Even the most fierce animals of the savannah can be sweet at them when the latest curves of the road heads, but the Norwegian lions, to what is seen, retain the beast and sullen plant for many five -year periods that already support them and bone the boss. Van Morrison is probably the only artist on planet Earth capable of inaugurating a show not only with meticulous punctuality, but five minutes before the stipulated schedule, with the occasional thousands of spectators still finding out where the hell fell their seats. But the Gray of this gentleman is so faithful and obedient that it is appropriate with unbalanced displays and gestures that in the following 92 minutes extraordinary events may occur. And such was the case.
As soon as a quarter of an hour had elapsed when Belfast sat in front of an Rhodes pian What Would I Doan issue that is not among the more common 125 in its direct history. And it occurred, they guess well, the first of the various fabulous moments that was going to bring us tonight with an always unpredictable genius (except in character). An artist who appeals to the essences of the soul, the rhythm ‘n’ bluesjazz, folk and even country to end up raising a speech as unrepeatable as patrimonial. Because theirs are not vocal strings, but a rosetta stone to unravel why the great genres of the twentieth century are still exciting.
We mentioned the night and it was just a way of speaking, because the old George Ivan likes to act in broad daylight and scratched, in effect, until the last ray so he has not to have to unravel from his everlasting sunglasses. But this man did not come into the world – 80 years will make that on August 31 – to conquer any orange award, but to substantially improve the experience of users in our condition of living beings. Only under the auspices of some interplanetary alienation can be explained that an almost octogenarian retains that powerful, torrential and unwavering.
Although it is still more difficult to conceive than an artist with half a hundred albums and six long decades on the service sheet retains that ability not to repeat itself a single day, to drill our soul with an unlikely intersection between In the Afternoon y Raincheck or undertake a Real Real Gone so vitamin as to lead to Sam Cooke and that You Send Me soaked in improvisation and chemically pure love.
They did well the 4,000 souls that pulverized the tickets for this first date of the Botanist Night Festival, and some of them may have combined enough Vanmorrisonian passion, a sanitized domestic economy and virtual tails skills to repeat this Thursday, given the almost total certainty that the teacher will only be repeated in his laconic unbelieving presence. Everything else depends on the humor, the pálpito and the instinct of our old man, knowing that his fabulous nine accompanying musicians are vaccinated against vertigo, starting with that huge saxophonist who responds to the name of Christopher White.
The repertoire is decided and announces on the march, so as soon as we can step on the ground with the immortal Days Like This (which is already 30 years old, although it seems inconceivable) how to find that a guy who treasures more than 500 original titles ends up disassembly while chaining versions: from the traditional Irish Green Rocky Road a Hank Williams (Cold Cold Heart), with intermediate scale in No Other Babyparadigm of his beloved skiffle of the young years.
Did we count on what such a thing happened? It may not, but to the concerts of Van Morrison it is convenient to go with the mind in white, the ears very open, the phone without drums and the eremita that we all have inside seizing the soul. They pray to their companions to postpone the gossip for when everything is over, because a comment at the wrong time can deprive us of a gesture, a howl, a blow of harmonica or any sudden outburst with that saxophone that Morrison sounds rough and almost Afonical, rough but at the time fabulous and unmistakable.
The filth of our own life, and let’s not say of others, they can either expect if what is settled in front of our noses is the closest to religion that we will experience the agnostics. And the author of Moondance (which, of course, did not sound: in the chapter of great successes we had to settle for Wild Night, Cleaning Windows and the usual closure with Gloria) He knows how to turn the mundane into transcendent, how to get a simple fleeting love or those youthful memories of his mornings as a clean -ristales end up becoming flashes of light that give meaning to our days.
How are we not going to consent to antipathy. There are people who wanders the world without opening their mouths, but they go, perhaps pleased by the sense of astonishment that was consolidating in the gardens of the Complutense University, ended up murmuring us in front of the microphone: “Thank you.” What else can be asked.