Bang Masters

After departing from his R&B group Them, Van Morrison worked with producer Bert Berns’ Bang label, recording the classic “Brown Eyed Girl” alongside a series of hard-nosed R&B based tunes that were, according to Morrison, more his producer’s ideas than his. An album, Blowin’ Your Mind, was issued from the sessions and various other collections appeared in subsequent years featuring that material with other outtakes. This release collects all those recordings (though, annoyingly, it does leave off the originally issued take of “He Ain’t Give You None”), including an alternate version of “Brown Eyed Girl” that’s of special interest. Early versions of “Beside You” and “Madame George,” two centerpieces from his next album Astral Weeks, are here in much altered and bluesier form. The percolating tension of the nearly ten-minute “T.B. Sheets” is incredibly taut and one of Morrison’s definitive performances. A couple of tunes are lighter fare than Morrison’s usual brooding self (“Ro Ro Rosey,” “Chick-a-Boom”). But the ferocity with which he delivers “Joe Harper Saturday Morning” and “Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)” suggest Morrison had found some way to express his frustration with this less than ideal professional situation.