In 1985, when CDs were at the opposite end of their life cycle, the NME ran a feature asking various Names of the Day what they thought of these shiny new (expensive) little objects. Morrissey came back with a great bon mot about the experience of listing to a CD having a "shake'n'vac" quality.
I bought A Sense of Wonder on CD in '86 or '87, working backwards after enjoying No Guru…, but it hasn't lasted as well as that album. It has the shake'n'vac eighties sound that actually wasn't a product of CDs per se, but a production trend that arrived at the same time as CDs. I think it started around Avalon, found its nadir on Brothers in Arms, and then started to fade with The Joshua Tree, which had one (Lillywhite?) foot in the old and the other (Lanois?) in something new.
At the time I liked Sense of Wonder. Now I tend to think there are just two remarkable elements to it. One is the reading of Mike Westbrook's reading of Blake in Let the Slave, the piece that led me back to the 'original'. The first half of the piece is beautifully realised, and then Van quite deliberately mumbles the second half, The Price of Experience.
What is the price of experience?
Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street?
No, it is bought with the price
Of all a man hath,
his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market
where none come to buy,
And in the wither'd field where
the farmer ploughs for bread in vain.
Ah, that desolate market — I'm getting to know it well. Not come by any wisdom yet, mind you.
The second remarkable element is equally, if not so literally, Blakean: it's the first example on the title track (unless, possibly, you count the earlier Cleaning Windows) of a hymn to the transcendence of everyday pastimes in East Belfast; the Castle Picture House on the Castlereagh Road, the pastie suppers at Davey's chipper, gravy rings, barmbracks (!), Wagon wheels (!!), snowballs (?). For a number of years after this point, such things became regular features on Van albums, but if you were ever going to pick a grain of sand of the purpose of seeing eternity, a chippie on the Castlereagh Road would not seem like your best bet. I guess that's the point, and maybe the reason I haven't got any of that wisdom.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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