{"id":24267,"date":"2021-05-11T12:52:11","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T16:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=24267"},"modified":"2021-05-11T12:53:50","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T16:53:50","slug":"listen-to-the-lions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/listen-to-the-lions\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen to the Lion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Listen to the Lion\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SWX-4eDxdDs?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>He was a great&#8230;man!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Even in his prime, <strong>Van Morrison<\/strong> wasn&#8217;t ever accused of being remotely &#8220;hinged.&#8221; He hasn&#8217;t married his wife&#8217;s daughter yet, so for me, I haven&#8217;t quite reached the level of discomfort I feel over Woody Allen. I wonder if he&#8217;s fully losing his mind, maybe getting dementia or some other condition that people at his age can get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I scanned through his new album, with some generic title and clip-art cover. It is as execrable as you might have read in reviews. It&#8217;s got that anti-Semitic single you&#8217;ve probably heard about. And another song calling those of us on Facebook idiots. All that&#8217;s missing is a duet with Clint Eastwood entitled &#8220;Get Off My Lawn.&#8221; It&#8217;s not worth discussing the music. It&#8217;s as generic as the album title and cover art. The lyrics are pathetic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wonder how much more of these meltdown albums we&#8217;re going to be subjected to as the first wave of rockers who wrote their own songs reaches their final years of fear and misery. Pre-rock artists like Sinatra could be spoonfed classics written by others as their personal worldview might have been caving in. That generation of artists didn&#8217;t stand for anything personal. They could &#8220;Put on a Happy Face&#8221; from the American Songbook with the help of a nurse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sadly, Van Morrison still has access to his original voice while bitterly rocking away on his porch and watching the world around him become a place that threatens him. He once had the ability to &#8220;Listen to the Lion.&#8221; I&#8217;m going to keep that part of the artist alive and let this present-day crank die off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even in his prime, Van Morrison wasn&#8217;t ever accused of being remotely &#8220;hinged.&#8221; He hasn&#8217;t married his wife&#8217;s daughter yet, so for me, I haven&#8217;t quite reached the level of discomfort I feel over Woody Allen. I wonder if he&#8217;s fully losing his mind, maybe getting dementia or some other condition that people at his <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/listen-to-the-lions\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24267"}],"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=24267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}