Word: uptempo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Anselmo" is cemented in a real experience, but almost unreal in its rarity. It is a picture, a series of strung together images, missions, and massage parlors, pancake houses, and waitresses, barren and dull. The rhythm section plods its way through a descending progression, only to break into an uptempo jazz styled passage: walking bass, spiralling saxophone solo blended into the overall mix, piano chords cementing the whole, the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Chorus offering incongruous styles throughout. The vocal is subdued, though not without subtleties of phrasing, and intention...
...cool jazz, of nightclub music, that the smoke-filled cavernness of the Orpheum couldn't destroy. But for my six bucks, the best song of the night was a perfectly rendered fifties version of Erroll Garner's "Misty." Slightly electrified, the song was a magnificent example of transplanted, uptempo, fifties nightclub jazz. The bass line walked brilliantly and the piano fills and the piano solo could've come from the late show at Birdland. And Van's gourd, subtle vocal would have made King Cote proud...
...Orpheum Theatre, with the bassman dancing frantically by himself just offstage, and you have a picture of Morrison's new music. "Wild Night" has more meaning, but is just as joyous and just as much fun to listen to. These two songs summarize the new Van Morrison: uptempo and very much alive...
...wraith appears in black velvet pants and jacket, a little lace jabot at her throat. The mordant chords purl from the back of the stage, and she becomes an authentically possessed figure. On the slow numbers, the words are not sung; they seem to float from her throat. The uptempo songs could survive almost any rendition, but when Elly sings them, she charges them with alternating currents of energy and melancholia. She does not interpret the songs, she becomes their owner-and their tenant. In Carousel, she sings in a lazy, wheeling style-until suddenly the merry-go-round lurches...