Van Morrison
Blowin' Your Mind!

THE REVIEW

Let's be clear. Within a year, Van Morrison would release his second album, the monumental "Astral Weeks." But here? I still can't wrap my head around it. Not bad, but ever since then, I just can't think about it.

I entered the usual place. Ordered the usual two beers and enjoyed the usual concert by an obscure local band, the "Jazzmasters." But that band, at least that one, wasn't the usual bunch of scoundrels that usually enlivened the place. They performed a handful of covers and only a few of their own songs. Among the covers, one of "Brown Eyed Girl" by good old Van the Man. Actually, more than a cover, it was a real reinterpretation in a noise key. No objections there. A wall of feedback that would have made both Jesus and Maria Catena turn pale; a solo guitar interlude that would have instead embarrassed the late Bo Diddley (for one reason or another, not often you see old Bo blush) and then the evocative voice of Laura, that's what the quintet's leader was called, whose timbre recalled another late great, Eva Cassidy. In short, it was truly crafted with skill and genius, enough to make me want to rediscover the album it originally belonged to.

The concert ended - which in all serenity, in hindsight, I could call the highlight of a great day, if not for the fact it was a typical shitty day, thus the peak of a great shitty day -, I set off on foot towards home, crossing the city and its decay, encountering first an attempted mugging on an attractive blonde and then the completely drunk milkman from my neighborhood who could only ask me if I knew how long until the sun would rise. "I have no idea, man. You can't make heads or tails of anything anymore," I replied as I continued down the usual road. Then even a friend. We engaged in discussing the evolution of his life and the devolution of mine.

I got home at the usual five in the morning. Between a cigarette and some nonsense, the usual time had come. Everything was so predictable once.

I wasn't sleepy. As usual. But that version of "Brown Eyed Girl" immediately came to mind again. I rushed to search for "Blowin' Your Mind!" (Bang Records, 1962) in the last row of records on the shelf, which I had nicknamed the "forgotten zone." I searched for a long time. The dust covering that almost entirely abandoned section of the shelf offered anything but a helping hand. It certainly took more than five minutes to find it.

Once the initial famous hit "Brown Eyed Girl" started, I almost wished there had been more dust. Even more.
There weren't exactly the agonizing cries of a crime etched into it. I mean, nothing to say. Pleasant and all. His voice, his timbre, although not yet fully mature, were already leaving their mark. The rhythm and blues, while nothing extraordinary, was performed excellently, except for a few irreverent twists that hinted at the young man's genius compositional ambition with the peculiar authority of a vehement vocal presence. But there was no story. Maybe it just wasn't the night. Fact is, it lasted about ten minutes in play. More than a rediscovery, it was a disappointment. Probably the same that made me catalogue it in the forgotten zone. Perhaps it was a disappointment for Morrison too. Surely it was published against his will, inadvertently causing quite a few problems.

So I was once again prey to insomnia. Abandoned and inconclusive. I realized then that perhaps that record could be the only thing to help me in the fight against insomnia. It could heal me, provided I resigned to the idea that I had lost that day.
I took it out of the sleeve and played it a second time, now as the vanquished. In a day that smelled rotten, which I knew by heart and where everything always stayed the same, I decided to wallow in the already-heard sound of a record that played much like my day that had passed.

I truly felt at home. The usual home, the usual things. The usual music. Nothing new. I thought that in the end, if I ever became a skilled reviewer and had to rate that record, for completeness, I'd give it a good score; if I expected more, I would have relatively martyred it. But if I never became a reviewer, well, I would never have rated it.