Van the Man

Something for the weekend …..
I have been interested to observe the disappearance of many Van Morrison songs from YouTube over the last while. I used to look at some from time to time. For example, there were a couple of videos of Cassandra Wilson’s wonderful interpretation of Tupelo Honey which are now gone. The video showing his duet with Sinead O’Connor on The Late Show* is also gone. His version of that Dublin song based on the Patrick Kavanagh poem, Raglan Road, with Derek Bell is gone.
What has been added recently is a set of ‘obscured’ videos from OfficialExileFilms.

I also notice that there is some stuff made available by permission of Exile Productions, his production company. Here is Jen Chapin singing Into the Mystic.

There has been quite a bit of Morrison activity lately with compilations and further releases of his remastered back catalog. And his view of record companies controlling his earlier work is well known. He has had his own label, Exile Productions, for many years. The ‘obscured’ videos carry a note pointing to vanmorrison.com where a “very important masterwork” is promised, and videos will appear ‘unobscured’. It will be interesting to see what emerges.
I notice that on the ‘obscured’ version of St Dominic’s Preview above there is no information about who is accompanying him or when or where the recording is. It looks as if it might be from Donal Lunny’s TV show, Sult, but I can’t be sure. One hopes that this type of detail will be added in any more ‘controlled’ release of videos.
I looked very quickly to see if I could see any obvious reported background on this activity. But didn’t find anything.
I found this interesting as an example of an artist taking a position on how much he wants to control the reception of his work in an environment like Youtube.
* For Irish readers, yes, I do mean The Late Show, not The Late Late Show 😉