My Greatest 100 (or so) Albums...

His Band and the Street Choir (Warner Bros. 1970) by Van Morrison. "Okay," you're saying, "didn't this guy already write that Moondance came out in 1970?" It's true, it did. Then Van showed why he's the man by following it up a few months later with this great disc. If Moondance was sort of the step between the overarching spirituality of Astral Weeks and a more traditional Soul style, His Band and the Street Choir is one step further into Van's particular style: Caledonia Soul. This one starts out with Domino and just takes off from there. Van was hot, hot like Bob Dylan was in the late `60's and like Elvis Costello and Graham Parker would be in the late `70's early `80's. In other words, he was putting out classic album after classic album in remarkably close proximity to each other. None of the other singer songwriters have ever been as consistently excellent and productive as those 4 were in the periods I've just described. Sure Bruce has put out a bunch of great records in a row, but we have really had to wait for those. Dylan, Van, Elvis and Graham delivered to goods almost daily at their creative peaks.