Jonesy,

I have been a Van Morrison fan for years. I had never seen him perform and was pretty excited when he came to Toronto a few years ago. I have never been so insulted by a preformer in my life. To his credit, he started exactly on time. He was touring a new album, kind of an R&B one. Well, he played songs from it for about forty minutes. They were fine, but I could have got the same thing byt staying home & watching a video of the Blues Brothers. Fianlly, the band started up "Tupelo Honey" the first song that I recognized. VAN WALKED OFF STAGE WITHOUT A WORD AND LEFT HIS DAUGHTER TO SING IT!!!

He came back, did more R&B, the band started another familiar song, same drill, happened about three or four times. I understand that if you're touring a new album that you need to play some material from it, but this was riduculous. We had eight people go to the show, 4 left. I foolishly stayed thinking that things would get better, they didn't. Ove the next few days people would ask how the show was. My reply was "name a Morrison song that you like". My reply to 80% of there answers was "they didn't play it", to another 10% "His daughter did it".

I still think that Van is one of the best songrwriters I've ever heard, but I now also think he's an arrogant jerk.