188-582: Astral Weeks is the second studio album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison . It was recorded at Century Sound Studios in New York during September and October 1968, and released in November of the same year by Warner Bros. Records . The album's music blends folk , blues , jazz , and classical styles, signalling a radical departure from the sound of Morrison's previous pop hits, such as " Brown Eyed Girl " (1967). The lyrics and cover art portray
376-494: A blue-eyed soul style. The album embraces a form of symbolism that would eventually become a staple of Morrison's songs, equating earthly love and heaven, or as close as a living being can approach it. Morrison and Davis's upright bass can be interpreted as the earth opposing Kay's percussion and the string arrangement representing heaven and with Berliner's lead acoustic guitar residing on a plane in between. Van Morrison told Ritchie Yorke, one of his biographers, he wrote both of
564-587: A concert venue , at home, in the field, or a mix of places. The time frame for completely recording an album varies between a few hours to several years. This process usually requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, and then brought or " mixed " together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live", even when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation , to assist in mixing different takes; other locations, such as concert venues and some "live rooms", have reverberation, which creates
752-420: A "live" sound. Recordings, including live, may contain editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology , artists can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones ; with each part recorded as a separate track . Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of
940-621: A "special relationship to time defined as 'swing ' ". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz
1128-446: A bag containing $ 20,000 USD in cash. According to Smith, "I had to walk up three flights of stairs, and they were four guys. Two tall and thin, and two built like buildings. There was no small talk. I got the signed contract and got the hell out of there, because I was afraid somebody would whack me in the head and take back the contract and I'd be out the money." When asked if he ever saw these men again, Smith replied, "No. They weren't in
1316-458: A bound book resembling a photo album ; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl long-playing (LP) records played at 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm . The album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption from the mid-1960s to the early 21st century, a period known as the album era . Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The 8-track tape
1504-458: A brown heavy paper sleeve with a large hole in the center so the record's label could be seen. The fragile records were stored on their sides. By the mid-1920s, photo album publishers sold collections of empty sleeves of heavier paper in bound volumes with stiff covers slightly larger than the 10" popular records. (Classical records measured 12".) On the paper cover in small type were the words "Record Album". Now records could be stored vertically with
1692-412: A collection of pieces or songs on a single record was called an "album"; the word was extended to other recording media such as compact disc, MiniDisc , compact audio cassette, 8-track tape and digital albums as they were introduced. An album (Latin albus , white), in ancient Rome, was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees, edicts, and other public notices were inscribed in black. It
1880-403: A compilation of songs created by any average listener of music. The songs on a mixtape generally relate to one another in some way, whether it be a conceptual theme or an overall sound. After the introduction of Compact discs, the term "Mixtape" began to apply to any personal compilation of songs on any given format. The sales of Compact Cassettes eventually began to decline in the 1990s, after
2068-407: A couple years ago, and out of 16 students, four of them said their favorite album was Astral Weeks ." Marcus goes on to say, "Now, how did it enter their lives? We're talking about an album that was recorded well before they were born, and yet it spoke to them. They understood its language as soon as they heard it." Elvis Costello described Astral Weeks as "still the most adventurous record made in
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#17328758079172256-447: A culturally significant work. Many factors afforded the record its strong reputation in rock criticism : its back story as a commercial underachiever and highly personal work for Morrison, its distinction from the rest of his discography, his artistic autonomy, the music's song cycle composition, the enigmatic lyrics and quality of seriousness and originality as perceived by mature rock audiences and writers. According to Rob Sheffield , it
2444-424: A current or former member of a musical group which is released under that artist's name only, even though some or all other band members may be involved. The solo album appeared as early as the late 1940s. A 1947 Billboard magazine article heralded " Margaret Whiting huddling with Capitol execs over her first solo album on which she will be backed by Frank De Vol ". There is no formal definition setting forth
2632-557: A customer buys a whole album rather than just one or two songs from the artist. The song is not necessarily free nor is it available as a stand-alone download, adding also to the incentive to buy the complete album. In contrast to hidden tracks , bonus tracks are included on track listings and usually do not have a gap of silence between other album tracks. Bonus tracks on CD or vinyl albums are common in Japan for releases by European and North American artists; since importing international copies of
2820-469: A deal with Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, which was founded by manager Bob Schwaid (who worked for Warners Publishing) and producer Lewis Merenstein . Merenstein received a call from Warner Bros. to see Morrison in Boston, and related how eight or nine producers had gone to hear Morrison, thinking they were going to hear "Brown Eyed Girl" only to find that "it was another person with
3008-468: A different sound from the Astral Weeks recording. " Sweet Thing " is the only song on the album to look forward instead of backward. In the words of AllMusic : "Over the endlessly descending, circular progression, Morrison sings positive lyrics about nature and a romantic partner, seemingly beginning in the middle of a thought: 'And I will stroll the merry way. ' " Paul Du Noyer wrote, "Sweet Thing puts
3196-467: A drum made by stretching skin over a flour-barrel. Lavish festivals with African-based dances to drums were organized on Sundays at Place Congo, or Congo Square, in New Orleans until 1843. There are historical accounts of other music and dance gatherings elsewhere in the southern United States. Robert Palmer said of percussive slave music: Usually such music was associated with annual festivals, when
3384-539: A fine lady with "rainbow ribbons in her hair" in a carriage drawn by six white horses and "returning from a fair". Van Morrison described Cyprus Avenue as "a street in Belfast, a place where there's a lot of wealth. It wasn't far from where I was brought up and it was a very different scene. To me it was a very mystical place. It was a whole avenue lined with trees and I found it a place where I could think." "Astral Weeks" songs ... were from another sort of place—not what
3572-456: A form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations. These work songs were commonly structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was also improvisational. Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score , with less attention given to interpretation, ornamentation, and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal
3760-434: A freer, folkier feel". Later, Kielbania heard jazz -trained flautist John Payne for the first time while sitting in on a jam session. He invited Payne to the club where he played with Morrison, hoping Morrison would invite him to join them. After allowing Payne to sit in on one performance, Morrison extended an invitation, which Payne accepted. The trio of Payne, Kielbania, and Morrison continued performing for four months. In
3948-410: A limited melodic range, sounding like a field holler, and the guitar accompaniment was slapped rather than strummed, like a small drum which responded in syncopated accents, functioning as another "voice". Handy and his band members were formally trained African-American musicians who had not grown up with the blues, yet he was able to adapt the blues to a larger band instrument format and arrange them in
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#17328758079174136-514: A long, long ending that went nowhere, that just carried on from minute to minute ... If it had [some] relativity to the tune itself, I would have left it there." The recording engineer for the album, Brooks Arthur, remembered the sessions in 2009: "A cloud came along, and it was called the Van Morrison sessions. We all hopped upon that cloud, and the cloud took us away for awhile [ sic ], and we made this album, and we landed when it
4324-433: A more pop-oriented direction, while Morrison wanted to explore newer musical terrain. Berns's widow, Ilene Berns , held Morrison and this conflict responsible for her husband's death. Years later she would downplay this scenario, but Morrison's then girlfriend Janet (Planet) Rigsbee has since gone on record describing Ilene Berns's subsequent vindictiveness towards Morrison. Following Bert Berns's death, Ilene Berns inherited
4512-474: A much swifter tempo and a "bizarrely inappropriate party atmosphere" had a considerably different tone from the 1968 Astral Weeks recording. The oldest composition on Astral Weeks is " Ballerina ", which Morrison composed in 1966 while still a member of Them , around the same time he first met his future wife, Janet. Inspired by "a flash about an actress in an opera house appearing in a ballet" (according to Morrison), former Them guitarist Jim Armstrong recalls
4700-460: A multi- strain ragtime march with four parts that feature recurring themes and a bass line with copious seventh chords . Its structure was the basis for many other rags, and the syncopations in the right hand, especially in the transition between the first and second strain, were novel at the time. The last four measures of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" (1899) are shown below. African-based rhythmic patterns such as tresillo and its variants,
4888-509: A pitch which he called a 'jazz ball' "because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it". The use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune . Its first documented use in a musical context in New Orleans was in a November 14, 1916, Times-Picayune article about "jas bands". In an interview with National Public Radio , musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of
5076-652: A popular music form. Handy wrote about his adopting of the blues: The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect ... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key
5264-463: A powerful and lasting universal poetic resonance." The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . It ranked number 16 in the 2000 third edition of Colin Larkin 's All Time Top 1000 Albums . Marcus referred to the impact of the album, calling it a "common language", and related in a 2009 interview that "I was so shocked when I was teaching a seminar at Princeton just
5452-593: A single artist, genre or period, a single artist covering the songs of various artists or a single artist, genre or period, or any variation of an album of cover songs which is marketed as a "tribute". Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans , Louisiana , in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . Since
5640-522: A single case, or a triple album containing three LPs or compact discs. Recording artists who have an extensive back catalogue may re-release several CDs in one single box with a unified design, often containing one or more albums (in this scenario, these releases can sometimes be referred to as a "two (or three)-fer"), or a compilation of previously unreleased recordings. These are known as box sets . Some musical artists have also released more than three compact discs or LP records of new recordings at once, in
5828-711: A small electric combo doing blues numbers, and songs from Blowin' Your Mind! and from Morrison's Them band days. Two of the musicians soon left but Morrison retained the bassist, Tom Kielbania, a student at the Berklee School of Music . Morrison decided to try an acoustic sound, and he and Kielbania began performing shows in coffee houses in the Boston area as an acoustic duo with Morrison playing guitar and Kielbania on upright bass . Before this, Morrison had primarily recorded and performed with electric musicians. The acoustic medium would provide him "greater vocal improvisation and
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6016-433: A solo album for several reasons. A solo performer working with other members will typically have full creative control of the band, be able to hire and fire accompanists, and get the majority of the proceeds. The performer may be able to produce songs that differ widely from the sound of the band with which the performer has been associated, or that the group as a whole chose not to include in its own albums. Graham Nash of
6204-423: A song cycle rather than a concept album, the songs do, when considered in their totality, seem to link together as one long song, forming an "intangible narrative of unreachable worlds" and delivered with what one writer calls "a masterpiece of virtuoso singing". According to Charlie Gillett , the album has meditative songs that combine themes of nostalgia, drama, and Morrison's personal mysticism and are performed in
6392-414: A studio. However, the common understanding of a "live album" is one that was recorded at a concert with a public audience, even when the recording is overdubbed or multi-tracked. Concert or stage performances are recorded using remote recording techniques. Albums may be recorded at a single concert , or combine recordings made at multiple concerts. They may include applause, laughter and other noise from
6580-406: A theme such as the "greatest hits" from one artist, B-sides and rarities by one artist, or selections from a record label , a musical genre , a certain time period, or a regional music scene. Promotional sampler albums are compilations. A tribute or cover album is a compilation of cover versions of songs or instrumental compositions. Its concept may involve various artists covering the songs of
6768-509: A trend of shifting sales in the music industry , some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album . An album may contain any number of tracks. In the United States, The Recording Academy 's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In
6956-430: A way of promoting the album. Albums have been issued that are compilations of older tracks not originally released together, such as singles not originally found on albums, b-sides of singles, or unfinished " demo " recordings. Double albums during the seventies were sometimes sequenced for record changers . In the case of a two-record set, for example, sides 1 and 4 would be stamped on one record, and sides 2 and 3 on
7144-456: Is a folk rock album, "perhaps the seminal album of the folk-rock genre", while the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame online biography of Morrison said its music is trance-like folk jazz set to "impressionistic, free-flowing" lyrics. AllMusic 's William Ruhlmann, on the other hand, viewed the music as an amalgam of folk, blues, jazz, and classical music that is unlike rock. Although usually described as
7332-454: Is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition". Duke Ellington , one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues ,
7520-663: Is a fundamental rhythmic figure heard in many different slave musics of the Caribbean, as well as the Afro-Caribbean folk dances performed in New Orleans Congo Square and Gottschalk's compositions (for example "Souvenirs From Havana" (1859)). Tresillo (shown below) is the most basic and most prevalent duple-pulse rhythmic cell in sub-Saharan African music traditions and the music of the African Diaspora . Tresillo
7708-548: Is a reminder of "an oppressive and racist society and restrictions on their artistic visions". Amiri Baraka argues that there is a "white jazz" genre that expresses whiteness . White jazz musicians appeared in the Midwest and in other areas throughout the U.S. Papa Jack Laine , who ran the Reliance band in New Orleans in the 1910s, was called "the father of white jazz". The Original Dixieland Jazz Band , whose members were white, were
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7896-434: Is a three chord blues composition and served for many years as the closing song for most of Morrison's live shows. Along with "Madame George", it is the centerpiece of the album and both songs are Belfast related and highly impressionistic. The song is told from the point of view of an outsider watching from inside an automobile and getting tongue-tied as the refined school girl he fantasizes about appears and he imagines her
8084-580: Is any vocal content. A track that has the same name as the album is called the title track. A bonus track (also known as a bonus cut or bonus) is a piece of music which has been included as an extra. This may be done as a marketing promotion, or for other reasons. It is not uncommon to include singles, B-sides , live recordings , and demo recordings as bonus tracks on re-issues of old albums, where those tracks were not originally included. Online music stores allow buyers to create their own albums by selecting songs themselves; bonus tracks may be included if
8272-508: Is at all obvious. They are poetry and mythical musings channeled from my imagination ... [They] are little poetic stories I made up and set to music. The album is about song craft for me—making things up and making them fit to a tune I have arranged. The songs were somewhat channeled works—that is why I called it "Astral Weeks". As my songwriting has gone on I tend to do the same channeling, so it's sort of like "Astral Decades", I guess. — Van Morrison (2008) " The Way Young Lovers Do "
8460-414: Is certainly as heartbreaking a reverie as you will find in pop music." Morrison has denied that the song is about a transvestite, as others, including Lester Bangs , have believed. The original title of the song is "Madame Joy" and Morrison later changed the title although he actually sings the words "Madame Joy" in the song. An earlier recording for Bang Records with slightly altered lyrics, backing singers,
8648-524: Is described by Clinton Heylin as a "lounge-jazz" sound that "still sticks out like Spumante at a champagne buffet". In his review for Rolling Stone , Greil Marcus also spoke of the song as a "poor jazz-flavored cut that, is uncomfortably out of place on this record". Brian Hinton describes it as there being "a Sinatra strut to Van's voice, a blues knowingness with Stax brass, and a string section which swirls where previously it drifted." He describes it as "about growing up, an adolescent first kiss". Called
8836-486: Is heard prominently in New Orleans second line music and in other forms of popular music from that city from the turn of the 20th century to present. "By and large the simpler African rhythmic patterns survived in jazz ... because they could be adapted more readily to European rhythmic conceptions," jazz historian Gunther Schuller observed. "Some survived, others were discarded as the Europeanization progressed." In
9024-493: Is led by Richard and everybody followed Richard and Van's voice", says Merenstein. "I knew if I brought Richard in, he would put the bottom on to support what Van wanted to do vocally, or acoustically. Then you get Jay playing those beautiful counter-lines to Van." Davis was not impressed by Morrison, not out of disdain or any preconceived notions, but rather because Morrison's professional comportment generally did not meet Davis's expectations. "No prep, no meeting", recalls Davis. "He
9212-552: Is not necessarily just in MP3 file format, in which higher quality formats such as FLAC and WAV can be used on storage media that MP3 albums reside on, such as CD-R-ROMs , hard drives , flash memory (e.g. thumbdrives , MP3 players , SD cards ), etc. The contents of the album are usually recorded in a studio or live in concert, though may be recorded in other locations, such as at home (as with JJ Cale's Okie , Beck's Odelay , David Gray's White Ladder , and others), in
9400-402: Is recorded on both the "A" and "B" side of the tape, with cassette being "turned" to play the other side of the album. Compact Cassettes were also a popular way for musicians to record " Demos " or "Demo Tapes" of their music to distribute to various record labels, in the hopes of acquiring a recording contract . Compact cassettes also saw the creation of mixtapes , which are tapes containing
9588-437: Is to play the composition as it was written. In contrast, jazz is often characterized by the product of interaction and collaboration, placing less value on the contribution of the composer, if there is one, and more on the performer. The jazz performer interprets a tune in individual ways, never playing the same composition twice. Depending on the performer's mood, experience, and interaction with band members or audience members,
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#17328758079179776-448: The Astral Weeks recording sessions, Merenstein first contacted veteran bassist Richard Davis . Perhaps best known for his work with Eric Dolphy , Davis essentially served as the session leader, and it was through Davis that Merenstein recruited guitarist Jay Berliner , percussionist Warren Smith Jr. , and drummer Connie Kay . All of these musicians had strong backgrounds in jazz; Berliner had worked closely with Charles Mingus and Kay
9964-620: The Atlantic slave trade had brought nearly 400,000 Africans to North America. The slaves came largely from West Africa and the greater Congo River basin and brought strong musical traditions with them. The African traditions primarily use a single-line melody and call-and-response pattern, and the rhythms have a counter-metric structure and reflect African speech patterns. An 1885 account says that they were making strange music (Creole) on an equally strange variety of 'instruments'—washboards, washtubs, jugs, boxes beaten with sticks or bones and
10152-612: The Dixieland jazz revival of the 1940s, Black musicians rejected it as being shallow nostalgia entertainment for white audiences. On the other hand, traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed bebop, free jazz, and jazz fusion as forms of debasement and betrayal. An alternative view is that jazz can absorb and transform diverse musical styles. By avoiding the creation of norms, jazz allows avant-garde styles to emerge. For some African Americans, jazz has drawn attention to African-American contributions to culture and history. For others, jazz
10340-517: The iPod , US album sales dropped 54.6% from 2001 to 2009. The CD is a digital data storage device which permits digital recording technology to be used to record and play-back the recorded music. Most recently, the MP3 audio format has matured, revolutionizing the concept of digital storage. Early MP3 albums were essentially CD-rips created by early CD- ripping software, and sometimes real-time rips from cassettes and vinyl. The so-called "MP3 album"
10528-411: The 1920s Jazz Age , it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music . Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes , complex chords , call and response vocals , polyrhythms and improvisation . As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in
10716-451: The 1950s, many women jazz instrumentalists were prominent, some sustaining long careers. Some of the most distinctive improvisers, composers, and bandleaders in jazz have been women. Trombonist Melba Liston is acknowledged as the first female horn player to work in major bands and to make a real impact on jazz, not only as a musician but also as a respected composer and arranger, particularly through her collaborations with Randy Weston from
10904-514: The 1970s. Appraising the concept in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau said most "are profit-taking recaps marred by sound and format inappropriate to phonographic reproduction (you can't put sights, smells, or fellowship on audio tape). But for Joe Cocker and Bette Midler and Bob-Dylan -in-the-arena, the form makes a compelling kind of sense." Among
11092-468: The 21st century, such as Latin and Afro-Cuban jazz . The origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm , a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning ' pep, energy ' . The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described
11280-443: The 25-minute mark. The album Dopesmoker by Sleep contains only a single track, but the composition is over 63 minutes long. There are no formal rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as "albums". If an album becomes too long to fit onto a single vinyl record or CD, it may be released as a double album where two vinyl LPs or compact discs are packaged together in
11468-520: The American magazine Stereo Review , editor Peter Reilly panned it as a "free-verse mind bender of an album", plagued by nonsensical lyrics and incoherent singing from Morrison, especially on "Madame George". In 1969, Greil Marcus reviewed the album positively in Rolling Stone , saying that Morrison's lyrics were thoughtful and deeply intellectual, "in terms of the myths and metaphors that exist within
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#173287580791711656-499: The Black middle-class. Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre, which originated in African-American communities of primarily the Deep South of the United States at the end of the 19th century from their spirituals , work songs , field hollers , shouts and chants and rhymed simple narrative ballads . The African use of pentatonic scales contributed to
11844-460: The Caribbean. African-based rhythmic patterns were retained in the United States in large part through "body rhythms" such as stomping, clapping, and patting juba dancing . In the opinion of jazz historian Ernest Borneman , what preceded New Orleans jazz before 1890 was "Afro-Latin music", similar to what was played in the Caribbean at the time. A three-stroke pattern known in Cuban music as tresillo
12032-491: The Hollies described his experience in developing a solo album as follows: "The thing that I go through that results in a solo album is an interesting process of collecting songs that can't be done, for whatever reason, by a lot of people". A solo album may also represent the departure of the performer from the group. A compilation album is a collection of material from various recording projects or various artists, assembled with
12220-599: The Hollywood Bowl performances and entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl: The Concert Film was released on 19 May 2009. Studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music ) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track or cassette ), or digital . Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records (78s) collected in
12408-658: The Starlight Roof at the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel . He entertained audiences with a light elegant musical style which remained popular with audiences for nearly three decades from the 1930s until the late 1950s. Jazz originated in the late-19th to early-20th century. It developed out of many forms of music, including blues , ragtime , European harmony , African rhythmic rituals, spirituals , hymns , marches , vaudeville song, and dance music . It also incorporated interpretations of American and European classical music, entwined with African and slave folk songs and
12596-584: The U.S. Female jazz performers and composers have contributed to jazz throughout its history. Although Betty Carter , Ella Fitzgerald , Adelaide Hall , Billie Holiday , Peggy Lee , Abbey Lincoln , Anita O'Day , Dinah Washington , and Ethel Waters were recognized for their vocal talent, less familiar were bandleaders, composers, and instrumentalists such as pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong , trumpeter Valaida Snow , and songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields . Women began playing instruments in jazz in
12784-573: The United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" if it either has more than four tracks or lasts more than 25 minutes. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs . Albums such as Tubular Bells , Amarok , and Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield , and Yes's Close to the Edge , include fewer than four tracks, but still surpass
12972-413: The album can be cheaper than buying a domestically released version, Japanese releases often feature bonus tracks to incentivize domestic purchase. Commercial sheet music is published in conjunction with the release of a new album (studio, compilation, soundtrack, etc.). A matching folio songbook is a compilation of the music notation of all the songs included in that particular album. It typically has
13160-455: The album has been viewed as one of rock music 's greatest and most important records (a reputation the singer himself has dismissed). It was placed on numerous widely circulated lists of the best albums of all time and has had an enduring effect on both listeners and musicians. Forty years after the album's release, Morrison performed all eight of its songs live for the first time at two Hollywood Bowl concerts in November 2008; this performance
13348-590: The album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America , having shipped 500,000 copies in the US. Music historian Andrew Ford said the album's commercial performance, much like its musical aesthetic, is similar to classical music: "Neither instant nor evanescent: Astral Weeks will sell as many copies this year as it did in 1968 and has every year in between". Astral Weeks has appeared in all-time best album polls worldwide. In 1978, it
13536-466: The album with the lines "If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream/ Where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop", which according to Erik Hage shows that Morrison had "once and for all pulled neck and neck with Dylan as a lyricist". Morrison described it as "one of those songs where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel ... I don't think I can elaborate on it any more than that." The words in
13724-516: The album's artwork on its cover and, in addition to sheet music, it includes photos of the artist. Most pop and rock releases come in standard Piano/Vocal/Guitar notation format (and occasionally Easy Piano / E-Z Play Today). Rock-oriented releases may also come in Guitar Recorded Versions edition, which are note-for-note transcriptions written directly from artist recordings. Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one-half of
13912-503: The album. If a pop or rock album contained tracks released separately as commercial singles , they were conventionally placed in particular positions on the album. During the sixties, particularly in the UK, singles were generally released separately from albums. Today, many commercial albums of music tracks feature one or more singles, which are released separately to radio, TV or the Internet as
14100-419: The album." You have to understand something, ... A lot of this ... there was no choice. I was totally broke. So I didn't have time to sit around pondering or thinking all this through. It was just done on a basic pure survival level. I did what I had to do. — Van Morrison (2009) For the Astral Weeks sessions, apparently they did not employ any lead sheets, or at least none were distributed to
14288-474: The amount of participation a band member can solicit from other members of their band, and still have the album referred to as a solo album. One reviewer wrote that Ringo Starr 's third venture, Ringo , "[t]echnically... wasn't a solo album because all four Beatles appeared on it". Three of the four members of the Beatles released solo albums while the group was officially still together. A performer may record
14476-413: The appropriate paperwork to keep Morrison (still a British citizen) in New York, and contacted Immigration and Naturalization Service in an attempt to have Morrison deported. However, Morrison managed to stay in the U.S. when Janet Rigsbee agreed to marry him. Once married, Morrison and Rigsbee moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts , where he found work performing in local clubs. Morrison began performing with
14664-406: The arrangements because the arrangements are too samey ... four or five other songs should have had a change of mood." According to Robert Christgau in 1974, " Astral Weeks is still considered unlistenable [sic] obscure by many astute observers". Merenstein, on the other hand, still admires the album: "To this day it gives me pain to hear it. Pain is the wrong word—I'm so moved by it." In 2001,
14852-510: The audience, comments by the performers between pieces, improvisation, and so on. They may use multitrack recording direct from the stage sound system (rather than microphones placed among the audience), and can employ additional manipulation and effects during post-production to enhance the quality of the recording. Notable early live albums include the double album of Benny Goodman , The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert , released in 1950. Live double albums later became popular during
15040-457: The band working on the song between engagements. "[Morrison] had all these words", Armstrong says, "we sort of formalized it, 'cause there was no structure to it". Them performed the song one night in Hawaii, but it was not recorded until Astral Weeks . On the full-length version of "Ballerina" which first appeared on the 2015 expanded edition, the left and right audio channels are opposite to those on
15228-406: The best selling live albums are Eric Clapton 's Unplugged (1992), selling over 26 million copies, Garth Brooks ' Double Live (1998), over 21 million copies, and Peter Frampton 's Frampton Comes Alive! (1976), over 11 million copies. In Rolling Stone ' s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time , 18 albums were live albums. A solo album , in popular music , is an album recorded by
15416-552: The blues are undocumented, though they can be seen as the secular counterpart of the spirituals. However, as Gerhard Kubik points out, whereas the spirituals are homophonic , rural blues and early jazz "was largely based on concepts of heterophony ". During the early 19th century an increasing number of black musicians learned to play European instruments, particularly the violin, which they used to parody European dance music in their own cakewalk dances. In turn, European American minstrel show performers in blackface popularized
15604-460: The classical guitar of Jay Berliner and Morrison's voice circling each other. Morrison described it as "the kind of song that you'd sing to a kid or somebody that you love. It's basically a love song. It's just a song about being spiritually beside somebody." It was originally recorded for Bang Records in December 1967. That first recording shows the pop music intentions of Bert Berns which give it
15792-626: The contracts of Bang Records. Morrison's annual option on his recording contract was also due less than a week after Berns's funeral. Legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison was not only kept out of the studio, but also found himself unable to find performing work in New York as most clubs refrained from booking him, fearing reprisals. (Bert Berns was notorious for his connections to organized crime, and those connections still affected artists like Morrison and Neil Diamond trying to leave Bang Records, even after Berns's death.) Ilene Berns then discovered that her late husband had previously been remiss in filing
15980-503: The copyright to any musical composition written and recorded by Morrison and released as a single within one year from 12 September 1968. That demand became a moot point when Warner Bros. refrained from releasing any singles during that time, as no single was released from Astral Weeks . Finally, Morrison had to include two original compositions controlled by Web IV on his next album. Morrison fulfilled that demand with two of his own compositions, " Madame George " and " Beside You ", although
16168-407: The cover photo is described as portraying "the mystic symbol of the union of opposites; the sacred marriage of heaven and earth". Astral Weeks sold poorly when it was first released in 1968. The album became a somewhat popular cult import in the United States, while in the United Kingdom it was largely overlooked by critics. The British magazine Beat Instrumental published a negative review of
16356-541: The development of blue notes in blues and jazz. As Kubik explains: Many of the rural blues of the Deep South are stylistically an extension and merger of basically two broad accompanied song-style traditions in the west central Sudanic belt: W. C. Handy became interested in folk blues of the Deep South while traveling through the Mississippi Delta. In this folk blues form, the singer would improvise freely within
16544-434: The early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles , biguine , ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation . However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands , Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were
16732-506: The early 1920s, drawing particular recognition on piano. When male jazz musicians were drafted during World War II, many all-female bands replaced them. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm , which was founded in 1937, was a popular band that became the first all-female integrated band in the U.S. and the first to travel with the USO , touring Europe in 1945. Women were members of the big bands of Woody Herman and Gerald Wilson . Beginning in
16920-480: The education of freed African Americans. Although strict segregation limited employment opportunities for most blacks, many were able to find work in entertainment. Black musicians were able to provide entertainment in dances, minstrel shows , and in vaudeville , during which time many marching bands were formed. Black pianists played in bars, clubs, and brothels, as ragtime developed. Ragtime appeared as sheet music, popularized by African-American musicians such as
17108-443: The end of that session we all knew that nothing was going to be used. They just said, let's forget it." Jay Berliner was not available, so Barry Kornfeld was recruited to play lead guitar in his place. According to Merenstein, there was tension at this second session and it was stopped after about three hours. Morrison was quoted by Ritchie Yorke as saying the album was recorded in "two eight-hour sessions, plus two overdub sessions. That
17296-433: The enormity of what in one moment of vision they can comprehend." Irish musician Glen Hansard said it made him think about life with a greater depth of feeling, "with a greater sense of fear and horror and desire than you ever imagined." Colin Larkin credited Morrison for fully realizing his ambition to "create without pop's constraints" on Astral Weeks , while AllMusic 's William Ruhlmann said its reputation among critics
17484-556: The entertainer Ernest Hogan , whose hit songs appeared in 1895. Two years later, Vess Ossman recorded a medley of these songs as a banjo solo known as "Rag Time Medley". Also in 1897, the white composer William Krell published his " Mississippi Rag " as the first written piano instrumental ragtime piece, and Tom Turpin published his "Harlem Rag", the first rag published by an African-American. Classically trained pianist Scott Joplin produced his " Original Rags " in 1898 and, in 1899, had an international hit with " Maple Leaf Rag ",
17672-612: The field – as with early blues recordings, in prison, or with a mobile recording unit such as the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio . Most albums are studio albums —that is, they are recorded in a recording studio with equipment meant to give those overseeing the recording as much control as possible over the sound of the album. They minimize external noises and reverberations and have highly sensitive microphones and sound mixing equipment. Band members may record their parts in separate rooms or at separate times, listening to
17860-459: The first jazz group to record, and Bix Beiderbecke was one of the most prominent jazz soloists of the 1920s. The Chicago Style was developed by white musicians such as Eddie Condon , Bud Freeman , Jimmy McPartland , and Dave Tough . Others from Chicago such as Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa became leading members of swing during the 1930s. Many bands included both Black and white musicians. These musicians helped change attitudes toward race in
18048-415: The first written music which was rhythmically based on an African motif (1803). From the perspective of African-American music, the "habanera rhythm" (also known as "congo"), "tango-congo", or tango . can be thought of as a combination of tresillo and the backbeat . The habanera was the first of many Cuban music genres which enjoyed periods of popularity in the United States and reinforced and inspired
18236-494: The form of a prototype. Compact Cassettes became especially popular during the 1980s after the advent of the Sony Walkman , which allowed the person to control what they listened to. The Walkman was convenient because of its size, the device could fit in most pockets and often came equipped with a clip for belts or pants. The compact cassette used double-sided magnetic tape to distribute music for commercial sale. The music
18424-480: The form of boxed sets, although in that case the work is still usually considered to be an album. Material (music or sounds) is stored on an album in sections termed tracks. A music track (often simply referred to as a track) is an individual song or instrumental recording. The term is particularly associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks; the term is also used for other formats such as EPs and singles . When vinyl records were
18612-474: The future. For the time being, Schwaid managed to free him from those obligations, under several conditions. First, Morrison had to write and submit to Web IV Music (Bert Berns's publishing company) three original compositions per month over the course of one year. Morrison fulfilled that obligation by recording thirty-six nonsense songs in a single session . Such action risked legal reprisals, but ultimately none transpired. Morrison then had to assign Web IV half of
18800-461: The guitar player and the vibe player and me and Van — all of us were playing. Then I started playing soprano sax on the thing, and Lew said, 'OK, I wanna try it again. Start again. And I want just the bass, the soprano sax, and Van. ' " It was a successful take, but it also came with a very long coda, prompting Merenstein to make a large cut during the editing process. Many of the tracks on Astral Weeks would be subjected to edits (mainly to tighten
18988-532: The habanera rhythm and cinquillo , are heard in the ragtime compositions of Joplin and Turpin. Joplin's " Solace " (1909) is generally considered to be in the habanera genre: both of the pianist's hands play in a syncopated fashion, completely abandoning any sense of a march rhythm. Ned Sublette postulates that the tresillo/habanera rhythm "found its way into ragtime and the cakewalk," whilst Roberts suggests that "the habanera influence may have been part of what freed black music from ragtime's European bass". In
19176-424: The influences of West African culture. Its composition and style have changed many times throughout the years with each performer's personal interpretation and improvisation, which is also one of the greatest appeals of the genre. By the 18th century, slaves in the New Orleans area gathered socially at a special market, in an area which later became known as Congo Square , famous for its African dances. By 1866,
19364-455: The instruments of jazz: brass, drums, and reeds tuned in the European 12-tone scale. Small bands contained a combination of self-taught and formally educated musicians, many from the funeral procession tradition. These bands traveled in black communities in the deep south. Beginning in 1914, Louisiana Creole and African-American musicians played in vaudeville shows which carried jazz to cities in
19552-567: The late 1950s into the 1990s. Jewish Americans played a significant role in jazz. As jazz spread, it developed to encompass many different cultures, and the work of Jewish composers in Tin Pan Alley helped shape the many different sounds that jazz came to incorporate. Jewish Americans were able to thrive in Jazz because of the probationary whiteness that they were allotted at the time. George Bornstein wrote that African Americans were sympathetic to
19740-539: The late 1950s, using the mode , or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation, as did free jazz , which explored playing without regular meter, beat and formal structures. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock music 's rhythms, electric instruments, and highly amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay. Other styles and genres abound in
19928-582: The later '30s, record companies began releasing albums of previously released recordings of popular music in albums organized by performer, singers or bands, or by type of music, boogie-woogie , for example. When Columbia introduced the Long Playing record format in 1948, it was natural the term album would continue. Columbia expected that the record size distinction in 78s would continue, with classical music on 12" records and popular music on 10" records, and singles on 78s. Columbia's first popular 10" LP in fact
20116-509: The later albums by the Velvet Underground , there was a redemptive element in the blackness, ultimate compassion for the suffering of others, and a swath of pure beauty and mystical awe that cut right through the heart of the work. — Lester Bangs , (1979) Astral Weeks has poetic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics that evoke emotions and images instead of coherent, intellectual ideas and narratives. According to Guy Raz from NPR , it
20304-668: The list. In 1998, it was voted the ninth greatest album of all time in a "Music of the Millennium" poll conducted by HMV , Channel 4 and The Guardian . In 2000, Q placed the record at number six on its list of the 100 Greatest British Albums Ever. Time included Astral Weeks in its 2006 list of the "All-Time 100 Albums". When Astral Weeks was voted the best Irish album of all time in 2009, Niall Stokes wrote in Hot Press , "It's an extraordinary work, packed with marvelously evocative songs that are rooted in Belfast but which deliver
20492-488: The longer 12-inch 78s, playing around 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of his new seventeen-minute composition Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. The recording was issued on both sides of a single record, Victor 55225 and ran for 8m 59s. By 1910, though some European record companies had issued albums of complete operas and other works,
20680-417: The lyrics, the instrumentation and Morrison's impassioned vocals on the listener and the album as being "like some kind of twilight state between sleeping and wakefulness", engaging the listener to project themselves into the spell of the song. Rolling Stone 's album reviewer wrote: "The crowning touch is 'Madame George', a cryptic character study that may or may not be about an aging transvestite but that
20868-924: The many top players he employed, such as George Brunies , Sharkey Bonano , and future members of the Original Dixieland Jass Band . During the early 1900s, jazz was mostly performed in African-American and mulatto communities due to segregation laws. Storyville brought jazz to a wider audience through tourists who visited the port city of New Orleans. Many jazz musicians from African-American communities were hired to perform in bars and brothels. These included Buddy Bolden and Jelly Roll Morton in addition to those from other communities, such as Lorenzo Tio and Alcide Nunez . Louis Armstrong started his career in Storyville and found success in Chicago. Storyville
21056-413: The melody was stated briefly at the beginning and most of the piece was improvised. Modal jazz abandoned chord progressions to allow musicians to improvise even more. In many forms of jazz, a soloist is supported by a rhythm section of one or more chordal instruments (piano, guitar), double bass, and drums. The rhythm section plays chords and rhythms that outline the composition structure and complement
21244-483: The mid-1930s, record companies had adopted the album format for classical music selections that were longer than the roughly eight minutes that fit on both sides of a classical 12" 78 rpm record. Initially the covers were plain, with the name of the selection and performer in small type. In 1938, Columbia Records hired the first graphic designer in the business to design covers, others soon followed and colorful album covers cover became an important selling feature. By
21432-479: The mid-1960s to the late 1970s when the Compact Cassette format took over. The format is regarded as an obsolete technology, and was relatively unknown outside the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation , along with Ampex , Ford Motor Company , General Motors , Motorola , and RCA Victor Records . It
21620-582: The music business." With his legal matters resolved, Morrison now had the freedom to proceed with recording his Warner Bros. debut album, with the recording sessions taking place at the Century Sound Studios in New York on 25 September, 1 and 15 October 1968. The live tracks for the sessions were performed by Morrison on vocals and acoustic guitar in a separate vocal booth with the other musicians playing together on upright bass, lead acoustic guitar, vibes, flute, and drums. The strings and horns constituted
21808-679: The music internationally, combining syncopation with European harmonic accompaniment. In the mid-1800s the white New Orleans composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk adapted slave rhythms and melodies from Cuba and other Caribbean islands into piano salon music. New Orleans was the main nexus between the Afro-Caribbean and African American cultures. The Black Codes outlawed drumming by slaves, which meant that African drumming traditions were not preserved in North America, unlike in Cuba, Haiti, and elsewhere in
21996-578: The music of New Orleans with the music of Cuba, Wynton Marsalis observes that tresillo is the New Orleans "clavé", a Spanish word meaning "code" or "key", as in the key to a puzzle, or mystery. Although the pattern is only half a clave , Marsalis makes the point that the single-celled figure is the guide-pattern of New Orleans music. Jelly Roll Morton called the rhythmic figure the Spanish tinge and considered it an essential ingredient of jazz. The abolition of slavery in 1865 led to new opportunities for
22184-444: The musicians. "What stood out in my mind was the fact that he allowed us to stretch out", recalls Berliner. "We were used to playing to charts, but Van just played us the songs on his guitar and then told us to go ahead and play exactly what we felt." Berliner actually had great appreciation for the freedom given to him and the band; something few, if any, of them were used to. "I played a lot of classical guitar on those sessions and it
22372-414: The name of this flautist, nor has he been identified on any of the surviving documentation; he does play flute on the released takes of "Beside You" and "Cyprus Avenue" but is not included in the album credits. When Morrison tried to squeeze in one last tune during the end of that first session, Payne spoke up and pleaded to Merenstein to permit him to participate. Payne was then allowed to play on what became
22560-460: The northeastern United States, a "hot" style of playing ragtime had developed, notably James Reese Europe 's symphonic Clef Club orchestra in New York City, which played a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. The Baltimore rag style of Eubie Blake influenced James P. Johnson 's development of stride piano playing, in which the right hand plays the melody, while the left hand provides
22748-596: The northern and western parts of the U.S. Jazz became international in 1914, when the Creole Band with cornettist Freddie Keppard performed the first ever jazz concert outside the United States, at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg , Canada. In New Orleans, a white bandleader named Papa Jack Laine integrated blacks and whites in his marching band. He was known as "the father of white jazz" because of
22936-411: The only instruments added subsequently to the initial recording sessions. Morrison said later "They ruined it. They added strings. I didn't want the strings. And they sent it to me, it was all changed. That's not 'Astral Weeks'." Producer Lewis Merenstein had a background in jazz, and according to Merenstein, Morrison "was not an aficionado of jazz when I met him. R&B and soul, yes; but jazz, no." For
23124-475: The original album. Morrison toured performing the album live throughout most of 2009, with Rolling Stone calling these concerts "some of the most inspired performances of his whole career". A live album entitled Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl was released by Morrison's record label, Listen to the Lion, on 24 February 2009. It was also issued as a double vinyl LP album released the same date. A DVD featuring
23312-429: The originally released edited version. " Slim Slow Slider " is the only song on the album to not have string overdubs and according to John Payne, Morrison had not played it live before. Like in the song " T.B. Sheets ", the singer tells of watching a young girl die, but in "Slim Slow Slider" the girl seems bent on her own self-destruction: "I know you're dying, baby / I know you know it too." The song ends abruptly with
23500-401: The other album masterpiece (along with Cyprus Avenue), " Madame George " is almost ten minutes long and tells of the mysterious madame "in a corner playing dominoes in drag", among other things. It also has a setting of Cyprus Avenue in Belfast with impressionistic lyrics that give stream-of-conscious details that are seemingly unrelated. Erik Hage describes the effect of the sensory experience of
23688-443: The other parts of the track with headphones to keep the timing right. In the 2000s, with the advent of digital recording , it became possible for musicians to record their part of a song in another studio in another part of the world, and send their contribution over digital channels to be included in the final product. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing or multi-tracking are termed "live", even when done in
23876-414: The other. The user would stack the two records onto the spindle of an automatic record changer, with side 1 on the bottom and side 2 (on the other record) on top. Side 1 would automatically drop onto the turntable and be played. When finished, the tone arm's position would trigger a mechanism which moved the arm out of the way, dropped the record with side 2, and played it. When both records had been played,
24064-411: The performances), but the one on "Slim Slow Slider" was easily the most substantial. "I would estimate three, five minutes of instrumental stuff", says Payne. "We went through stages [until] we got to be avant-garde kind of weird, which is what you hear after the splice – all that weird stuff we're playing – but there was a whole progression to that." According to Merenstein, before he cut it, the coda "was
24252-470: The performer may change melodies, harmonies, and time signatures. In early Dixieland , a.k.a. New Orleans jazz, performers took turns playing melodies and improvising countermelodies . In the swing era of the 1920s–40s, big bands relied more on arrangements which were written or learned by ear and memorized. Soloists improvised within these arrangements. In the bebop era of the 1940s, big bands gave way to small groups and minimal arrangements in which
24440-495: The period 1820–1850. Some of the earliest [Mississippi] Delta settlers came from the vicinity of New Orleans, where drumming was never actively discouraged for very long and homemade drums were used to accompany public dancing until the outbreak of the Civil War. Another influence came from the harmonic style of hymns of the church, which black slaves had learned and incorporated into their own music as spirituals . The origins of
24628-454: The perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music. But critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has
24816-487: The plight of the Jewish American and vice versa. As disenfranchised minorities themselves, Jewish composers of popular music saw themselves as natural allies with African Americans. The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson is one example of how Jewish Americans were able to bring jazz, music that African Americans developed, into popular culture. Benny Goodman was a vital Jewish American to the progression of Jazz. Goodman
25004-459: The post-Civil War period (after 1865), African Americans were able to obtain surplus military bass drums, snare drums and fifes, and an original African-American drum and fife music emerged, featuring tresillo and related syncopated rhythmic figures. This was a drumming tradition that was distinct from its Caribbean counterparts, expressing a uniquely African-American sensibility. "The snare and bass drummers played syncopated cross-rhythms ," observed
25192-464: The practice of issuing albums was not widely taken up by American record companies until the 1920s. By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records (the term "record album" was printed on some covers). These albums came in both 10-inch and 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than
25380-672: The pre-jazz era and contributed to the codification of jazz through the publication of some of the first jazz sheet music. The music of New Orleans , Louisiana had a profound effect on the creation of early jazz. In New Orleans, slaves could practice elements of their culture such as voodoo and playing drums. Many early jazz musicians played in the bars and brothels of the red-light district around Basin Street called Storyville . In addition to dance bands, there were marching bands which played at lavish funerals (later called jazz funerals ). The instruments used by marching bands and dance bands became
25568-406: The primary medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves and many album covers or sleeves included numbers for the tracks on each side. On a compact disc the track number is indexed so that a player can jump straight to the start of any track. On digital music stores such as iTunes the term song is often used interchangeably with track regardless of whether there
25756-537: The prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines. The mid-1950s saw the emergence of hard bop , which introduced influences from rhythm and blues , gospel , and blues to small groups and particularly to saxophone and piano. Modal jazz developed in
25944-404: The record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums. The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as 8-track tape , cassette tape , compact disc , MiniDisc , and digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of
26132-617: The record not touching the shelf, and the term was applied to the collection. In the early nineteenth century, "album" was occasionally used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Robert Schumann 's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces. With the advent of 78 rpm records in the early 1900s, the typical 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so almost all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items generally were released on
26320-405: The record, finding Morrison's songs monotonous and unoriginal. In NME , Nick Logan regarded it as a pale imitation of the guitarist José Feliciano 's 1968 Feliciano! album, which was one of the year's best-selling records. With the exception of Astral Weeks ' title track, Logan felt the compositions were indistinguishable and "suffer from being stuck in the same groove throughout". In
26508-451: The recording, and lyrics or librettos . Historically, the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage, the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78s were bundled in book-like albums (one side of a 78 rpm record could hold only about 3.5 minutes of sound). When LP records were introduced,
26696-497: The records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78s by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums, typically with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album. By
26884-452: The release and distribution Compact Discs . The 2010s saw a revival of Compact Cassettes by independent record labels and DIY musicians who preferred the format because of its difficulty to share over the internet . The compact disc format replaced both the vinyl record and the cassette as the standard for the commercial mass-market distribution of physical music albums. After the introduction of music downloading and MP3 players such as
27072-410: The rhythm and bassline. In Ohio and elsewhere in the mid-west the major influence was ragtime, until about 1919. Around 1912, when the four-string banjo and saxophone came in, musicians began to improvise the melody line, but the harmony and rhythm remained unchanged. A contemporary account states that blues could only be heard in jazz in the gut-bucket cabarets, which were generally looked down upon by
27260-425: The rock medium, and there hasn't been a record with that amount of daring made since". Johnny Depp , in a Rolling Stone interview in 2008, recalled how when he was a preteen his older brother (by ten years), tiring of Johnny's favourite music of the time said, " 'Try this.' And he put on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks . And it stirred me. I'd never heard anything like it." Joan Armatrading has said that Astral Weeks
27448-557: The same voice". Merenstein first heard Morrison play at Ace Recording studio and recalled that when Morrison played the song " Astral Weeks " for him, "I started crying. It just vibrated in my soul, and I knew that I wanted to work with that sound." While Merenstein was visiting Morrison, Schwaid set to work on resolving Morrison's contractual troubles with the help of legendary Warner Bros. executive Joe Smith , who would ultimately sign Morrison to Warner Bros. Still legally bound to Bang Records, Morrison would yet have more issues with them in
27636-407: The session, but the search for a 'closer' consumed a considerable amount of time. They attempted (and rejected) a number of songs until Morrison suggested "Slim Slow Slider". "I don't think we'd ever done [it] live", recalls Payne. "[Morrison] had a book full of songs ... I don't know why he decided to do it ... And we were first doing it with the drums, with Richard Davis and Connie Kay and
27824-470: The sessions was "The songs came together very well in the studio. Some of the tracks were first takes. [But] the musicians were really together. Those type of guys play what you're gonna do before you do it, that's how good they are." He told Ritchie Yorke that only two tracks recorded during the sessions did not make it to the album. "One was about Jesse James and the other about trains. They were both just basic blues numbers. That's why they didn't fit in with
28012-433: The singer in a hazy, pastoral paradise where he wanders in 'gardens wet with rain', or counts the stars in his lover's eyes, and vows to 'never grow so old again' or 'read between the lines'. He pleads with his mind to keep quiet, so his heart can hear itself think. He yearns to obliterate experience and rediscover innocence." It has been a more popular cover song than any of the others on the album. The song " Cyprus Avenue "
28200-552: The slang connotations of the term, saying: "When Broadway picked it up, they called it 'J-A-Z-Z'. It wasn't called that. It was spelled 'J-A-S-S'. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies." The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the 20th Century . Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to rock -infused fusion . Attempts have been made to define jazz from
28388-444: The soloist. In avant-garde and free jazz , the separation of soloist and band is reduced, and there is license, or even a requirement, for the abandoning of chords, scales, and meters. Since the emergence of bebop, forms of jazz that are commercially oriented or influenced by popular music have been criticized. According to Bruce Johnson, there has always been a "tension between jazz as a commercial music and an art form". Regarding
28576-433: The song: "Talkin' to Huddie Ledbetter/Showin' pictures on the wall" appear to be based on Morrison's real life custom of carrying around a poster of Lead Belly and hanging it on the wall wherever he lived. (This was revealed in a Rolling Stone interview in 1978.) " Beside You ", the second song on the album, has been described as "expressionistic poetry and a scattershot collection of images and scenarios". It begins with
28764-675: The songs "Madame George" and "Cyprus Avenue" in stream of consciousness: "['Madame George'] just came right out ... The song is just a stream of consciousness thing, as is 'Cyprus Avenue' ...I didn't even think about what I was writing." In an interview with Paste in 2009, Morrison said the songs on Astral Weeks were written "prior to 1968 over a period of five years". In an NPR review he comments: "It's not about me. It's totally fictional. It's put together of composites, of conversations I heard—you know, things I saw in movies, newspapers, books, whatever. It comes out as stories. That's it. There's no more." The song " Astral Weeks " opens
28952-420: The songs from his second. Steven Van Zandt , from Springsteen's E Street Band , has said: " Astral Weeks was like a religion to us." According to writer Steve Turner , the album also became popular with travelers of the hippie trail , "from Europe through to Kathmandu and there were even reports of vans painted in psychedelic colours being renamed 'the Van Morrison'." In his 1975 book, Ritchie Yorke wrote "It
29140-482: The songs on the album. The third and final session, in the evening on 15 October, produced four more recordings that completed the album — " The Way Young Lovers Do " " Sweet Thing ", " Ballerina " and " Slim Slow Slider ". Davis expressed to Rolling Stone that there was a "certain feel about a seven-to-ten o'clock session" and that "the ambience of that time of day was all through everything we played". Both "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina" were originally scheduled for
29328-525: The symbolism equating earthly love and heaven that would often feature in the singer's subsequent records. His lyrics have been described as impressionistic , hypnotic , and modernist , while the record has been categorized as a song cycle or concept album . Astral Weeks did not originally receive promotion from Morrison's record label and was not an immediate success with consumers or critics. Its standing eventually improved greatly, with praise given to Morrison's singing, arrangements and songwriting, and
29516-436: The title track of the album – " Astral Weeks " – the fourth song produced from this initial session. For the remainder of the sessions, John Payne played on every song. The next session, according to John Payne, occurred early in the morning, but it did not work and nothing from this session worked for the final album. "It just didn't happen" says Payne. "It was the wrong time of day for jazz musicians to create. I think that by
29704-500: The twice-daily ferry between both cities to perform, and the habanera quickly took root in the musically fertile Crescent City. John Storm Roberts states that the musical genre habanera "reached the U.S. twenty years before the first rag was published." For the more than quarter-century in which the cakewalk , ragtime , and proto-jazz were forming and developing, the habanera was a consistent part of African-American popular music. Habaneras were widely available as sheet music and were
29892-566: The use of tresillo-based rhythms in African-American music. New Orleans native Louis Moreau Gottschalk 's piano piece "Ojos Criollos (Danse Cubaine)" (1860) was influenced by the composer's studies in Cuba: the habanera rhythm is clearly heard in the left hand. In Gottschalk's symphonic work "A Night in the Tropics" (1859), the tresillo variant cinquillo appears extensively. The figure was later used by Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers. Comparing
30080-461: The user would pick up the stack, turn it over, and put them back on the spindle—sides 3 and 4 would then play in sequence. Record changers were used for many years of the LP era, but eventually fell out of use. 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8: commonly known as the eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, or simply eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology popular in the United States from
30268-488: The versions subsequently released were vastly different musically from the original versions recorded with Bang. There were still demands that weren't given on paper, which Smith tried to deal with through Don Rickles 's manager, Joe Scandore. Scandore, whom Smith described as "connected", set up an unusual arrangement where Smith had to arrive one evening at an abandoned warehouse on 9th Avenue in Manhattan at 6 p.m. with
30456-473: The weeks they played at the Catacombs, they began to develop the template for Astral Weeks . It was around this time that Warner Bros. Records approached Morrison, hoping to sign him. Presumably, their interest focused on his prior success with " Brown-Eyed Girl ", not on Morrison's current acoustic work. Regardless, their interest allowed Morrison to return to the recording studio. At the time, Warner Bros. had
30644-466: The words, "Every time I see you, I just don't know what to do." It has been said to be about a drug addict, but Morrison has only said that it's about someone "who is caught up in a big city like London or maybe is on dope, I'm not sure." According to Steve Turner , one of Van Morrison's biographers, Irish painter Cecil McCartney influenced the titling of Astral Weeks . Morrison related how "A friend of mine had drawings in his flat of astral projection. I
30832-478: The world of rock and roll". He believed both the music and lyrics captured the spirit of Bob Dylan 's 1967 album John Wesley Harding , while calling Astral Weeks a "unique and timeless" record. Rolling Stone later named it the album of the year. Melody Maker also called it one of the year's best records, featuring Morrison's "small harsh voice" backed by an attractive musical combo that "verges on genius" during "Madame George". When his third album Moondance
31020-498: The writer Robert Palmer, speculating that "this tradition must have dated back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and it could have not have developed in the first place if there hadn't been a reservoir of polyrhythmic sophistication in the culture it nurtured." African-American music began incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythmic motifs in the 19th century when the habanera (Cuban contradanza ) gained international popularity. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans would take
31208-493: The year's crop was harvested and several days were set aside for celebration. As late as 1861, a traveler in North Carolina saw dancers dressed in costumes that included horned headdresses and cow tails and heard music provided by a sheepskin-covered "gumbo box", apparently a frame drum; triangles and jawbones furnished the auxiliary percussion. There are quite a few [accounts] from the southeastern states and Louisiana dating from
31396-475: Was "all too often crystallized in a single moment. Like the Beach Boys ' Pet Sounds , Astral Weeks was perceived as a one-off whose critical standing allowed little discussion for other equally fascinating musical forays that followed." Morrison felt annoyed by the retrospective acclaim and claims about the record's significance. In agreement with Logan's original criticism, he later said he should have "changed
31584-592: Was Frank Sinatra's first album, the four-record eight-song The Voice of Frank Sinatra , originally issued in 1946. RCA's introduction of the smaller 45 rpm format later in 1948 disrupted Columbia's expectations. By the mid-1950s, 45s dominated the singles market and 12" LPs dominated the album market and both 78s and 10" LPs were discontinued. In the 1950s albums of popular music were also issued on 45s, sold in small heavy paper-covered "gate-fold" albums with multiple discs in sleeves or in sleeves in small boxes. This format disappeared around 1960. Sinatra's "The Voice"
31772-429: Was Morrison's "most beautiful and intense album", the foundation for his "legend" and a work that continues to captivate musicians and listeners. Lester Bangs said its anguished feeling resonated with him on first listen, calling it "the rock record with the most significance in my life so far ... a record about people stunned by life, completely overwhelmed, stalled in their skins, their ages and selves, paralyzed by
31960-540: Was a further development of the similar Stereo-Pak four-track cartridge created by Earl "Madman" Muntz . A later quadraphonic version of the format was announced by RCA in April 1970 and first known as Quad-8, then later changed to just Q8. The Compact Cassette was a popular medium for distributing pre-recorded music from the early 1970s to the early 2000s. The first "Compact Cassette" was introduced by Philips in August 1963 in
32148-487: Was almost as if Van Morrison, elusive at any time, had deliberately created an album of music which would indefinitely withstand the vulgarity of music industry image-making. Later they might say that other albums were reminiscent of Astral Weeks , but they could never claim that Astral Weeks was like anything else." According to Greil Marcus , Martin Scorsese said that the first fifteen minutes of his 1976 film Taxi Driver
32336-466: Was at his house when I was working on a song which began, 'If I venture down the slipstream' and that's why I called it 'Astral Weeks'." "It was a painting", McCartney corrects. "There were several paintings in the studio at the time. Van looked at the painting and it suggested astral travelling to him." The album cover photograph of Van Morrison was taken by Joel Brodsky , best known for his "Young Lions" photoshoot with Jim Morrison . The squared circle in
32524-430: Was based on Astral Weeks . Astral Weeks did not sell as an album, even still today. A lot of people like it, mostly musicians and other artists and writers etc. like it, but as an album, it didn't sell. — Van Morrison (1979) The critical recognition and renown of Astral Weeks came to overshadow Morrison's subsequent work, as well as Morrison himself. According to biographer Johnny Rogan , his recording career
32712-423: Was done." In a Rolling Stone interview in 1972, Morrison told John Grissim Jr.: "I was really pretty happy with the album. The only complaint I had was that it was rather rushed. But I thought it was closer to the type of music I wanted to put out. And still is, actually." It sounded like the man who made Astral Weeks was in terrible pain, pain most of Van Morrison's previous works had only suggested; but like
32900-414: Was from this that in medieval and modern times, album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, autographs, sketches, photographs and the like are collected. This in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item. The first audio albums were actually published by the publishers of photograph albums. Single 78 rpm records were sold in
33088-399: Was issued in 1952 on two extended play 45s, with two songs on each side, in both packagings. The 10-inch and 12-inch LP record (long play), or 33 + 1 ⁄ 3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record often had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, and it was adopted by
33276-410: Was justified because "unlike any record before or since", it "encompasses the passion and tenderness that have always mixed in the best postwar popular music". Astral Weeks influenced future releases of other musicians such as Bono and Bruce Springsteen . Mike Ragogna with HuffPost wrote that Astral Weeks influenced Springsteen's 1973 first album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and two of
33464-545: Was later released as Astral Weeks Live at the Hollywood Bowl . At the beginning of 1968, Van Morrison became involved in a contract dispute with Bang Records that kept him away from any recording activity. This occurred after the sudden death of the label's founder Bert Berns . Born with a congenital heart defect, Berns had a fatal heart attack, and was discovered dead in a New York hotel room on 30 December 1967. Prior to Berns's death, he and Morrison had experienced some creative difficulties; Berns had been pushing Morrison in
33652-433: Was major ... , and I carried this device into my melody as well. The publication of his " Memphis Blues " sheet music in 1912 introduced the 12-bar blues to the world (although Gunther Schuller argues that it is not really a blues, but "more like a cakewalk"). This composition, as well as his later " St. Louis Blues " and others, included the habanera rhythm, and would become jazz standards . Handy's music career began in
33840-470: Was part of the Modern Jazz Quartet . Morrison was still working with Kielbania and Payne but, for these sessions, they were essentially replaced. According to Kielbania, "I got to show all the bass lines to Richard Davis. He embellished a lot of them, but I gave him the feeling." Davis proved, perhaps, to be the most pivotal instrumentalist during these sessions. "If you listen to the album, every tune
34028-540: Was released in 1970, Warner Bros. ran full-page advertisements remarking on the unavailability of Astral Weeks in record stores, calling it a "damn shame" that it "ended up as what you might call a critically acclaimed but obscure album ... If you want it and can't find it, yell at the store's record buyer. Loud, because you're the customer and you're always right. Undo the veils of potential obscurity." Astral Weeks ' critical standing improved greatly over time. It became viewed as one of rock's greatest records and
34216-441: Was remote from us, 'cause he came in and went into a booth ... And that's where he stayed, isolated in a booth. I don't think he ever introduced himself to us, nor we to him ... And he seemed very shy". Drummer Connie Kay later told Rolling Stone that he approached Morrison and asked "what he wanted me to play, and he said to play whatever I felt like playing. We more or less sat there and jammed." Morrison's impression of
34404-626: Was the first album she purchased as a teenager and that it opened her up musically. In August 2010, director and choreographer, Jessica Wallenfels , staged a production in Portland, Oregon , of a rock opera/story ballet of Astral Weeks called Find me Beside You . In November 2008, Van Morrison performed two concerts at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, California playing the entire Astral Weeks album. The band featured Jay Berliner , who played on
34592-446: Was the first tape format widely used alongside vinyl from 1965 until being phased out by 1983, being gradually supplanted by the cassette tape throughout the 1970s and early 1980s; the popularity of the cassette reached its peak during the late 1980s before sharply declining during the 1990s. The cassette had largely disappeared by the first decade of the 2000s. Most albums are recorded in a studio , although they may also be recorded in
34780-529: Was the leader of a racially integrated band named King of Swing. His jazz concert in the Carnegie Hall in 1938 was the first ever to be played there. The concert was described by Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history". Shep Fields also helped to popularize "Sweet" Jazz music through his appearances and Big band remote broadcasts from such landmark venues as Chicago's Palmer House , Broadway's Paramount Theater and
34968-402: Was the whole album." In his biography, Clinton Heylin gives the date for the second session as 1 October and states that "Only 'As Young Lovers Do' from this session would make the album" contending that this is the reason for the different "lounge-jazz sound" on this track. Other biographers have primarily noted that the early morning first of October session was abandoned without producing any of
35156-451: Was very unusual to play classical guitar in that context", says Berliner. The first session, held in the evening on 25 September 1968, produced four recordings that made it to the album. Only three had initially been intended for inclusion: " Cyprus Avenue ", " Madame George ", and " Beside You ". Although not scheduled to play, Payne still attended the first session and listened as another flautist played his parts. To this day, nobody recalls
35344-459: Was voted the fourth best album of all time in Paul Gambaccini 's poll of 50 prominent American and English rock critics. It was also ranked second greatest by Mojo in 1995, and third by The Times . In 2003, it was ranked number 19 by Rolling Stone on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revision and dropping to number 60 in the 2020 reboot of
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