Artist:   Van Morrison
Song:   "Madame George"
Album: Astral Weeks
Label:   Warner Bros. Records
Year:    1968

1968 didn't seem right. You could feel the front wheels pulling toward the ditch. Even though the countercultural revolution was slowly spreading toward the middle of America, all was not well within it. Advertisements featured the new rock, like the music was meant to sell clothes and cars. What's up with that? Wasn't it our secret sound? Then Van Morrison released Astral Weeks, an album so frightenly original that most listeners ran for the hills. The freedom of jazz flowed through the songs, and Morrison's lyrics came from a mixture of the mystic and the mean streets, none more moving than "Madame George." Forty years later, there are still question marks all over this masterpiece. The music unfolds like we've stumbled across a private funeral, with the singer flooded by memories of a life-changing friend who gave a brief peek behind life's curtain before vanishing in the fog. What is seen is too strong for words, and now a young man is left to wonder if his confused feelings will ever feel right again: "Playing dominos in drag" indeed. The music continues, like a night that will not end. At the Hollywood Bowl Saturday night Van Morrison confronted himself head-on, performing Astral Weeks for the ages, pouring his soul into the spirit world like a man making a deal with the Maker. The large neon cross on the hill behind the Bowl shone bright, just like the moon and the singer in the black hat, shirt, suit, shoes and sunglasses did onstage. It was a vision from Caledonia, courtesy of Belfast and the great beyond, and no one was smiling more than Madame George himself.