[Quote:]

In order to fulfill his obligation to his early solo label Bang Records,Van Morrison sat down in 1967 or so 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. Make sure you get past the first few tunes – it takes him a few to get cooking.

Listener Scott S, who originally brought the tapes to our attention in 2001, wrote:

As far as I know, none of this stuff was ever issued in the ’60′s. I can only surmise at some point in the early ’90′s, whoever controlled Van’s Bang masters ran across the tapes and – either having questionable ethics and/or a twisted sense of humor – licensed the tapes to European labels that were releasing compilations of Van’s Bang-era material. I know of at least two double-CD sets that include demo stuff as the second disc – one is Payin’ Dues on Charly in 1994, and the other is New York Sessions ’67. WIll Rigby told me that he saw a single-disc best-of that actually mixes legit Bang-era Morrison tracks with material from the demos – now that must be an interesting listen. I guess there’s irony in the fact that Morrison recorded these tunes as a big fuck-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).