CD1:

Wild Children

Slim Slow Slider

Warm Love

Drum Shambo (sic) Hustle

Autumn Song

St. Dominic's Preview

Purple Heather

Madame George

Wild Side of Life

I Shall Sing

And It Stoned Me

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Ballerina

Astral Weeks

Streets of Arklow

Brown Eyed Girl

Raglan Road

CD2:

I've Been Working

What'd I Say

Bring It On home To Me

The Way Young Lovers Do

Wild Mountain Thyme

Hey! Good Looking

Green

Listen To The Lion

Hard Nose The Highway

Moondance

Snow In San Anselmo

Caravan

Cypress Avenue

St. Dominic's Preview

These Dreams of You

More and More

NOTES: Disc One Tracks 1-11: "Talk About Pop" - RTE TV, November 9, 1973; Tracks 12-13: "Countdown Ballroom" - Kansas City, February 17, 1974; Tracks 14-17: "Music Hall" Boston, MA, March 11, 1974; Track 18: Colerane, Eire, April 20, 1988.

Disc Two recorded at the Troubadour, Los Angeles, California. Tracks 1-13: May 23, 1973 - late show; Tracks 14-16: May 24, 1973. (All tracks Van Morrison: vocals and guitar. Disc one tracks 12-17 and Disc two with the Caledonia Soul Orchestra.)

Let’s tackle the material comprising Disc 2 first. During the last week of May ’73 Morrison, his Caledonia Soul Orchestra in tow, held down a residency at LA’s storied Troubadour venue. The show on the 26^th was recorded by Warner Brothers (most likely all the shows and several others on this tour, in fact) and songs wound up appearing on the official live album It’s Too Late To Stop Now, one of the great concert discs. A number of ITLTSN outtakes bootlegs have surfaced over the years (most tapping actual WB acetates), including, on CD, Dynamite’s It’s Never Too Late, Oil Well’s Wild Night (also issued on TAKRL as Wild Night On Sunset) and the sensibly-titled, no-label Too Late To Stop Now Outtakes. A selection of songs from the 24^th and 27^th also found its way onto an old vinyl boot, A Spawn of the Dublin Pubs, and it’s interesting to note that the three songs from the 24^th (Disc 2, tracks 14-16) on this new Wild Wolf title almost certainly were taken from that LP (you can hear the vinyl cracks/pops on the CD). But the material from the 23^rd doesn’t appear to have been previously booted – I stand to be corrected – and while the sound quality isn’t as immaculate as the official ITLTSN it’s still pretty amazing, enough so that I’ll call it a “professional audience recording.” That is, it’s not a line recording, as the ambiance is more “live-in-a-room” and does contain some telltale crowd noise, but it’s certainly not a one-mic/cheap deck job either. Somebody knew what they were doing when setting up to get this show down on tape.

The main set on Disc 1 is from a solo acoustic performance broadcast of the “Talk About Pop” program on RTE-TV (Ireland) in late ’73 and the sound quality, while containing some slight hiss, is excellent. It’s also a rare opportunity to here the bard doing some of the material sans band – “Wild Side Of Life” and “St. Dominic’s Preview” in particular are revelatory. The remainder of the disc is with a full band and hails from several different sources; tracks 12-17 are very good to excellent audience recordings, while 18 is an FM broadcast which, unfortunately, is marred by a whooshing/static effect no doubt present in the original recording.

Nice period photos from Wild Wolf for this set help make it an altogether quite desirable artifact from a key period in Morrison’s career. -- OSWALD