Night in San Francisco
The Belfast Cowboy is one of the most mercurial and gloriously inconsistent live performers of his generation, as notorious for his onstage sulks and autopilot off-nights as he is justly celebrated for incandescent live sets that burn in the memory.  This 1994 double-CD set, Van Morrison's third solo live album, doesn't surpass either his mid-'70s triumph,It's Too Late to Stop Now, or his Belfast homecoming on 1984'sLive at the Grand Opera House, but a generous set and a typically taut, virtuosic stage band are tempting inducements, as is a repertoire that mixes both old and more recent Morrison originals with some shrewd covers.  With Georgie Fame his staunch right hand (on organ and backing vocals), and his overexposed band singers, Brian Kennedy and James Hunter, Morrison digs into some particularly ripe medleys, interpolating King Pleasure, Sly Stone, T-Bone Walker, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Witherspoon, Gene Vincent, Roy Orbison, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Doc Pomus along the way.--Sam Sutherland