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A Night in San Francisco
Polydor 314-521-290-2
(Released May, 1994)
CD1:
CD2:
Recorded live at The Masonic Auditorium, San Francisco, Saturday, December 18, 1993, and at The Mystic Theatre, Petaluma, on Sunday, December 12, 1993
Review by Scott Thomas:
Showing a propensity for releasing live albums at 10 year intervals, 1994
marked the release of A Night in San Francisco, Morrison's third and
arguably best in-concert set. By the late 1980's, Van had stopped participating
in formal tours preferring instead to play scattered concerts at times and
venues of his own choosing with a constantly evolving set of musicians. For
these late 1993 West Coast concerts, Morrison takes a kind of showband approach:
band members Georgie Fame and Brian Kennedy, his daughter Shana, and blues
greats Junior Wells, Jimmy Withersoon, and John Lee Hooker all get their turns
at the mike. This, however, is not Ringo's All-Starrs. Van weaves his guests
into the program without ever losing the overall thread of the performance:
clearly, it was his show even when he was watching from the wings. Thus,
sweet-voiced Brian Kennedy's rendition of "You Make Me Feel So Free" is given a
surge of drama by Van's sudden reappearance in the final stanzas. Kennedy and
Shana do a fine job harmonizing on "Beautiful Vision." Van, Wells, and
Witherspoon create a raunchy, rainy blues segment near the end of Disc One
before the sun comes out again on "Tupelo Honey," and Van and John Lee recover
quite nicely from their sleep-inducing version of "Gloria" on Too Long
in Exile by redoing the song here with aplomb and humor. Only Georgie
Fame's "Jumpin' with Symphony Sid" seems thrown in to mollify the ego of the
talented organist / vocalist.
This band, though lacking a string section, has a denser sound than that of the Caledonia Soul Orchestra probably because it adds a second keyboard player and a percussionist. Though one could argue that they lack the astonishing subtlety of the landmark 1973 outfit, they are superb nonetheless and manage to keep pace with the churning creativity of their leader. The album's instrumental highlight comes early on in the program via Ronnie Johnson's chaotic, but somehow angelic electric guitar solo on "Vanlose Stairway / Trans-Euro Train / Fool For You."
As for Morrison himself, he proves on A Night in San Francisco what he sought to prove on Too Long in Exile; that middle-age, while it may have deepened and darkened his voice, had not diminished the power of his voice or the fecundity of his musical imagination. Instead of interspersing his originals with covers, as was the case on It's Too Late to Stop Now!, Van weaves the two together creating some unusual and unlikely associations. Thus, the Enlightenment track "See Me Through" segues seamlessly into Van's otherwise unreleased "Soldier of Fortune" which in turn unfolds into Sly Stone's "Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again," and "In the Garden" turns into Sam Cooke's "You Send Me" which, after briefly quoting "Real Real Gone," becomes "Allegheny," a modern folk song written by Bill Staines.
Part of The Van Morrison Website