Intermission: Taking a Break from Reviewing APS Websites With Van Morrison and Lester Bangs

After three-days spent mired in the stinky mud of APS middle school websites, your humble blogger needs a short respite. How about we consider, very briefly, Van Morrison and the album Astral Weeks? (Blogger puts needle down on old, scratchy record, Side A, "Astral Weeks", and sits back in an eternally comfortable thrift store arm chair)

Ahhhhh...I feel better already.

And to help us refocus on what's real and what really constitutes art, love, music and redemption, let's go to that critic ne plus ultra Lester Bangs, and his words on this album.

I think I'll shut up now. For now. (Blogger reads Bangs and listens to the rest of Side One, especially "Cyprus Avenue" while staring at empty wall as he sits back in the ultra-comfortable arm chair)



P.S.: My all-time favorite piece by L. Bangs is on New Year's Eve. Its opening sentence is:

“On New Year’s Eve of 1972 I attended a great party thrown by someone I didn’t know and inadvertently fell into a protracted conversation with this nearsighted social worker about 20 or 25 who kept babbling about his Volkswagen until I finally had to say: ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the owning of a Volkswagen is a social, or a political act?’”

Way back, back in the late 80s, I was browsing through the deep, deep discount bin at the University Bookstore in Seattle and ran smack dab into a pile of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung remainders going for about 20% of the cover price.

My life hasn't been quite the same since.

The New Year's Eve piece is in there along with the Astral Weeks bit and many others. If you haven't read it, please flee your computer this very second and procure a copy. I'll wait while you're gone before delving back into the Hell of middle school websites 24 hours or so from now.

Meanwhile, I'm flipping the scratchy record over to Side B..."Young Lovers Do"...(Blogger sits further back in eternally comfortable thrift store arm chair, puts feet up on vaguely smelly thrift store footrest)