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Van
Morrison/Linda Ronstadt/Tim Buckley
Academy of Music,
New York
By
Robin Loggie
Presented
by Rock Magazine November 13 at the Academy of Music,
Van Morrison, Linda Ronstadt, and Tim Buckley stirred a half-full house from it's
initial polite restraint with strong turns.
Accompanied
by an excellent six-man backup which, at times, the Warner
Bros. artist conducted with careful deliberation, Morrison's
command of the blues-rock style he's developed was asserted
in Moondance, Domino and Come Running, but,
at the same time, curiously tinged with an air of remote preoccupation.
His sound was hampered by and dependent on Pete Johnson's
indefatigable trumpet and Jack Shore's alto sax.
Making
her first NY appearance with her new four-man group, Swampwater,
Linda Ronstadt's artless candor became focused in mind-searing
renditions of Dylan's I'll Be Your Baby Tonight, Hank
Williams' Lovesick Blues and her current Capitol single,
Long Long Time. Homage to the Stradivarius of country music
was revived when Gib Duloff, guitarist, performed a glittering
fiddle instrumental.
Concluding
the evening with an eerie trip into vocal distortion, Tim
Buckley seemed oblivious to the audience in relating mostly
to the mike or his electric twelve-string, while his voice
assumed, with phenomenal control, the harmonic effects of
a trombone and moog synthesizer combined.
Underlying
his performing expertise, there seemed to be a covert delight
in projecting his surrealistic tone poems of things that go
bump in the night imagery to a following that's known him
previously for his folk material. His You Can Always Tell
a Town by Its Graffiti, launched with the animal howling
of his four side-men and coiling around Buckley's jazz wails,
was the ultimate perspective of the Straight recording artist's
new territory.
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