Gig - Van Morrison: Live At Blickling Hall

Van talks to band shock!

Not a venue that could be described as rock & roll - but a great way to spend an evening and Van's always pointing out that he ain't rock & roll anyway. Another wine and picnic venue and so we did both!.
The stage was set up at the back of the Hall (Norfolk by the way), which meant the backdrop for the event wasn't as spectacular as at Leeds Castle but it was a smaller audience and more intimate - even managed to get a few photos.

Van appeared a bit iffy mood wise as he hit the first number, something obviously wrong with either acoustics, band or both. But after that he seemed to relax into the event. You're never going to see Morrison smiling and laughing with the audience, it's not his style and never has been. But he did seem to have a genuine rapport with the band and they appeared to be enjoying themselves.
As he had not long released the "country" album "Pay The Devil", we were clearly due some songs from that release - and we duly got some, with 'There Stands The Glass', and 'Big Blue Diamonds' standing out. He also did a reasonable 'Can't Stop Loving You', which isn't actually on the album.

Van with David Hayes

As at Leeds Castle in 2005, he pulled material from all stages of his career, messing around with a couple of the melodies to keep himself interested - he changed 'Have I Told You Lately' from the straight ballad of the recorded version to a mid tempo type shuffle. He also went all the way back to 'Moondance' and, more unusually, 'Crazy Love' as well as material from his most recent albums, among them 'Precious Time' and 'All Work And No Play'. He finished the main set with 'Brown Eyed Girl', which was a pleasant surprise. A surprise because it's from the Bert Berns period and we know what Van thinks of both Berns and the time he spent on the Bang label. I've seen him live countless times and never heard him play it; pleasant because he played it straight and seemed to enjoy it. He closed with 'Gloria' and disappeared off-stage prompt at 10:00. Hard to tell whether or not he'd simply had enough (he was ticking off the songs as they were being played) or if there was a 10:00 Norfolk Sunday night curfew  

He's not fashionable and he probably doesn't care - nor do we frankly. It was another fine show and if he is treading water (when compared to the heady days of Astral Weeks and Moondance), well at least he treads water better than most!