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Billboard Presented by Rock Magazine Nov. 13 at the Academy of Music, Van Morrison, Linda Ronstadt, and Tim Buckley stirred a half-full house from it's initial polite restraint with strong turns. Accompanied by an excellent six-man backup which, at times, the Warner Bros. artist conducted with careful deliberation, Morrison's command of the blues-rock style he's developed was asserted in "Moondance," "Domino" and "Come Running," but, at the same time, curiously tinged with an air of remote preoccupation. His sound was hampered by and dependent on Pete Johnson's indefatigable trumpet and Jack Shore's alto sax. Making her first NY appearance with her new four-man group, Swampwater, Linda Ronstadt's artless candor became focused in mindsearing renditions of Dylan's "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," Hank Williams' "Lovesick Blues" and her current Capitol single, "Long Long Time." Homage to the Stradivarius of country music was revived when Gib Duloff, guitarist, performed a glittering fiddle instrumental. Concluding the evening with an eerie trip into vocal distortion, Tim Buckley seemed oblivious to the audience in relating mostly to the mike or his electric 12-string, while his voice assumed, with phenomenal control, the harmonic effects of a trombone and moog synthesizer combined. Underlying his performing expertise, there seemed to be a covert delight in projecting his surrealistic tone poems of "things that go bump in the night" imagery to a following that's known him previously for his folk material. His "You Can Always Tell a Town by Its Graffiti," launched with the animal howling of his four side-men and coiling around Buckley's jazz wails, was the ultimate perspective of the Straight recording artist's new territory.
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