SONG OF THE DAY

“Car­a­van” by Van Mor­ri­son (Moon­dance, Warner Bros. Records, 1970). Writ­ten by Van Morrison.

MY TAKE

This was one of the albums I was raised on. Well, to be frank, I was only raised on the A side, though I am famil­iar with the songs on the B side of the album. Side A is “And It Stoned Me”, “Moon­dance”, “Crazy Love”, “Car­a­van”, and “Into The Mys­tic”. Christ, it’s prac­ti­cally his great­est hits right there! (Hence why I’m tag­ging this entry as a “Note­wor­thy Album” as well).

Each of those songs hold a dis­tinct, eter­nal place in my heart, and each in a dif­fer­ent way. For “Car­a­van” its first of all the cohe­sive jam-band-style of it: by that I mean it’s per­fect for a jam band, and has sev­eral spaces in the arrange­ment that are wide open fields for inter­pre­ta­tion, but a good jam doesn’t lose it like so many jam songs do after minute #4. Sec­ond of all, the “la la la” cho­rus. Very rem­i­nis­cent, very catchy, mem­o­rable, stuck-in-my-head-able, and every­one in the car can sing along even if it’s the first time they’re hear­ing it! Third of all, the story: it’s meant for the road, it’s meant for peo­ple going some­where on the long haul, it’s meant for wind through your hair. That’s what he was think­ing of when he wrote it, and it still trans­lates per­fectly today.

I know it’s get­ting repet­i­tive, but this is def­i­nitely a win­dows down, high­way dri­ving in sum­mer song. Prac­ti­cally every other song I’ve blogged about this sum­mer seems to gar­ner that response from me, but that’s just what sum­mer does to me! It makes me want to cel­e­brate music! It makes me want to road trip! It brings me back, always, to clas­sic rock, clas­sic albums, days when I sat in the back­seat as we drove 18 hours to the coast and dad was the DJ.

BRIEF FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- “Caravan“ was a con­cert high­light for sev­eral years and was included as one of the songs on Morrison’s 1974 acclaimed live album, It’s Too Late to Stop Now.

- It was also per­formed by Mor­ri­son with The Band in the 1978 film by Mar­tin Scors­ese enti­tled The Last Waltz which com­mem­o­rates The Band’s last con­cert appear­ance together before dis­band­ing in 1976.

- In his book, Song­book, about his 31 favourite songs, Nick Hornby names “Car­a­van” from the live album, It’s Too Late to Stop Now as the song he wants played at his funeral. He writes that

“in the long, vamped pas­sage right before the cli­max Morrison’s band seems to iso­late a moment some­where between life and its after­math, a big, baroque entrance hall of a place where you can stop and think about every­thing that has gone before.”

Then he humor­ously real­izes that this is also the place where Mor­ri­son intro­duces the band and won­ders how the mourn­ers will feel about hear­ing all the unknown people’s names being called out as they file out of the funeral, but says “I’m not chang­ing my mind, so there.”

- When asked about his enjoy­ment per­form­ing in The Last Waltz, Eric Clap­ton com­mented that “For me, Muddy [Waters] and Van [Mor­ri­son] steal the show. Van doing [“Car­a­van”] with the leg kicks. Some of the great­est live music you’ll ever see.”

- It was listed as No. 254 on the All Time 885 Great­est Songs com­piled in 2004 by WXPN from listener’s votes.

- The band Count­ing Crows filled in for Van Mor­ri­son at his 1993 induc­tion cer­e­mony at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and per­formed “Caravan”.

VIDEO OF THE DAY

I don’t gen­er­ally like live record­ings because it usu­ally doesn’t sync with all of the per­fec­tion that I fell in love with on the studio’s cut. I don’t like how’s he’s screamy screechy in this per­for­mance, he seems horse, and I’m not really a fan of how the tempo seems ramped up, I def­i­nitely pre­fer the more dance­able album ver­sion. But I will say the horns are tri­umphant here! And that’s ALWAYS a good thing! WATCH FOR THE FAMOUS LEG KICKS: