Garage-rock actually did manage to seep down to my 10-, 11-, 12-year-old world in various screwy ways—church youth dance functions of one sort or another, mostly—and even back then I had "Gloria" pegged as the one they all played (along with, in my neck of the woods anyway, "Surfin' Bird" and often "Liar, Liar" too), even before the Shadows of Knight brought it to radio. It was usually a barnstormer, filling up the dance floor, sometimes even closing sets. For me, it took Patti Smith's inspired twist on it 10 years later to wake me up to the true dimensions of Van Morrison's amazing rock 'n' roll standard. She turned it into a profane starry-eyed goof on medieval Roman Catholic orthodoxy, as in "Gloria in excelsis Deo." And even then I still had to work my way back through that Shadows of Knight version—the one I knew first and best, which is not bad at all, if a bit on the copycat side with some slight sweetening, and indeed was my official favorite version for a time—to finally get to this good and proper. These mid-'60s Them sessions yielded amazing stuff and you might as well start right here. The attack is pugnacious and sullen, pressing in with deft moves like a pickpocket on a crowded platform, the band a model of tight sharp-elbowed poise, and Morrison raspy and harsh within the melodics of the blues form as only he can be, still a raw talent, prowling the song like a tomcat, arguably learning some of his slinky vocal moves off Mick Jagger, arguably teaching them to Jagger too. Did I mention that it is 1964 and he is 19 years old? You know what he went on to. You know the chorus. This is classic rock in every way that is good.
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