Refining the Chaos with Coltrane and Morrisson

Woke up this morning not wanting to tackle my next album: Van Morrison's classic, essential, epic album Astral Weeks. Don't get me wrong. I fucking LOVE this record. I've spent more time listening to it than almost any other album from the 60s, the notable exception being Joni Mitchell's "Blue". An exercise in restrained improvisation, it combines the tight, stubborn adherence to form of the folk that was the fad of the time with meandering jazz improv (that sometimes borders on the Ornette-COLEMANESKUE in its chaos) with Morrison's famous soulful wail and R&B sensibilities. Got all that? Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

But let's face it: you've got to be feeling pretty free to listen to Astral Weeks. Morrison's (never reprised) shambling, genre-bending band creaks along the seams of these songs, wrestling them this way and that before they (usually) fade to black. I woke up desiring something with cohesion, and God handed me Astral Weeks and John Coltrane's proto-free-jazz Ascension record. This gets to the center of what makes this project difficult: the only dictation of my listening is cold pattern of alphabetical order. If my emotional state and the music I am to listen to intersect, it is purely a matter of coincidence.

But it can also make for some beautiful surprises. Ascension, which I'd never listened to before, was pretty awesome. I especially loved the solo by alto sax John Tchicai, which kind of screeches and wails and forces your ear back to the music(which it inevitably drifts from when trying to decipher the mountain of sound bellowing from Coltrane & Co). Every single one of the musicians really stretches out, and the whole 40 minute deal makes the closing vamp, which I'm told is borrowed from Trane's own A Love Supreme, all the more powerful and resonant. I'm no expert on free jazz, and to tell the truth, it's still mostly just dissonance to my ears. But I can't say that I disliked this album. Something stuck out, and I'm kinda excited for repeated listenings.
//JOHN COLTRANE - ASCENSION//GREAT TUNE: N/A (single-piece record)//

After taking in the crazy musical beast that is Ascension, Astral Weeks seemed like a tiny task. It was almost like Coltrane was setting me up to dig on Morrison that much harder. Even the nearly ten minute-long "Madame George" was a pleasing excursion. That moment around 7:55 when the strings kick back in with the coda....pure ecstasy. Yeah, I just might be able to handle this project.
//VAN MORRISON - ASTRAL WEEKS//GREAT TUNE: "Sweet Thing"//