todays saturday is by an old standard, van morrison. while the singers biggest hits are most likely to be heard at the hangge uppe or ricks american cafe, there is a whole bed of work that many of us, myself included, have probably never heard, and thats where todays track comes from. i can still remember the first time i heard this song (thanks to nick sha, the cool guy) during a memorable night of just hanging out with the motley crew of people that was left in the house during fall break when everyone else was at home.
so why do i like “snow in san anselmo”, the opening track of “hard nose the highway”, way more than “brown eyed girl”? first of all, because girls dont scream whenever it comes on at the bar (probably because its never played at the bar), and consequently chris jordan doesnt scream when it comes on at the bar to make fun of those girls. second, theres just so much going on all the time. it starts out with piano and, you guessed it, a choir, which makes it automatically pretty sweet. then after the first verse, it suddenly changes into a full jazz combo breakdown, complete with (presumably) an upright bass, saxamophone, piano and those one of a kind jazz drums. but wait, theres more. the choir is back! and since we all know that i love just about any song that has any sort of dramatic change in the middle of it, it was a pretty safe bet that id be a fan of this one too. its cool because the little jazz section is, in a way, the chorus of the song, but there are really no words at all, save for a few from the choir. pretty unconventional, but it totally works.
friends chose vm’s “into the mystic” to play behind their first dance as a married couple–an awesome choice.
though for a brown-eyed girl in what sometimes seems a blonde-haired/blue-eyed girl’s world, of course i’ll always have a spot in my heart for “brown-eyed girl.” i wouldn’t scream for it at bars, though. meanwhile, as a kid, i always thought crystal gayle was saying “don’tcha make my brown eyes blue,” as in, “i’m perfectly content with my brown eyes, and would much prefer them to blue ones.” i’m over it now
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