As my 40-year-old desk calendar shows, I picked up Van Morrison’s Moondance on January 7, 1983, a day prior to a one-day stint counting inventory at the A&S department store in Willow Grove, Pa. No doubt, I was spending my future earnings! I was 17, a high-school senior, and consumed with all things pop, rock and soul. Yet it took a year and a half before I added more Morrison albums to my collection. It wasn’t for lack of want, understand, but due to something more mundane: money. When one has many interests and only a set amount of cash, it doesn’t take a genius to know that some wants will be pushed off…and off…and off. It would take me the better part of a decade to dig through his oeuvre.
I sometimes wonder how my fandom would’ve developed if the instant-on streaming services had been around during my teen years. Would a months-long jag into an artist’s catalog, spiked by occasional new additions to the collection, have faded within days because I had access to their every release? Would I have become overwhelmed by the options? Would I have rushed through every Van Morrison album in a week, for instance, rather than savoring each and every release, and then gone onto the next interest? Would I have ever returned to Van Morrison’s Common One? On first listen, I admit I found it so-so, but over months—and many listens—I came to I rate it among his best, a perfect precursor to his 1980s oeuvre. It is jazzy, soulful and poetic, the kind of album that is slow to reveal itself.
Anyway, enough of my early morning musings and onward to today’s Top 5…
1) Ken Buono – “Into the Mystic.” Back in the day, Buono played drums for the Philly bands Flight of Mavis and Buzz Zeemer—and, further back, was a year or two behind me in high school. Here, he does justice to the classic Moondance track, adding a simple twist of Dylan to the song’s transcendentalism.
2) Anna May – “The Night Calls.” One of my favorite artistic finds of the year, Anna May’s long, acoustic-minded songs remind me of the stream-of-conscious musings found on the second side of Neil Young’s On the Beach. On her Facebook page, she wrote, “Night is a significant span of every one of our days, and each of us uses it in different ways. Some of us tune it out, and others embrace our proximity to darkness. I’m reminded of the ways in which I let old ghosts come to visit me and I am reminded that most of life is more cryptic than it is clear.”
3) Rumer – “Snowbird.” The British chanteuse, whose velvety voice is balm for the soul, offers a Christmas gift to fans with this wondrous rendition of the classic 1970 Anne Murray hit. (Here’s a fun fact about the song: It was written by Gene MacLellan in about 20 minutes while walking along the beach at Prince Edward Island in Canada.)
4) Beth Bombara – “Lonely Walls.” The St. Louis singer-songwriter’s recent It All Goes Up album, though unreviewed within these pages, is well worth the investment of both time and money. This video, released just last week, is quite cool.
5) The Tell Alls – “Magic of Christmas.” Ken Buono, going by The Tell Alls here, shares this catchy—and jangly—Christmas tune, which pokes holes in the business side of the holiday while celebrating the true spirit of the season.
And here’s one bonus: Calista Garcia and band performing the timely “Entertaining Children During Wartime.” The sound quality is admittedly so-so, as many live clips are, but it’s a reminder of her talent all the same.
The Old Grey Cat 
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