It's Too Late to Stop Now

I thought this was a fun listen, coming from someone who normally never listens to a live album. It was a very relaxing and jazzy listen.

While I had never listened to this album in its entirety, I’m glad it was included in the 1001 Albums list and gave me the push to finally check it out. I get that some people may not enjoy live albums, but this one is great from front to back in my opinion. It contains several amazing tracks, including Saint Dominic’s Preview, Domino, Bring It on Home to Me, and so many others. I feel like he effortlessly blends blues, jazz, folk, and soul into a solid rock album. This also happens to fall right within my taste, as I really enjoy the jazzy vibes and could listen to this on any given night while sipping a cognac.

I love hour and a half long live albums

very good 8/10

Van Morrison is a great singer His studio albums are top notch. This live album was kinda of an extension but missing something. He has the energy but the slickness is missing

Never been a fan, and this has not altered the dial.

It’s fun but it is in a live album of covers, in no way is this essential.

Love me a good live albums

As is the case with Moondance, unfortunately this is pretty dang good. Morrison is a pretty great live singer but OH MAN does he make some goofy choices. The stuttering? The thing where he says the rest of the line at the very end of the bar like he forgot what the words were until that moment? Fucking hilarious. Pretty breezy listen for a 90 minute live album to be fair! Was kind of not looking forward to having to do this (sorry NOT sorry Van) but yeah, pretty nice!

While I do enjoy the tunes of Van Morrison, an hour and half is too long

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with the live albums on this list. Calling balls and strikes here: it feels like a cheat code. Compilations are banned, but a live album is basically just a backdoor way to sneak a greatest hits record in, and it's impossible to compare them apples-to-oranges with actual studio albums. All that meta project stuff aside... I actually really enjoyed this despite how long it is. The backing band completely changes the songs. It doesn't just sound like a sloppy live rehash of his studio stuff; the instrumentals give everything a totally different vibe and make it its own distinct thing. I’m not a massive Van Morrison guy and don't really know his lore, but hearing him here actually shifted my perception of him. It adds a whole new wrinkle to his music I wouldn’t have caught otherwise. Just a really good vibe.

Excellent

My edition of the book says this is one of the 'greatest live albums'. Really? It's ok, don't get me wrong, but... really?

Impressive audio quality and playing but a very long runtime. The rythm and blues goes in smoothly with only the occasional dip into the classic 12-bar blues, keeping it fresh. But not fresh enough for the runtime. This is one for the fans or those wishing to keep quality background music on without changing the record for a while.

I don't hate it. It has jazzy and bluesy moments that are pretty fun. But it's surrounded by a lot that just completely blended into the background for me.

After college I lived in an apartment ive mentioned before, Superbad poster on the wall etc. Well, we came across this album and it had a lot of mystique. You could buy it for $150 otherwise it wasn’t available anywhere else. BUT we discovered it was available on (defunct?) music streaming platform Grooveshark under the name “Val Mallrison” The album on its own is pretty flawless but the elusive nature made it that sweeter. It’s only been available on Spotify for a few years now. Hope you all stuck around for the final minutes, most electric close to an album possibly ever. Sick name/cover too.

In the running for top album to listen to on a porch while having a pleasant conversation with your wife

Long, but it has some really great moments. Domino and Into The Mystic are family favorites. I thought some of the funk and blues was fun too (ive been working). Van Morrison has an amazingly unique feel to each song vocally. Curious to read his background… I remember reading he played the Whiskey while the Doors were running through there too 4.5 stars

What a joy to listen to this. If you don't like a Van Morrison live album, you don't like music or fun. This ruled. Guy is doing some wild mix of giving his heart and soul / mailing it in, and that mix just works great. Fun shit. Give me all of it,

I guess if you like Van Morrison's ad-libbing you might like this album, but really I think I could have done without an hour and a half of this supposedly great live album. Not an album I'll hurry back to.

Surprisingly alright for a live album but probably not something I'd be likely to put on ever again. It wasn't bad, it's just not the kind of music I'd normally listen to, and it wasn't interesting enough to challenge that Standouts Ain't Nothin' You Can Do Cyprus Avenue 3/5

Sounded great for a live album. One song was kind of annoying cause he must have kept pulling away from microphone, vocals kept fading. Alright rock

Listened to a part of the first disc and a part of the second since it’s too long. From what i heard it’s good tho. Low 4 fav track: i believe to my soul

Van Morrison is great and combined with an excellent rhythm section elevates this live album.

Top-shelf background music. Too long.

So many great tracks. I’ve heard he’s not so good live lately, but this must’ve been a great concert to be at..

Great voice, lively performances and a super clear sound for a live album, but damn, I didn't need to hear one hour and a half of Rhythm and Blues. As said, I think the quality in the musicianship is very present. Van Morrison sings with a lot of passion and expression, specially in the moments where his voice gets louder and sounds raspy. Everyone else showcase a lot of spirit as well. The string sections sound really beautiful, and the horns along with the guitars and drums can get very playful in the brightest moments. However, hearing only and exclusively rhythm blues for such a long time can make it somewhat difficult to sit through, at least for me. Once reached the second disc, I started to feel my brains getting fried, and I even considered given it a bad score if it wasn't thanks to "Here Comes the Night" and "Gloria" bringing some energy. So, regardless of the enthusiasm from the artists, I think this would benefit from having some material removed, as this is not a recording from an unique live performance and instead it is a compilation from many. But I guess it is what it is...

Exemplary live album in terms of sound production, set list, crowd energy, artist energy, and improvisation. Top 5 live albums without question.

No fan of live albums but very nice listen nonetheless

Only previous experience of Van Morrison was Brown Eyed Girl which I forever categorise as a 'shite pub song' as it's the kind of song you always hear played in shit pubs. See also Mr. Brightside. But this was pretty decent.

Van Morrison has a really good voice. Sounds like a fun concert. 3.75 rounded up 4.00

This is a live double album. Do you like Van Morrison? I mean really like him? 92 minutes of live performance like him? Understand... He pulls his ace in the hole that is Into The Mystic on the third track of disc one. That's like 75 more Vanny minutes AFTER his slightly blah live rendition of Into The Mystic. Snark aside, this is relatively easy to listen to. I zoned out somewhat during the 92 minute runtime, but it wasn't the worst experience.

twas ok

boring

Another double live album. Yuck. You cannot convince me that a live album is better than a studio album. If you love a certain band/artist and want to hear what they sound like live but can't go to one of their concerts than sure, listen to a live album. But for a list named "1001 albums you must hear before you die" to include multiple live albums is just stupid. The only good live album is Daft Punk's Alive 2007 album and hilariously that album is not even on this list. Pick any studio Van Morison album and I'll give it a fair shot but I can't sit through a double album of live bullshit for a mediocre at best artist.

A energia e qualidade desse álbum são fenomenais. Kuba Auri.

Not into live albums

A bit long but enjoyed it the whole way through

Ohh this is van morrison

Too long, and Van Morrison is really pretty moring

Not my style

I don’t really like live albums. I don’t really like Van Morrison. This was never going to end well.

The pros: this was recorded well, the brass section were alright. The cons: Van Morrison’s singing; so pretty much the entire album.

Rock, soul, jazz.

That was the worst version of Bring It On Home To Me I've ever heard. The rest of the songs seemed fine but I didn't really know them from anything else. Maybe they were made much much worse than their original versions too?

Really appreciating VMs voice in this live context a lot more than i typically would, and loving the live instruments. Lots of great brass and string work. Big fan of him saying "bringa me my nice shirt" in Help Me. Legitimately had a blast listening to this. Ive always been a (mild) van morrison disliker but i feel like this album made me see the appeal.

I don't like the uneven ellipses in this album title OR Van Morrison's scatting and riffing but this is a fine live album Highlights: "These Dreams of You", "Saint Dominic's Preview", "Gloria"

stoooooooopppppppp

I really do like Van Morrison, but fuck me if I want to listen to an extremely lengthy double LIVE album. That's the kiss of death right there. (I only listened to the first half, and frankly that's enough)

A double is unnecessary. Interesting that this is heralded as the 'best live album' - not quite sure who would be giving rhat rating and why

Quite long for my taste.. for a live album it really made me fill like I was in a public... not a really bit live album guy 3/5

i liked this more than i thought i would, but i wasn't paying too much attention. like a pleasant 3.5 probably.

Delightfully devilish!

Long, alright album of dad rock. It overstayed its welcome for sure, but it was never too bad or offensive, just a little slow and dull. Not my kind of music really

I don't know what the studio versions of these songs are like, but the versions in this album seem fine. The supporting band does a good job and Morrison stays primed throughout the entirety. Overall, it's a fine album but doesn't strike me as the greatest live recording ever. He must have grown tired of playing Brown Eyed Girl because his hits are notably absent from the album's 90-minute run time. What's left are mostly forgettable songs that were probably only worth hearing in a live setting and didn't totally translate into great songs in the recording. Even though its a long album, I think it was worth hearing to both better appreciate Van Morrison's extensive catalogue and to better appreciate his talent as a live/touring musician.

Enjoyable live album, but I'm no hug Van Morrison fan. Music was good, but nothing excellent. Don't think I'll ever listen to this again, but not mad at experiencing it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Like life. Moments of magic, moments of drudgery, all evens out in the wash.

Bon album, les parties de cuivres sont vraiment chouettes.

Ik heb zin gekregen om naar een concert van hem te gaan 🤩

Echt super, helemaal fan van

Boring Vocals Music Lyrics This is a white man just making noise

7 - solid live van

Pleasant enough, but not something they made me jump up. Not a great fan of his vocal style.

Not a great fan of Van, although I really fond of some of his stuff. This album was quite listenable.

Labai geras balsas, quirky pasirodymas, kažkodėl labai ilhai užtruko (bent jautėsi).

Live album, hearing it once is enough for me. Take it off the list.

Moondance was my first album on the generator. I don't know many VM songs, but I loved that album. I really like this album as well. It's the vibe of his music that really attracts me - jazzy, R&B, soul, folk. It makes me want to delve more into his discography, though this type of music is not usually in my wheelhouse.

Good stuff, enjoyed...but still heard these songs thousands of times waiting tables in high school. 4 albums in and they all have very personal connections for better and worse.

It's fine, but also one star removed for Live album. I'd rather judge studio versions of albums than warbly blues and soul tunes.

I'm not a fan of live albums or Van Morrison for that matter. It was an hour and a half!! Too long! The singing was fine.

i'm a big fan of this ear van, but it's inclusion here is puzzling. a live album?

This will be my first time listening to Van Morrison. He sounds like a white guy trying hard to emulate American blues/soul with limited success. The songs are OK, but they don't come anywhere close to his African American contemporaries or predecessors. This would be more tolerable as a single album, but a double live album of this guy is way too much, especially when he's not even very good. Really, list? This album is ranked #11 of 26 albums for 1974. Other 1974 albums rated by me: Sheer Heart Attack(1/26)-5 Queen II(4/26)-4 Pretzel Logic(7/26)-3 Court and Spark(8/26)-4 Here Come The Warm Jets(19/26)-3 Grievous Angel(22/26)-4 Phaedra(25/26)-4

This sounded better than I remember. In my Van Morrison phase, I liked his first 5 albums and this where he lost me. After time, I feel like I understand better what he was trying to do. It's good but doubr I will listen to too often.

Good album for a rainy day. It's long, and I'm not a fan of live albums in general, but I think it's pretty well recorded and his stage presence comes through well.

Simply too much Van Morrison for me, but I'd imagine this is a fan's dream! I liked some of the songs and found the album overall fairly groovy. But, again: it's simply too much. Riding between a 2 and a 3, but I'll be generous and bump it up because I enjoyed the vibes today. You're welcome, Van!!!

7/10

Boooo live albums. It’s extremely rare I’m a fan of these, and this record is no different. The musicianship & vocals here are really tight and performed with a good energy to them. However, the songs themselves fall flat to me. Whilst they are objectively “good”, subjectively they give me very little to get excited about. And when you combine this with a live version I just can’t get fully on board.

There was a lot of, pretty middle of the road, music to get through on this album. This is my second Van Morrison album and I don't really get the appeal.

Crisp production and some nice jamming made this a much better live listen than I expected. Unfortunately that's about all I have to say about it. Nothing bad, nothing amazing.

Mixed feelings. I hate Live albums in general, but the recording here is insanely good quality, and the audience interactions/noises aren't intrusive so I don't mind them too much. The backing music is great, I love the blues sound and all the instrumentals are really solid. Definitely my vibe as an easy-listening background thing. Morrison's voice though is not my thing at all. I don't generally go along with complaints of cultural appropriation, but here, he's putting on an accent, and that's what pushes it over the line into uncomfortable territory. 4 stars for Caledonia Soul Orchestra but it loses 1 star for Van Morrison's vocals.

This album is too long for middling blues. 8(!) of these songs are covers, I can't imagine going to see a band for them to play 8 songs that aren't theirs. Different times I guess. Van Morrison sounds incredibly monotonous most of the time so it's not even like the Jerry Lee Lewis album I had before where the cover adds a ton of energy. Just waiting for this album to end at this point

Dislike his backup musicians' performances

Przed dwóją, bo tak planowałam zbyć tę płytę na początku, uratował to tylko dobry vibe i to, że nieco poczytałam o Vanie. Jeszcze jedna płyta w zestawieniu i może się polubimy.

Correct

not for moi

Alright but not breast

not for me but not like awful

1974 Rock, soul, jazz, live album Me dan ganas de escuchar mas de Van Morrison, pero el album en si no me dice mucho

Great Songs: Into The Mystic, Listen to the Lion Good Songs: Ain't Nothin' You Can Do, Warm Love, These Dreams of You, I Believe to My Soul, I've Been Working, Help Me, Domino, I Just Want to Make Love to You, Here Comes The Night, Caravan, Cyprus Avenue Mid Songs: Wild Children, Bring It on Home to Me, Saint Dominic's Preview, Take Your Hand Out of My Pocket, Gloria Bad Songs:

Perfect

Much better than I expected but it’s still Van Morrison

Okay, let’s get this out of the way. Van Morrison has a long and well-earned reputation for being a cantankerous old bastard, and at times a singularly unpleasant one. I know this. As a character reference, _It’s Too Late to Stop Now_ proves absolutely nothing. As a live album, however, it captures something close to miraculous. My heart sank when I saw that today’s album was a double live set. Live albums are one of those things I approach with suspicion. Too often they give you inferior versions of songs you already know, padded with applause, extended endings and the peculiar assumption that because something lasted eleven minutes in a room full of people, it therefore needs to last eleven minutes in my kitchen. There is also that particular species of live album where everyone involved seems terribly pleased simply to have turned up. _It’s Too Late to Stop Now_ is the opposite. By the end I was convinced that this is an album whose entire meaning depends upon being live. The first thing that struck me was how loose the Caledonia Soul Orchestra sounded. Not sloppy: loose. There is an elasticity to the playing that immediately gives Morrison room to move. He can stretch a line, clip another one, sit behind the beat, push ahead of it, almost talk through a phrase, and the band responds as though this is not disruption but information. They tighten around him, relax with him and leave space when he leaves space. On “Warm Love” this becomes obvious very early. Morrison delivers the verse in clipped, staccato phrases and the band seems to contract around that delivery; then the chorus arrives, he relaxes, and they loosen with him. The vocal is not simply sitting on top of an arrangement. His phrasing is actively changing the arrangement’s feel. That relationship becomes one of the governing pleasures of the whole album. The band is astonishing because the looseness is clearly the result of enormous discipline. Everybody seems to know the structure well enough to forget about demonstrating that they know it. The arrangements breathe because the musicians understand where the centre is. Morrison can wander because they know how to hold the ground beneath him. It reminded me of something I say a lot, originally learned from software and interface design: it is very hard to make things sound easy, and very easy to make things sound hard. Good interface design moves the complexity upstream. Somebody else does the difficult work so the user does not have to admire the machinery; they can simply use the thing. The Caledonia Soul Orchestra do that musically. The rehearsal, listening, arrangement discipline, cue-reading, dynamic control and mutual awareness are all hidden backstage. What reaches the listener is ease. Brass and piano can trade licks. Strings can appear for one perfectly placed pizzicato note and vanish again. Morrison can vocalise in unison with the horn section simply because the line is there and apparently the most natural thing in the world is to walk around accompanied by your own brass section. Nobody appears interested in pointing out how difficult any of this is. “Into the Mystic” is the first arrangement that made me sit up and think that this was operating on another level. The way the brass enters around the foghorn image is beautiful, but what really makes it work is the interplay between brass and strings. They are not simply decorating Morrison. They carry their own counter-melodies, answering one another and moving independently around the vocal. There is quite a lot happening, but it never feels cluttered. Freedom here is not the absence of arrangement; it is what an extremely good arrangement makes possible. That distinction keeps returning. These are often sophisticated musical decisions, but they have been worked into the band so deeply that they feel instinctive. The piano drives “These Dreams of You” with little rhythmic pushes and fills that give the song its jaunty stride. Morrison at one point simply joins the brass line vocally, as though humming along to a record, except the record is happening around him. “Domino” has a proper soul stomp underneath while Morrison meanders over the top of it, the band planting its feet so firmly that he is free not to. There are moments where the brass and piano seem to be having their own conversation while the rhythm section keeps walking. The band has different gaits. It can sway, stride, stomp, swing, recline and drive. “These Dreams of You” has a jaunty kick. The bridge in “I Believe to My Soul” is almost Santana-laid-back, the groove reclining without losing pulse. “I’ve Been Working” suddenly has a funk engine underneath it, giving the musicians a chassis solid enough to stretch around without losing shape. “Bring It On Home to Me” has this magnificent wide-legged, slightly baggy feel, helped enormously by a bass sound that blooms rather than snaps. The best phrase I found for it while listening was a beautiful bar-room stumble. That Sam Cooke cover also contains one of Morrison’s finest vocal moments on the record. Towards the end he stretches “ever” in the line about changing one’s mind into something ragged and pleading. It is not technically immaculate and that is precisely why it works. For a moment the vulnerability cuts through all the muscularity of the band. Muscularity became another important word for the album, although not in the crude sense of sheer volume. This music has body. The bass has weight, the brass can punch, the strings can create tension, and Morrison’s voice itself has physical presence. Yet the most impressive display of strength comes when they stop playing loudly. “Help Me” was the moment where I thought, yes, now show me whether you can really do it. The band drops almost to pianissimo and everything remains alive. Pianissimo is hard. At volume, momentum covers a multitude of sins. Drop an ensemble right down and every early entrance, every wobble and every uncertain player becomes visible. Quiet playing can very easily become tentative playing. This band contracts without losing commitment. The groove remains under tension, and when the full ensemble returns the release is extraordinary. It is not simply louder; it feels like pressure being allowed out of a sealed system. That may be one of the central lessons of the whole record: control enables abandon. The slide guitar solo in “Help Me” sounds gloriously uncontrolled precisely because the rest of the band is controlled enough to let it be. It snarls and smears and almost skids off the road while the rhythm underneath remains secure. The apparent danger is real enough to be exciting, but the centre holds. The same principle applies to Morrison himself. He is not merely the singer in front of this band; he is inside it. Sometimes he seems almost to conduct it through vocal phrasing. That is there in embryonic form on “Warm Love”, but by the time we reach “Cyprus Avenue” it has become the entire performance method. Repetitions, hesitations, emphases and little vocal feints seem to determine what the ensemble does next. He pushes and they swell, retreats and they thin out, hangs on a phrase and the whole orchestra seems willing to wait with him. The piano often seems to have special licence: even when the larger band responds dramatically to Morrison, it continues an almost independent train of thought, a discursive commentary underneath the performance. This becomes especially beautiful on “Cyprus Avenue”. Morrison’s songwriting has always had a discursive quality, but here it reaches another level. At one point he becomes tongue-tied, apparently unable to complete what he is trying to say, and the band comes down with him to the intimacy of that inarticulacy. The piano keeps quietly noodling beneath him like an inner monologue that has not stopped simply because spoken language has failed. Then the full band arrives with enormous force, but the piano carries on having its own conversation. Later the instruments begin operating almost cinematically. A line changes the emotional temperature and the strings enter as though somebody has cut to a different scene. Piano becomes interior monologue, strings become a change of light, and the full band becomes physical release. Eventually even language begins to fail. Morrison reaches that extended sequence of “babe” after “babe” where the repeated word ceases to communicate literal information and becomes pulse, plea, obsession and percussion. We are beyond words now. The voice has become another instrument and the whole thing moves into full-blown soul-revue mechanics: surges, retreats, call-and-response, audience interaction, the emotional temperature being pushed higher and higher until the huge coda finally has to bring the thing down. It may be too late to stop now, but somebody eventually has to. That final performance feels like the culmination of everything the album has been teaching us, with subtle ensemble responsiveness turning gradually into ecstatic performance mechanics. Yet the covers are just as important to understanding what Morrison is doing here. At first I simply thought they were gutsy choices. Ray Charles. Sam Cooke. Willie Dixon. Sonny Boy Williamson. These are not exactly singers and writers you approach casually, especially live. “I Believe to My Soul” could very easily have sounded like somebody attempting a Ray Charles song. It doesn’t. “Bring It On Home to Me” has the added danger of Sam Cooke having been such a phenomenal live performer himself. Yet Morrison never sounds as though he is engaged in an impression or an act of deference. The band is up to the songs and so is he. The more I listened, the less these pieces felt like covers at all. They began to feel like Morrison demonstrating what he had learned from. Here is the blues, here is soul, here is gospel and R&B. Here are the rhythmic habits, the call-and-response structures, the phrasing, the elasticity, the authority to stretch a line until it becomes speech. The covers become an audible genealogy: this is the language Morrison learned, while the originals show what happened once he became fluent enough to stop obeying its rules. That is where the question of genre became interesting. At one point I thought, yes, this album has a genre, and then realised what I meant was almost the opposite of conventional genre classification. It has a genre because it collapses genres. Soul, blues, jazz swing, R&B, gospel, folkish storytelling and Celtic fiddle colours are all present, but they stop behaving like separate categories because they have been absorbed into the same performing language. The genre is Van Morrison. His particular transformation of soul and blues is to make them more discursive. He keeps their muscle and cadence but loosens their syntax. Songs can wander, narrate, circle back, stretch towards speech, pause to think and repeat themselves until repetition becomes meaning. He is less interested in getting to the point than in discovering what happens while circling it. “Listen to the Lion” feels almost airy after some of the album’s harder driving sections. The song stretches, time opens up and the band stops behaving as though every available space needs filling. It unfolds rather than arrives. “Saint Dominic’s Preview” sprawls magnificently in a different way. Its arrangement is complex and insistent, but there is still room for Morrison to sound conversational over the top. The song keeps opening new rooms rather than merely getting longer, and that is the crucial distinction: the length feels earned by movement. “Wild Children” gives the set another change of function altogether. After the physical force of “Help Me”, the performance metaphorically wipes the sweat from its brow and becomes a storyteller. There is something elegiac about it, almost an elegy for Morrison’s generation, and the band adopts a jazzier swing around him. A small harmonic shift in the bridge increases the feeling of memory without announcing itself as cleverness. Again, hard made easy. The older Them material is fascinating because Morrison is no longer interpreting somebody else’s past but his own. “Here Comes the Night” already had a brisk verse and a more expansive chorus in the Them version, but here the band exaggerates that internal contrast. The verses positively move, which makes the chorus feel as though the whole song suddenly inhales. I initially thought of it as a deconstruction, but that is not quite right. They are not dismantling the original design so much as magnifying it. “Gloria” feels even more transformed. In Morrison’s hands now it sounds like an old soul shouter rather than a young garage-R&B song. The youthful original has been absorbed into the mature musical language he constructed from everything that surrounded it. The chronology collapses just as thoroughly as the genres. This is also where Kevin Rowland kept entering my head. I have had the pleasure of seeing Dexys live a couple of times, so I already knew what Rowland does with songs in a room: stretches them, reopens them, changes pacing and dynamics, treats the singer as part conductor, and lets horns and strings participate in conversation rather than merely decorate a familiar arrangement. Even Dexys lyric sheets often feel like approximations of something that remains fluid in performance. Hearing _It’s Too Late to Stop Now_ before the random 1001 draw eventually lands on Dexys is a happy accident. I now have a much clearer historical reference point for that philosophy of performance. This is not simply “Dexys sound like Van Morrison”; that would be too easy. It is more that Rowland’s idea of what a live ensemble can be suddenly has a recognisable ancestor. Songs are not fixed objects to be reproduced but material that can be reopened every night. Even Morrison’s printed lyrics are not necessarily the final authority. On “Into the Mystic” the lyric sheet offers “jolly old soul” while he is plainly singing “jelly roll soul”. The performed text has its own life. Words can be substituted, stretched or repurposed just as tempo and arrangement can. The performance is the object. All of which brings me back to the most remarkable thing about the album: it captures Morrison enjoying this. Not simply singing brilliantly or commanding an excellent band, but sounding comfortable with the whole business of being there. The expanded recordings from the tour reveal how much the performances and set were breathing from night to night, and Morrison was evidently enjoying touring during this period. That matters because it means this is not simply an editor constructing one miraculous Van Morrison from a pile of otherwise unpromising tapes. It appears to have been a genuine, if temporary, equilibrium. Morrison is comfortable with himself and with the Caledonia Soul Orchestra; the orchestra is good enough to follow him anywhere; the audiences are receptive enough that he feeds from their attention rather than withdrawing from it; the arrangements are loose enough to allow risk; and the repertoire is broad enough to show both where he came from and what he had become. The ridiculous confluence is all of those things happening at once. That is what I mean by lightning in a bottle. The lightning is not Van Morrison’s talent, because that was always there. The rare thing is Morrison, this band, these audiences and this particular moment all being compatible with one another. There is a review on the 1001 Albums site which reduces the experience to “Van Morrisonandonandonandon”. It is a very good joke, and not entirely unfair. Morrison absolutely does go on. But on this record, the going-on is the point. He circles, stretches and worries at phrases. He lets language become sound. He gives the band room to breathe and trusts them to give it back. He allows a song to become something that exists only in the room and only for as long as everyone involved remains willing to keep it alive. I began this album hungry, literally, waiting for a fasting blood test and thinking that ninety-odd minutes of live Van Morrison was perhaps not the gift I needed that morning. Instead it forced me to sit still and listen properly. The longer it went on, the more that initial resistance became part of the pleasure. This was not an inferior substitute for studio recordings. It was a record about things studio recording cannot manufacture: responsiveness, risk, collective timing, trust and the peculiar electricity that appears when several people realise simultaneously that whatever is happening is working. As a character reference, it is dreadful. As a live document, it is extraordinary. _It’s Too Late to Stop Now_ catches a rare period in which band, audience and performer seem completely at ease with one another: a rare record of the world enjoying Van Morrison enjoying being Van Morrison in public. Somebody had the presence of mind to put microphones in front of this ridiculous confluence, and the distinction matters. They did not merely record him; they caught him.

a lupe le gusto

Kinda jazzy rock, a bit rambly

Can the man! Somehow I just can’t quit him, he has that combo of white soul and a hot band. My man seems effortless in his cool and high kicks all the way through. It’s a fun show x

Really enjoyed this, but it did not need to be an hour and a half long

From the Vault #45 (May 30, 2026) First Van Morrison. I've heard this guy's name before, though I'm not entirely sure what genre he belongs to. Given the length of this album and its associated album cover, I think I can safely pin this as a live arena rock album - probably with a really dramatic flair. Might as well get into it. Wow, these genres are something else, huh? Rock, folk, soul, jazz, blues. This guy was sampling just about every genre which was popular at the time. I'm glad to have been one fifth of the way there with my genre prediction. Anyways, this album is sharp. A little too sharp, if you ask me. I'm sure it would have been phenomenal to hear performances with this level of fidelity and precision from an artist that I actually care for, though from the perspective of a non-fan the only appeal that these live albums have with me is through either charismatic performances, fun audience interactions or an intense, engrossing atmosphere. This album features very little of these things. Pair this with the fact that I'm not normally a fan of this album's genre, and you have an occasionally disengaging listen. Still, taking the music for what it is, it's respectable. Morrison delivers some nice, swaggering vocals which pair nicely with the lively sax and other brass instruments. Backing instruments like the organ, piano and strings are also welcome additions as well. While this album is both lengthy and not exactly my speed, I commend the skill and technique which went into putting on a show like this. Overall, a tolerable listen. Book time. "...one of the greatest live albums of all time and one acknowledged by Morrison as a career peak." Some of the songs on this album sound completely different to their studio album counterparts because of the ten-piece orchestral band that Morrison was touring with. A few of the songs are original creations, which would be used in some of his later albums. Morrison was a purist while recording this album and strayed from using studio techniques in his performances, resulting in much of his material from Tupelo Honey being skipped over. Morrison's orchestral band broke up shortly after this performance, "...but no one who saw one of these shows will ever be able to forget it." Wikipedia verifies that this is widely considered one of the best live albums, having been a slam dunk with critics in addition to receiving enduring acclaim. The chart performances were less remarkable, with its highest position being No. 19 in Belgium, with the average peak position being somewhere in the 40s in the nine countries where it charted. Fortunately, I don't need much persuading. This album's reputation as one of the best-ever live albums kind of speaks for itself. I cosign this inclusion.

Long, but not a bad live album! 3/5 ⭐️ 263/1081

live albums suck!!! double albums suck!!! stop!!!

Based on the not so enjoyable previous Van Morrison experiences I've had on this list, you can imagine my delight when given a 90 minute live album. That being said, I didn't struggle through this too much so it must have been decent enough