Pegasus News - Dallas/Fort Worth

By John Clarke, of It's Smelling a Lot Like Tuesday

It's snuck up on me a bit, but tonight I'll get to see a legendary musician perform, one Van Morrison. Most people in the audience will have been looking forward to this show for months, for good reason. But I'm ambivalent. Here's why:

1. The setting. I am used to being disappointed at musical performances. I see lots of shows and lots of stuff tends to get in the way of my enjoyment of them that has nothing to do with the musician. If the place is too big, I feel detached from the performer. If my fellow audience members talk too much during the show, I'll get angry. If the sound is bad, I'll feel cheated.
2. The familiarity factor. If I'm not familiar enough with a musicians work and the music takes some getting used to, I won't enjoy the show. I've listened to Van's Astral Weeks about 57 times. And I know most of his hits. So this shouldn't be a problem with him.
3. The set list. If an artist takes a "radical departure" as my buddy Rob likes to say, the show could suck. Van's latest album is all covers of really old country songs. Van's great, but I want to hear him do his own stuff, not a stuff from a circa 1954 country jukebox.
4. The look. Van is no longer the long haired skinny guy I see staring up from the cover of 1968's Astral Weeks. That's OK because nobody stays young forever, even me. But sometimes if I can't translate my mental image of a performer with what they actually look like, it'll bother me.

And it's quite possible that all of the items I listed above are complete bullshit. If went to a huge concert hall that had bad sound in which the over-the-hill performer did nothing but Christmas music, and that musician happened to be Johnny Cash, I'd be ecstatic. I never got the chance to see J. Cash.

I will get to see V. Morrison. And It might be the best show I've ever seen.

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