Lately I post a From The Archives selection to my social media on Fridays, but this Friday is St. Patrick’s Day and I wanted to share this great doc about Irish rock music. I originally discovered the BBC gem The Irish Rock Story: A Tale of Two Cities at the Nashville Public Library. It’s a cool capturing of Irish music’s evolution from Van Morrison’s pop star breakthrough in the 1960′s to U2′s ascendancy to biggest band in the world status by the dawning of the 21st century. But before Van became The Man, Ireland produced a deep history of poetry and music that were as much a part of “Gloria” as American rhythm and blues. And between Van and Bono artists like Thin Lizzy, The Undertones, Rory Gallagher, the Boomtown Rats and Sinead O’Connor fired the flame of Irish rock. All the while the cultural differences and political tensions between the cities of Dublin and Belfast acted like the poles of a battery, creating a charged tension that produced some of the best music in the world.

Here’s the flick. Happy St. Patrick’s Day…

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Van Morrison joined the British Invasion with Them until he left the band to meet Dylan and the folk rock revolution head-on with his first great masterpiece, Astral Weeks.

Here’s what Rolling Stone has to say about this epic, emotive music:

Van Morrison never sounded more warm and ecstatic, more sensual and vulnerable, than on his enigmatically beautiful solo debut. Fresh off the success of “Brown Eyed Girl” and newly signed to artist-friendly Warner Bros., he explored the physical and dramatic range of his voice during extended poetic-scat singing, and set hallucinatory reveries on his native Belfast to wandering Celtic-R&B melodies. The crowning touch was the superior jazz quintet convened by producer Lewis Merenstein to color the mists and shadows. Bassist Richard Davis later said that Morrison never told the musicians what he wanted from them or what the lyrics meant. Maybe he didn’t know how to. He was going deep inside himself, without a net or fear.

This is big-heart music for the thinking person — a masterpiece of lyrical inspiration and musical improvisation. Van’s use of his own repetitive voicing as a percussion instrument speaks to the poetic underpinnings of his songwriting in the Celtic, spiritual traditions where he has continued to root his mature music. This is deep, dark sound. It’s also ecstatic, mystical music — Morrison reveals himself to be a rock shaman par excellence within the tracks of this album’s lustrous, longing message.

Here is the album in its entirety:

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