My first Van album, bought at the end of 1983. Very probably it was you that recommended I start here — if so, you were right. It fits almost any time and anywhere. It feels like one great track after another all the way through (helped, I reckon, by getting the least interest song out of the way right at the start).
It's got classic written all over it. And yet, like an over-visited tourist destination, it feels worn out. Not physically worn out: living apart from my record player in the mid-eighties, I recorded it onto tape and mostly listened to that copy. But worn out in that I feel I got everything I could out of this record a long time ago, and listening again seems unnecessary, superfluous. It lives on in memory. The songs are so immediately memorable, and available to my inner ear, that there's no need actually to play them again. My ears go onto autopilot.
(In this Moondance is quite different to Astral Weeks, which my memory cannot assimilate beyond about the first 32 bars: after that the music and words come tumbling after each other too thick and too fast for mind to keep up. Yes, I remember many moments throughout Astral Weeks, but they join up in different ways on each listening.)
So, while I thought I might enjoy giving Moondance my priveleged weekend coffee listening spot (cf. 1, 2), I was glad when the needle went up. Then I could binge some more on Paavoharju.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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