VAN MORRISON – BRIGHTON DOME 27.1.22
Van Morrison has been combining elements of Celtic music, improvise jazz and rhythm & blues for more than 30 years, born in Belfast he’s a legend and a revered musician. Last year he was knighted and inducted into the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame” and even has a star on the ‘Hollywood Walk of Fame’. He has won six Grammys, a BRIT award for Outstanding Contribution and Ivor Novello award for lifetime achievement. His latest studio album is number 42 and he has seven live albums, nine compilation albums, six video albums and 80 Single releases to his name.
Tonight at the Brighton Dome was the first of two consecutive night appearances and the band came on stage at 7:30pm for a warmup and played a couple of pieces and then disappeared until Van Morrison came on at 8:10pm. He was wearing his now expected, dark suit, hat and aviator sunglasses, for a 76-year-old he seemed pretty good.
He launched into the set with four songs from his current double CD album ‘Latest Record Project 1’. Those songs being: ‘Latest Record Project’, ‘Deadbeat Saturday Night’, ‘Double Agent’ and ‘Up County Down’.
With his new songs out of the way he then started to concentrate on his back catalogue, first one out of the blocks was ‘Days Like This’ and a superb version of ‘Have I Told You Lately’. Throughout the performance band members were given an opportunity to express the music with Morrison pointing to each of them in turn. The seven piece band were first class musicians and were able to follow Morrisons lead without any difficulty, keyboard, guitar, drums, saxophone, bass guitar, percussion and xylophone.
He was able to switch styles so easily from jazz, soul, country, blues and swing. His performance came to life about half way through with the 1930s blues number, recorded by ‘Them’ in 1964 ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’. For a while the room was rocking as he combined it with ‘Got My Mojo Working’ and ‘I Can Tell’.
It was time to change the mood with ‘Sometimes We Cry’ and ‘Real Real Gone’. Another highlight was his excellent rendition of ‘Into The Mystic’.
Towards the end of the gig, he became rather more animated when he sang ‘Coming Down To Joy’ almost dancing at one point!
As you would expect, the end of the set started with ‘Brown Eye Girl’ and a lively version of ‘Gloria’ which had the audience singing (despite most of us wearing masks). During the performance Morrison hardly spoke to the audience and then walked off stage during ‘Gloria’, leaving the band to play for a further 10 minutes by themselves.
There is no doubt that Van Morrison is a great singer songwriter and performed some amazing music during this concert as well as a talented saxophonist. However, I have to commend the band who I believe we’re truly exceptional musicians and it’s clear that Morrison selected the best to accompany him.
Van Morrison setlist:
‘Latest Record Project’
‘Deadbeat Saturday Night’
‘Double Agent’
‘Up County Down’
‘Days Like This’
‘Have I Told You Lately’
‘Someone Like You’
‘Moondance’
‘Magic Time’
‘Baby Please Don’t Go’/’Got My Mojo Working’/ ‘I Can Tell’
‘Sometimes We Cry’
‘Real Real Gone’
‘Carrying A Torch’
‘Precious Time’
‘Ain’t Gonna Moan No More’
‘Cleaning Windows’/’Be-Bop-A-Lula’
‘Into The Mystic’
‘Coming Down To Joy’
‘Brown Eyed Girl’
‘Gloria’
Further information on Van Morrison can be found at www.vanmorrison.com
