Astral Weeks may have given Morrison cult cred, but cults are formed by terribly insecure people who need to feel they have superior intellect or insight. Weird and anti-social pretty much describes his behavior, and if I wanted weird and anti-social stream of consciousness, I could just go down to where the homeless guys hang out, screaming about aliens and zoo people. Stream of consciousness is only interesting when the consciousness being streamed is interesting, and Van Morrison’s is really not that interesting. So what if it was “stream of consciousness”? Big deal. Jazz musicians had been doing that for years.
So what if they improvised a lot? Big deal.
As much as I love the 60’s, I’ll never understand the era’s fascination with Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, an album that should appear next to the dictionary definition of colossal bore.
