ballad version. I've done a mid-tempo version and I've done this version. This is the version I like best for release." "Heavy Connection" is said to be "psychic stuff" with the lyrics vague and secret but speaking of a love connection "when you came into my dreams/like from a whisper to a scream." The last song on the album is "Cold Wind in August". Dr. John describes it as a "cross current from forties to seventies music. It's like where Ray Charles left off. It's a real tear-jerker that gets back to the basics of music." "Flamingos Fly" was covered by Sammy Hagar, a year before A Period of Transition was released, on his first solo album Nine on a Ten Scale. Critical reception In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Greil Marcus dismissed the songs as "a lot of neo-R&B huffing and puffing" and said "Morrison's performances rarely find a focus, almost never hit a groove ... The key to the album's sluggishness is the dullness of the horn charts." Robert Christgau wrote in The Village Voice: "In general this is an unexciting record – but not definitively. It's full of the surprising touches... that signify talent putting out." Peter Knobler wrote in Crawdaddy, "The agonies of Morrison's earlier works are submerged—not obliterated, mind you, or denied, but not crowding out the obvious pleasure that carries the album forward." In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine was more positive and said the album is "warm, welcoming, infused with spirituality and humor. Still like any period of transition, this is somewhat tentative and uneven, with its best moments, being at best, minor masterpieces." Biographer Steve Turner called the album, "lethargic and uninspired" but says that perhaps it was the album Morrison needed to make after being largely absent from the music business for almost three years. Cash Box said of the single "Joyous Sound" that "Morrison relaxes with the pure sound and accent of the syllables in his vocal, while the band cooks throughout." Record World said that it's "a bright, happy jump song with a trademark Morrison horn arrangement." Aftermath Expectations were high and Morrison has admitted to working at his best when not under the pressure of high expectations from the industry and fans. In June 1977, he explained his feelings about this: The album charted moderately well but most critics were disappointed, after waiting three