You better start savin' up, for the things that money can't buy

Some artists have catalogs so deep, only the aficionados have navigated through all might be contained there. So it is with Van Morrison, whose “Ivory Tower” probably will not make any casual fan’s list for favorite Morrison tracks.

So the fact that I know this tune very well makes me an aficionado, I guess. That’s OK with me. Morrison’s peaks are staggeringly high, and “Ivory Tower” is admittedly bubbling under a lot of his other work, but I’ve always had a fondness for this percolating little R&B number.

You could argue that it’s formulaic for Morrison, and I can buy that. But I love the not-so-subtle digs that he slings as he walks on a tightrope of self-pity, which with him is not as unbecoming as it might seem.

Today’s blast from the past: