BY JUD COST

The last time I saw Van Morrison live, opening for Bob Dylan at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in 1998, he mailed it in. It was a disappointingly lackluster set that could have been lifted from somebody's karaoke demo tape. Tonight, as the fog crept over the top of U.C. Berkeley's Greek Theatre, and the lights of San Francisco glowed cherry-red across the bay, Morrison played one for the ages: a mindblowing performance of his much revered second solo album, Astral Weeks, the 1968 record that would chart his course for the next 40 years.

Dressed head-to-toe in black with shades and a fedora, the pint-sized, Belfast-born troubadour strode quickly to the mic and lit the place up with "And It Stoned Me," "Moondance" and "Caravan," a brace of dazzling gems from his second Warner Bros. album, 1970's Moondance. The voice sounded strong as ever, a sturdy vehicle for Morrison's hypnotic blend of Ulster street smarts, chamber-jazz, Muddy Waters-style R&B and William Blake-drenched mysticism. Unfortunately, the self-appointed shouters, squealers and "We love you, Van" nitwits were out in force, more audible tonight than usual due to the show's low decibel levels, even with an 18-piece orchestra in tow. But the loudmouths couldn't ruin this historic event, and Morrison didn't stomp offstage as he reportedly has in the past.

After a 20-minute intermission, Morrison reappeared and was off, down the rabbit hole of his own feral imagination, with the title number from Astral Weeks, a song that sets the trajectory for this brilliant work: "If I ventured in the slipstream/Between the viaducts of your dream/Where immobile steel rims crack/And the ditch in the back roads stop." Originally recorded with a studio cast that included Jay Berliner on guitar, John Payne on flute and soprano sax and a shamefully uncredited violinist, as well as heralded jazz veterans Richard Davis on bass and Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet on drums, only Berliner was back to reprise his inspired fretboard work. The extra personnel added for the occasion gave the arrangements more heft without jeopardizing the album's basic structural integrity of acoustic guitar, violin, flute, bass and drums.

Morrison re-sequenced the songs from Astral Weeks, putting the album's most spectacular work, "Madame George," at the end for major dramatic effect. Oddly enough, even in the S.F. Bay Area, he felt obliged to "explain" the song that's been adopted in some local households as the transgender national anthem. "It's about people using opium," mumbled Morrison. No explanation necessary for this ten-minute epic draped in Finnegan's Wake-like imagery.

The song moves deftly from the activities of street urchins ("Outside they're making all the stops/The kids out in the street collecting bottle tops/Going for cigarettes and matches in the shops") to what's going on inside, behind closed doors ("When you fall into a trance/Sitting on a sofa playing games of chance/With your folded arms and history books you glance/Into the eyes of Madame George/And you think you've found the bag/You're getting weaker and your knees begin to sag/Caught up playing dominoes in drag/With the one and only Madame George."

Morrison followed this momentous work (he'd played the entire album live only once before, at the Hollywood Bowl in 2008) with a stunning return to his early days fronting Them, one of the most exciting of the British Invasion bands. A couple of choruses of Morrison wailing on harmonica to Them's 1965 hit "Mystic Eyes" was followed by the knockout blow, "Gloria," a garage-rock staple that wrung the crowd like a dirty dishrag. No encores, either.

Unlike many current artists, Van Morrison knows when it's time to go. The euphoria of the evening also acted as topical anesthetic, helping to erase the pain of sitting for three hours on what was designated a "reserved seat," but was really just  a nubby, dank concrete walkway better suited for a livestock show. Berkeley has to do a lot better than that.