracks is taken in its entirety from this 90-track release.

• Super Hits (1998) – Super Cheap would be a better description – it’s one of the two least expensive downloads on Amazon.  10 songs, and poorly selected (“America’s Great National Pastime” is included, but not “All I Really Want to Do”?).  Avoid unless there are no alternatives.

• The Essential Byrds (2003) – Sony’s “Essential” series is generally pretty solid, and this is no exception – 33 songs over two disks, only eight of which came from after Sweetheart of the Rodeo.  The bad news:  a $16.99 download price.  Try to get Version 3.0 (which contains a third disk with six additional songs and a cardboard sleeve instead of a jewel box) or, better still, the British version (which I don’t think we can download here in the States, but I could be wrong), which has 45 songs.

• There Is a Season (2006) – Apparently somebody at Columbia decided they needed a do-over on box sets, so here’s the second four-disk box from the band.  This one includes Jet Set and Beefeaters songs, plus two Gene Clark songs from the 1973 Byrds misfire, and the songs he wrote are more represented on the first couple of disks.  The bad news is there are few alternate takes and rarities.  This was intended to replace the first box set, but they’re both available for download (and this one is seven dollars more for nine more songs).

• Playlist: The Best of The Byrds (2008) – Somewhat better than Super Hits for the same $7.99 price, although not by much.  14 songs, with the same questionable selections (“Spanish Harlem Incident”?).  There are better options.

There aren’t many solo compilations from the band members – Gene Clark could certainly use one (although it might be hard to pull that off because he was with a bunch of labels), and so could Roger McGuinn (easier, since most of his solo albums were with Columbia or Arista, which are both under the Sony banner).  Chris Hillman’s Desert Rose Band released a greatest hits set in 1992, but that’s hardly representative of his entire career.  Many of Gram Parsons’ solo recordings are on The Complete Reprise Sessions (2006) from the always-reliable Rhino, although my one-disk version of GP/Grievous Angel should be fine for most (and neither contains anything from his Flying Burrito Brothers days).  As for Michael Clarke, I’m sure there’s a Firefall greatest hits set out there somewhere. 

The one exception to this rule is David Crosby, which should be no surprise since he’s had the most successful and varied solo career (with several well-publicized detours, of course).  Voyage, from 2006, contains 51 songs (granted, only three are from the Byrds, but given he was only starting to write songs late in his tenure with the band, that’s no surprise), including a wide variety of solo, CSN, CSNY, and Crosby & Nash songs, plus a few from the band he headed with his son James Raymond as CPR.  Throw in a disk of unreleased material, and for an $18.99 download cost, it’s really worthwhile.

Superhits 1983, Part 4

Yeah, it's been awhile.

Marvin Gaye, “Sexual Healing, “ #3 1/29/83

The last of 56 chart pop hits during his lifetime (Erick Sermon’s 2001 hit “Music” contains vocals Gaye did in 1982 for his own album), this one is a song to remember.  Written in late 1981 and early 1982 while Gaye was living in Belgium and trying to rid himself of his decades-long drug habit, the song (co-written with musician Odell Brown, although author David Ritz has claimed to have helped out with the lyrics) became the centerpiece for his final studio album (at least while he was still alive), Midnight Love. Gaye, of course, never completely overcame his drug issues, and after another downward spiral, was shot and killed by his father after an argument in April 1984, just short of his 45^th birthday.

 

Kenny Loggins, “Heart to Heart,” #15, 1/29/83

Second chart hit from Loggins’ High Adventure album, and a jump back from the rockers “I’m Alright” and “Don’t Fight It” into more comfortable midtempo territory.  Not sure who plays on this track – there is a lengthy roster of guest artists on the album, including Steve Lukather and David Paich from Toto, Michael McDonald, and Pat Benatar’s husband Neil Giraldo – but since David Sanborn is the only sax player listed, I’m pretty sure that’s him at the end.

 

 

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, “You Got Lucky,” #20, 1/29/83

First single from the band’s album Long After Dark, written by Petty and guitarist Mike Campbell.  Long After Dark is most notable in the history of the band for being the first album with Howie Epstein on bass, replacing Ron Blair.  After Epstein’s death in 2003 due to complications from drug use, Blair came back to the band, and he’s been there ever since.  (Bad news:  there's about a minute 20 seconds useless setup for this video, so feel free to skip.)

 

 

Juice Newton, “Heart of the Night,” #25, 1/29/83

Third and final chart single from Newton’s 1982 album Quiet Lies, co-written by John Bettis and Michael Clark.  Bettis had a hand in a bunch of familiar 1980s songs, writing the lyrics for everything from Madonna’s “Crazy for You” to Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.”  He also wrote lyrics for a few of the Carpenters’ later hits, along with the theme to Growing Pains, “As Long As We Have Each Other.”  This song reached #4 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart, the sixth and last top 5 hit for Newton on that chart.

 

 

 

Peter Gabriel, “Shock the Monkey,” #29, 1/29/83

15 years into his music career with Genesis and then solo, Gabriel finally chalked up an American Top 40 hit.  (His previous solo peak was with 1980’s “Games Without Frontiers,” while Genesis never notched a Top 40 hit when Gabriel was with the band.)  According to Gabriel, the song is not about animal cruelty, but jealousy in human relationships.  I guess we’ll have to take his word for it.

 

 

Ray Parker Jr., “Bad Boy,” #35, 1/29/83

One of two new songs from his 1982 greatest hits set (the other, “The People Next Door,” only hit the R&B chart), this also displayed Parker’s occasional foray into lyrics that weren’t palatable to all listeners (“Spank me, whup me/Let me come back home”).  I had a friend who loved Parker’s music until she listened to the hits set, which included these lyrics on “Let Me Go”: “I know that when a woman gets in her 20s/She starts to feel like she’s running out of time”; she had no use for him after that.  In any case, it’s a reasonably catchy song if the lyrics aren’t taken seriously.

 

 

Lanier & Co., “After I Cry Tonight,” #48, 1/29/83

Another old-school R&B act (they started out in 1968 as The Jacksonians, playing backup on a number of southern soul releases for the next decade) that got their own chance on a tiny record label, in this case LARC Records, which was distributed by MCA for about a year before going under.  According to the book Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, the same label organizers made a comeback shortly thereafter as a boutique label with the Columbia/Epic group named Private I, but apparently Lanier & Co. didn’t make the transition.  The band dissolved shortly after a 1988 release on Waylo Records, Dancing in the Night; this was their only chart single.

 

 

Chaka Khan, “Got to Be There,” #67, 1/29/83

I love Chaka Khan, I really do.  Outstanding singer and personality galore.  But she isn’t a prolific songwriter (most of her albums, both solo and with Rufus, only had one or two cowrites), so she’s always been at the mercy of her label and whoever’s in the producer’s booth.  I’m not sure who decided her remake of the 1972 Michael Jackson hit with a nearly identical arrangement would be a good idea, but it certainly didn’t help boost her career.

 

 

Chicago, “What You’re Missing,” #81, 1/29/83

Third single from the band’s comeback LP Chicago 16, this one’s a rocker (although still with Peter Cetera on lead vocal, like the ballads before it), but it didn’t get much chart action.  We can bitch about Chicago’s 1980s transition from a genuine rock band to nothing but AC-friendly ballads – but they did usually release one rocker per album, and those songs always charted the lowest.  In this case, not making a video for the album, which might have helped get them on MTV, certainly didn't help.  Cowritten by Jay Gruska and Joseph Williams (the latter was later one of Toto’s many lead singers).

 

I Go to Sleep: Songs of Slumber

Last night I asked my ever-ready Facebook friends to throw me some songs about sleep, and they came through as always (boy, did they ever). First though, a few they missed:

1) "I Go to Sleep", Pretenders

Chrissie and co. released two versions of this Kinks song, on a studio LP and on the wonderful live Isle of View (get it?) concert release. Both versions blow away the original.



2) "Sleep", Azure Ray

Maria Taylor's somber, aching vocals and the tempo of the song capture perfectly the restless eternity that is a sleepless night.



3) "Can't Do A Thing to Stop Me", Chris Isaak

Scary stalker Chris is gonna dream about you, and ain't nothing you can do about it.



4) "Sleep Won't Ever Come", Best Coast

Sometimes it feels that way.



5) "Walking in My Sleep", Roger Daltrey

There are probably a million reasons I shouldn't like this song, but I always have.



And now our Facebook gang's contributions:

David Anderson

"Talking in Your Sleep", Romantics

"In My Dreams", Dokken

Michele Ferlisi

"Wall of Sleep," Black Sabbath

"Sleeping Village", Black Sabbath

Sally Fenn-Tucker

"Sweet Dreams Are Made of This", Eurythmics

"Through the Long Night", Billy Joel

Brenda Balin

"Wake Up Little Susie", Everly Brothers

"Dream A Little Dream", Cass Elliot

A&H Blogger Curt Alliaume

"I'm So Tired", the Beatles

"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", Warren Zevon

"I Need A Nap", Weird Al and Kate Winslet

Twla Meding

"Virginia Calling", Sons of Bill

Anne Campisano-Detlet

"Dream Weaver", Gary Wright

Rich Bilitz

"The Lion Sleeps Tonight", the Tokens

Karen Aagesen Cerini

"Dream On", Aerosmith

"Let's Go to Bed", the Cure

Eddie Johns

"In Dreams", Roy Orbison

Billie McIntyre Dunn

"It's Raining Again", Supertramp

Rich Kurlantzick

"Rose Darling", Steely Dan

"Daysleeper", R.E.M.

Mike Haines

"MLK", U2, 

"Sleepless", King Crimson

Donna Mellusi

"Peaceful Relaxing Scene", Ann-Margret

Mark Traeger

"Sleep", Dopesmoker

Rosie Perez

"All I Need", Air

Anna Russomano Broskie

"Where Hides Sleep", Alison Moyet

But That's All in the Movies, It Won't Happen to You: Films Based on Songs

Lots of movies and songs share the same name, mostly because the latter was written purposely for the former. Movies that are based on songs are a rarer breed, and run the gamut from exploitive to silly to art-house serious. Herewith are some of the best (and worst).

1. The Indian Runner/"Highway Patrolman", Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen's work has always had a cinematic feel, and a lot of his best songs would make great movies. Certified Bruce Pal Sean Penn wrote and directed this 1991 drama that features Viggo Mortensen and David Morse as Frank and Joe Roberts, the ill-fated brothers in Springsteen's song. 

2. Ode to Billy Joe, Bobby Gentry

This weird, moody song gave me shivers as a kid. The TV movie tried to make sense of the lyrics, but failed to undo the song's mystery.

3. The Legend of Tom Dooley/"Tom Dooley", The Kingston Trio

Folk songs have nothing on horror films when it comes to violence and murder, and "Tom Dooley" is no exception.

4. Bad Romance, Lady Gaga

This 2011 film is in fact based on Mother Monster's hit.

5. Born in East L.A., Cheech Marin

Technically based on two songs: Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and Cheech's own parody. The video for the song was hilarious, but stretching the joke out to movie-length was pushing it.

6. Harper Valley PTA, Jeannie C. Riley

This goofy tune not only inspired a TV film but also a failed TV series, both starring I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden.

7. The Gambler, Kenny Rogers

The first song on this list to feature the singer in the lead role of the film adaptation, of which there were several.

Laura Schetelich adds:

Alice's Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie

D.C. Will Do That To You

This entry is devoted to celebrating my adopted hometown, Washington, D.C.  If you wanna play along, you can add songs that are about cities or areas around D.C., as I myself will. To make things a mite easier, the songs can refer to D.C. or the Metro Area in passing, but they have to be direct references. And the songs can but don't have to be about politics.

Got all that? Good, then GO!