Wild Night

Doctor Wu and I went to see Van Morrison at The Patriot Center (George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia). Great show!

Here’s the setlist:
1. All Work And No Play (Van entered shortly after the band and was playing sax)
2. Playhouse
3. Stranded (Van on sax again)
4. Back On Top
5. There Stands The Glass
6. Only A Dream
7. Bright Side Of the Road
8. Big Blue Diamonds
9. In The Midnight (great performance…rocked the house)
10. Cleaning Windows
11. Crazy Love
12. Moondance (solos and intros except for the 2 female and 1 male back up singers who never did get introduced. Even Van played 2 solos on his sax.)
13. I Can't Stop Loving You (Doctor Wu and I looked at each with a “WTH?”)
14. Precious Time
15. Have I Told You Lately
16. Help Me (with James Hunter, the opening act. This song got the house stompin’ along)
17. Brown Eyed Girl (with the house lights up so Van could watch the audience sing and dance)
18. Wild Night (sent the back up singers scrambling through sheet music books to no avail so they just went with it.)
19. Gloria (and the band rocked it!)

Review from a Van L subscriber: “The songs almost always featured the steel guitar and fiddle/violin but even the non-country songs sounded great in these versions. Twice Van turned and scolded the drummer for missed cues and once even the steel guitar player got a quick hand signal to play quieter. The sound board engineer after the show said he was actually pretty good tonight but Wild Night threw him and the light guys. Chris Barber was excellent on trombone but Pee Wee Ellis was too subdued except on Moondance when he took off. Van played harmonica a lot even on BEG which was odd. He came in on the bass part, the bridge I suppose, but still it worked. James Hunter opened and did a 5-6 song set all but one from the new cd but he was GREAT. He sounds like the 50's, Sam Cooke and James Brown all rolled into one.”

Wonderful show, especially for Doctor Wu and I who'd never seen him live. His voice was exceptional, and I particilarly liked the scatting. He's rarely directly 'on-key' but the music is soulful so you never care. Wish he'd done an encore though -- the crowd stomped around Gloria ended and we thought he'd come back, but they brought the house lights up and it was time to go. Doctor Wu bought us t-shirts as souvenirs...has the photo above on it :)