Van Morrison: Blowin' Your Mind! [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

Music On Vinyl presses it on 180g vinyl. Blowin' Your Mind! carries Van Morrison's first solo hit, "Brown Eyed Girl," and Rolling Stone counts it among the 40 essential albums of 1967.

This edition

• 180g vinyl

About the album

Before Astral Weeks there was a two-day session in New York. Fresh out of Them and signed to Bert Berns's Bang Records, Van Morrison cut these songs on March 28 and 29, 1967, with Berns producing. They were meant for a run of singles; Berns gathered them into an album instead, wrapped in a swirling psychedelic sleeve, and kept the arrangements punchy, with stately organ and stinging guitar circling Morrison's voice.

"Brown Eyed Girl" is the one everybody knows, all sunshine and sha-la-las, but the rest shows how far Morrison's writing already reached. "He Ain't Give You None" wanders past Notting Hill Gate and Curzon Street, remembered from his London touring days, and "T.B. Sheets" is a slow, unflinching blues that points toward everything he did next. Side B brings "Spanish Rose," "Ro Ro Rosey," "Who Drove The Red Sports Car" and a rousing "Midnight Special."

A little over a year later came Astral Weeks, and "Brown Eyed Girl" went on to become a fixture of every wedding band set list in the land. Somewhere a cover band is learning it right now; we wish them well.

Also at Kops: more Van Morrison on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Bang / Music On Vinyl (cat# MOVLP594), a reissue of the 1967 album.