{"id":22646,"date":"2015-08-12T10:30:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-12T14:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=22646"},"modified":"2015-08-12T10:19:03","modified_gmt":"2015-08-12T14:19:03","slug":"wavelength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wavelength\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Any Song Skirt More Closely With Cheesy Rock Moves Than Van Morrison&#8217;s &#8220;Wavelength&#8221; While Still Retaining a Respectable Level of Greatness?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CsEdUH3j1KU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not suggesting that &#8220;Wavelength&#8221; is among <strong>Van Morrison<\/strong>&#8216;s Top 10 Greatest Songs, but I think it&#8217;s his last great one. Oh, I know he had some well-regarded records after that single and collaborations with well-regarded Irish folk musicians, but I found those records kind of boring. I like when Van gets worked up, and he gets worked up about all kinds of funny things on &#8220;Wavelength.&#8221; First, the lyrics milk the last drops of 1970s pickup lines, somehow avoiding references to astrological signs. Next, there&#8217;s the spacey triplets riff on the synth. But that&#8217;s not all: there&#8217;s a Steely Dan-worthy, jaw-dropping guitar solo. A horn section. A woman sawing away on rock violin. Background singers in ruffled, silky garments. A close-up of Van&#8217;s polyester bellbottoms. And it goes without saying that Van scats. Nowadays, a band like Arcade Fire jams 14 band members onstage and manages to sound like the minimalist Cure. Van&#8217;s band is the sound of excess!<\/p>\n<p>Does any song skirt more closely with cheesy rock moves than Van Morrison&#8217;s &#8220;Wavelength&#8221; while still retaining a respectable level of greatness?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not suggesting that &#8220;Wavelength&#8221; is among Van Morrison&#8216;s Top 10 Greatest Songs, but I think it&#8217;s his last great one. Oh, I know he had some well-regarded records after that single and collaborations with well-regarded Irish folk musicians, but I found those records kind of boring. I like when Van gets worked up, and <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wavelength\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}