Astral Weeks

December 11, 2017
Music journalist Walsh’s uneven history uses the sessions that became Van Morrison’s enigmatic album Astral Weeks as an anchor for a wider history of the now-mostly-forgotten Boston music scene of 1968. That summer, Morrison left N.Y.C. to get away from the shady dealings of his producer, and to try to pursue his own musical path. He performed shows in Boston under the name the Van Morrison Conspiracy, and during his show at the Catacombs, he developed the songs that would eventually comprise Astral Weeks. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with musicians and on archival research, Walsh faithfully explores “the Bosstown Sound”—Boston’s own short-lived contribution to the psychedelic sounds of the late 1960s—and chronicles the lives of Boston bands such as Beacon Street Union, Orpheus, and Ultimate Spinach (in which future Steely Dan member Jeff “Skunk” Baxter played). The city’s jug-band scene, the harmonica player Mel Lyman (who started a commune whose members thought he was God), and the acid experiments at Harvard led by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert all helped to create an atmosphere that influenced the music on Morrison’s album. Walsh can be an entertaining narrator, but he fails to weave his narrative threads into a seamless chronicle of rock-and-roll history.

January 1, 2018
A chaotic cultural chronicle of a great city during a pivotal year.A lot was happening in Boston in 1968. Looking back, writes musician and music critic Walsh, "is like catching a glimpse of an upside down, hallucinogenic version of the thriving metropolis that stands today." In his first book, the author attempts to bring it all back home, to connect a tangle of loose wires and see what one thing might have had to do with the other. Over here, we have Irish transplant Van Morrison, set to make his greatest album: a one-of-a-kind, stream-of-consciousness song cycle steeped in death and rebirth and "completely preoccupied with notions and transcendence and the sublime." Over there, we have Mel Lyman, the writer and musician who established a worshipful cult following known as the Fort Hill Community. At the same time, MGM Records was trying to invent a genre called the Boston Sound, which garnered more press than listeners. There was also a cut-up collage program on local TV, What's Happening, Mr. Silver? that was capturing everyone's attention. The documentarian Frederick Wiseman was upsetting officials with Titicut Follies, the movie The Boston Strangler was trying an unresolved case on screen, and a pre-Ram Dass Richard Alpert was turning on and tuning in with Timothy Leary. Walsh delivers plenty of information and offers some insightful stories about this time--particularly about the making of Morrison's masterpiece--and occasionally draws some interesting associations: the mystical influences, for example, that inspired the Velvet Underground, their acolyte Jonathan Richman, and Morrison himself. Unfortunately, the narrative parts fail to fully cohere. Unlike Will Hermes' Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (2011), which fully captured the changing cultural landscape of a thriving city (New York), no clear image ever quite emerges and nothing solid develops from all these coincidences.A patchy work of pop history that tells more than it shows.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 15, 2018

Boston-based journalist and musician Walsh uses the creation of Van Morrison's classic Astral Weeks album, written primarily when the singer was living in Cambridge, MA, for a year, as the framework for this history of 1968-era Boston. He examines music, underground journalism, film, public television, FM radio, and a commune for a narrative of a moment and period in a city that is often not examined. A stew of countercultural ideas, mysticism, and groundbreaking avant-garde experiments in various art forms was brewing in and around Boston at the close of the Sixties, and Walsh weaves this story while documenting Morrison's activities leading up to the recording of his otherworldly sounding masterpiece. Using dozens of interviews as well as published accounts and history, the author paints a sprawling cultural portrait with a vivid cast of characters and events while contextualizing the city's social and cultural history. VERDICT Moving from paradigm-shifting art to the more bizarre corners of the counterculture, this book illuminates a lesser-known portion of the tumultuous cultural history of America during the late Sixties. [See Prepub Alert, 10/4/17.]--James Collins, Morristown-Morris Twp. P.L., NJ

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.