Van Morrison's F*You Album

After listening to Greg Hill on 107.3 WAAF in the mornings (thanks to Pete for turning me onto the show during the David Lee Roth train wreck), I usually flip over to WBCN 'round about noon. I like listening to Mike Hsu too, but Adam's da man.

What the hell was the point of this post? Oh, yeah! WAAF used a little snippet from an obscure Van Morrison tune as bumper, something inserted between commercials to keep listeners' attention, in which he asks somebody in the studio if they'd like to have lunch. I laughed outloud and clapped because I knew precisely from what song it was taken.

Long ago I downloaded all 31 tracks from Van Morrison's "f*you" recording session while under contract with Bang Records in 1967.

Rather than trying to explain it all over again, here's the copied-and-pasted explanation (with gentle editing for length) behind the bizarre and hilarious tracks. They're a bit difficult to find nowadays, but this site has a couple of samples.

In order to fulfill his obligation to his early solo label Bang Records,Van Morrison sat down in 1967 and cranked out 31 songs on the spot, on topics ranging from ringworm to wanting a danish, to hating his record label and a guy named George.

None of this stuff was ever issued in the '60's. I guess there's irony in the fact that Morrison recorded these tunes as a big f*you to his label - before he signed to Warner and recorded Astral Weeks - yet ultimately the joke's on him, now that they're being packaged as legitimate tracks (on "best-of" collections, no less).