(click on cover image for larger version)

A Spawn of the Dublin Pubs
(bootleg vinyl LP)

Side A

1. Saint Dominic's Preview
2. These Dreams Of You
3. The Way Young Lovers Do
4. Bad Man Looking For A Fight
5. More And More
6. Listen To The Lion

1. Domino
2. Warm Love
3. Caravan
4. Cypress Avenue

Appears to have been printed/pressed in at least two variants (sleeves shown above) with the variant at top suspected as being the earliest. On that variant, the image is on a standard 8 1/2 by 11 sheet glued in the center of a light blue album cover.

Sleeve Note (from variant 2 pressing):
"Van Morrison is too important and rewarding an artist to miss. He's as exciting a performer as we have in contemporary music. His excitement comes from the intensity of his performance. When you see him struggle on stage to achieve his own sense of perfection, you can understand the drive that is behind his creativity. There were moments during his show that he hit the peak and you could wish that everyone who had ever been moved emotionally by music could be on hand to share the excitement. - L.A. Times"

Collector's Question: What is the first Van Morrison bootleg?
[Update (September 2006): see at bottom for a recent Email]
(question asked and conclusion (below) orchestrated by David Chance)
The 3 main contenders (from Hot Wacks, 3rd ed. - 20 Nov. 1976) are:

• Belfast Cowboy (TMQ 73035)
  
• A Spawn of the Dublin Pubs (TMQ 73020)
  
• Van the Man (HHCER 109)

Belfast Cowboy:
this bootleg is comprised of portions of the 1971 Pacific High broadcast and the BBC broadcast of the Rainbow Theatre concert 24 July 1973...that would place it's release date after July 1973... (MT: The Belfast Cowboy boot can again be found in the Hot Wax 14 TRADE MARK OF QUALITY (TMOQ) index: it's no. 73035, that places it 15 volumes after "Spawn".)

A Spawn of the Dublin Pubs:
this bootleg is comprised of portions of concerts recorded May 24 and 27, 1973 at The Troubadour in Los Angeles CA... Sleeve note from variant 2 pressing: (AS: The quote from the LA times on the variant of "Spawn" is not from the LA times review of the Troubador gigs. I wonder, actually, whether the variant may be a much, much later repressing.)

Hot Wax 14, TMOQ-label index, comments by MT:
"James Paul McCartney" (73018) is April 16, 1973. "A Spawn Of The Dublin Pubs" (73020) is two volumes after the aforementioned Macca show. No later dates in earlier volumes. The Beatles reference source gives dates for 73001/73002 "The Renaissance Minstrels vol.1&2" as 1972. It seems that this was probably the first Van-boot.

Heylin, pgs.95-96:
"...the winter of 1973-4 saw TMQ2 issue a handful of significant titles in their own right: Van Morrison's "A Spawn of the Dublin Pubs" (which pre-empted Van the Man's own live double-set, "It's Too Late to Stop Now" by a couple months")..." [DC: from available information, ITLTSN was released in February 1974.]

Van the Man (Highway High Fi 109):
the material on this bootleg is comprised of "Moondance" from the Fillmore West 26 April, 1970; "Caledonia Soul Music" a studio outtake from 1970; and portions of the 5 Sep 1971 Pacific High broadcast.

DeWitt, pg.37:
a vinyl bootleg called "Van The Man" appeared in a record shop in Berkeley, California in October 1971

Heylin, pg.83:
"on 9 September, 1971, an informer in the Rubber Dubber set-up showed up with a few friends, 'some private detectives from the Kinney Corporation (owner of the Warner Brothers and Atlantic labels, both of which had had artists Rubber Dubbed), and a handful of US marshals' ... the marshals confiscated boxes of alleged contraband, and the Kinney Corp, professing to represent the late Jimi Handrix, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, VAN MORRISON, and CSNY, brought suit against Mr. Dubber..." (RW: I don't know if this implies that Van boots existed by this date or not.) (DC: if this incident occured just 4 days after the Pacific High broadcast that would seem to raise other questions...and did "the detectives & US marshals" find in the "confiscated boxes" a tape of the Pacific High concert?)

(DC: the photo on the cover of the boot seems more likely from 1973 or '74 than 1971 or before...and for a September 5th live concert/FM-radio broadcast to be pressed clandestinely onto vinyl and land in a local record shop sometime in October seems quite a feat, if DeWitt is correct.)

(AS: the Pacific High concert was indeed broadcast live, though it was available by 9/71. But I also find Howard DeW's claim that it was in the stores a month later to be doubtful.)

(SG: Re the first Van boot - I remember that someone in Holland gave it ["Van the Man"] to me in mid 74 when he came to London on a visit.)

(NCJP: I've got a catalogue of the original bootlegs from World's Records. A catalogue from Fall '74 listing only that same record, Van the Man.)

Hot Wacks Book 14:
Highway High Fi Records (HHCER)
102 Beatles 'Supertracks'
*** (released late-1973)
104 Rolling Stones: 'Cutty Shark Or Eat 'em Alive'
*** (with material dated 9/73 Don Kirschner's Rock Concert)
109 Van Morrison: 'Van The Man'
*** (apparently released mid-to-autumn 1974)
115 Beatles: 'EMI-outtakes'
*** (released 1975)

Heylin, pg.106:
"...TMQ's catalogue pales alongside what Ken and co. unleashed between 1974 and the end of 1976. A hundred-plus titles from the flagship label, The Amazing Kornyphone Record Label, were supplemented by represses of Smokin' Pig titles, thirty-two titles on TKRWM (The Kornyphone Records for the Working Man), a dozen double-albums on Singer's Original Double Disks (SODD) and 16 releases on Highway Hi Fi Collector's Edition Records (HHCER) (which regularly appeared with TAKRL or Smokin' Pig labels - just to add to the confusion."

From the epilogue to Greil Marcus's book "Stranded: Rock and Roll For a Desert Island" (1979):
---Van the Man (Amazing Kornyphone). Blazing live performances ("Friday's Child"!) on one side, and a riveting, unspeakably gentle instrumental ("Caledonia Soul Music") on the other. Recorded 1970-1971, ***BOOTLEGGED 1974***. (RW: One different thing you'll notice here is that it's on the Amazing Kornyphone label rather than Highway Hi Fi.)

...does anyone have "Van the Man" on the Amazing Kornyphone label?

Library of Congress:
a 1997 online search showed cataloging records for "Van the Man" with a date of 1975, likely an acquisition date as no date is apparently evident on the bootleg itself.

Conclusion (?):
Thanks to all the collectors who weighed in with information regarding this! It appears that "Van The Man" was released sometime in mid-1974 (not 1971 as Howard DeWitt claims in his book). "Belfast Cowboy" has a TMOQ catalog number 15 volumes after "A Spawn of the Dublin Pubs", thus probably a 1974 release. "Spawn" seems to have been released in late-1973, so, by best accounting and information available, it holds the title of "the first Van Morrison bootleg". ...dcat... B-)

We did two more: Van the Man and Belfast Cowboy. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure about the order of those. Probably because we did them at about the same time. I'm quite sure I put together Van the Man (that's my girlfriend of the time who is credited for the photo - she did a lot of great concert photos). A good friend of mine, with help from me, put together Belfast Cowboy. In any case, he came up with that title I think. "Spawn" and "the Man" were my titles.

In any case, maybe I've cleared up the record, so to speak, on the first Van boot. It was Spawn. I know. I did it and I fought to get it out...

Part of the van-the-man.info unofficial website