Rolling Stone Van Morrison’s ‘Latest Record Project’ Is a Delightfully Terrible Study in Casual Grievance
His repetition sounds less like the trance-like mysticism of a Caledonia poet and more like a furious customer demanding a refund.
By Bradley Quinn
In 1967, Van Morrison recorded 31 perverse one-minute ditties in order to fulfill his record contract. The off-the-cuff songs, brimming with contempt for just about everything in the young singer-songwriter’s orbit –– the Sixties, rock & roll, scoring a surprise hit with “Brown Eyed Girl” –– established a young Morrison as, among many other things, a first-rate troll. The first five tracks were titled “Twist and Shake,” “Shake and Roll,” “Stomp and Scream,” “Scream and Holler,” and “Jump and Thump.” On “Here Comes Dumb George,” he mumbled those four words for a full 80 seconds.