see i can get with that aero (i'll cop to not being well-versed in cohen), it's just that it's simon's talent as a melodicist/"arranger" that, for me, pushes him into a distinctly different musical category---i'm not gonna dither between dylan and simon when i'm reaching for something to listen to, they're not hitting the same switches
xp no horseshoe otm
― g++ (gbx), Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:51 (twelve years ago) link
sorry bro
and i know that this is kinda pat and not v nuanced but it kills me and if i am in a car or my apartment it calls for maudlin singalongs
And tell me whyWhy won't you love meFor who I amWhere I amHe said:'Cause that's not the way the world is babyThis is how I love you, babyThis is how I love you, baby
― g++ (gbx), Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:54 (twelve years ago) link
i do think the s&g lyrics lack depth; they also irritate me a lot of the time. but he matured! this seems unfair:
he thinks what great texts/musics are missing is the sterling insight of Paul Simon
― horseshoe, Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:54 (twelve years ago) link
He a very short-lived musical called The Cave Man, I think. I loved the sndtrk to that and was super excited to get tickets only to arrive at the theater and find it had closed down. So bummed.
― ladies love draculas like children love stray dogs (ENBB), Sunday, August 7, 2011 1:46 PM Bookmark
close! it was The Capeman
― Neanderthal, Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:55 (twelve years ago) link
haha i was about to say, lol the cave man
― Autism Alamac (some dude), Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:56 (twelve years ago) link
tbh as much as i <3 simon and a lot of his lyrics i kinda think that he's plowing a different furrow than dylan or cohen? not in subject matter or w/e but i've always considered him more of a ~sounds~ guy than those two?
I agree with this. The very specific sound of various Simon songs is one of the biggest draws for me in his music. I'd say he's more pop, but a 70s model of it.
― _Rudipherous_, Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:56 (twelve years ago) link
As a melodicist there is no contest, Paul Simon can melodically kill Leonard Cohen every day before breakfast.
yeah this was basically the comparison i was tryna make (sorry max) cuz like '50 ways to leave your lover' is a total jam, catchy and funny and fun to listen to in a way cohen could never manage but when hes listing off the different ways so many of them are kinda nonsensical or awkward in order to fit the rhyme scheme ('get a new plan, stan'?) that it doesnt distract from the song but its still p corny
― Lamp, Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:58 (twelve years ago) link
areo otm re simon and cohens relative lyrical merits, and thats a p insightful and interesting post altogether, my only complaint is maybe its not really that easy to tease simons lyrics from his melody and delivery, like they play vv well together in a way that cohens growling over plunking guitar steez doesnt, i mean i know i could just read the lyrics on a piece of paper or w/e but that i have no interest in doing so says something
― ice cr?m, Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:59 (twelve years ago) link
paul simon is totally corny, i will admit, but i am, too, so
― horseshoe, Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:59 (twelve years ago) link
I remember the Capeman got some really harsh reviews. He went through three directors, and basically the response was that he seemed very naive about how Broadway shows worked....
his score was praised though (I remember hearing and liking "Bernadette")
xxxpost
― Neanderthal, Sunday, 7 August 2011 17:59 (twelve years ago) link
richard cory is p early in simon's career & seems odd to hold against himps as a kid i liked that song for its traditional-ness i guess but i was raised on burl ives so
― Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn't he? (D-40), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:00 (twelve years ago) link
― Lamp, Sunday, August 7, 2011 5:58 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
this feels almost too obviously corny to be 'corny' to meif that makes sense
― Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn't he? (D-40), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:01 (twelve years ago) link
I had a longer post but I should own up that I relate more strongly to Cohen in part because melody is difficult for me, if it wasn't for mrs. aero being pretty ruthless about saying "melodically you're being boring there" I would get a lot more writing done & lots of it would sound exactly the same - whereas Simon specializes in breezy wasn't-this-always-just-sitting-right-there? melodies, enviably effortless feel
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:02 (twelve years ago) link
richard cory is p early in simon's career & seems odd to hold against him
this is what i meant when i said i didn't like simon & garfunkel lyrics. i guess it's true that he's obsessed with himself and his experiences but it doesn't hurt the later songwriting afaic.
― horseshoe, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:04 (twelve years ago) link
Stealing song from Los Lobos: Dud
We only have dumb inarticulate Lobos guy's word for it!
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:05 (twelve years ago) link
I wish we wouldn't spend as much time discussing Simon's lyrics as we do about what interesting chordal patterns this guy picks on his guitar.
fair point, though "I am a rock" is from the same phase
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:06 (twelve years ago) link
i am too dumb about that stuff :(
xp
― horseshoe, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:06 (twelve years ago) link
oh hush you, either say yourself what those chordal patterns are or cease yr whinin
I tend to pretend the S&G stuff doesn't exist to be honest.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:06 (twelve years ago) link
yes he had flashes of brilliance during the garfunkel era but a lot of stuff was just embarrassing. and then paul simon is just so !!!
makes you wonder who he ripped off amirite lol
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:08 (twelve years ago) link
JUST A JOKE EVERYBODY BE CALM.
okay listening to this jerry landis song on youtube and lolling at how in character it is for lamp to like this
ok lol @ this too btw iirc
― Lamp, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:09 (twelve years ago) link
haha i'll kill you >:[
― horseshoe, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:09 (twelve years ago) link
Capeman - that was it!!
Man I was so pissed that night.
― ladies love draculas like children love stray dogs (ENBB), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:10 (twelve years ago) link
i was raised on burl ives so
don't hate on burl btw, burl ives is real
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:12 (twelve years ago) link
i think spirit voices is a really good example of a lot of things i think about simon. like how musically its this shuffly samba but obviously he never sings like he's singing samba, he's just as happy here to preserve the exotic otherness of that style. so yeah at first it seems like this really horrible example of that imperialism 102 but then the singer singing portugese appears and he's like bathed in this metallic reverb and its a fucking apparition, and you realise that it works as this encapsulation of like mystical tourism or something. like its really beautiful and i love how the song *stages* the event instead of describing it ("all of these spirit voices rule the night") but it also seems to work as a sly wink to the listener about whats really going on when he plays with these other musics. idk i might be reading to much into it. but it does seem to integrate how fantastic simon is at integrating his songwriting with his sonic formalism.
― ℗⎣▲✘ (ico), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:14 (twelve years ago) link
oh im not at all -- just thinking that richard cory's straightforward storytelling style prob appealed to me at the time for that reason xp
― Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn't he? (D-40), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:14 (twelve years ago) link
One and one-half wandering jewsFree to wander wherever they chooseAre travelling togetherIn the sangre de cristoThe blood of christ mountainsOf new mexicoOn the last leg of the journeyThey started a long time agoThe arc of a love affairRainbows in the high desert air
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:17 (twelve years ago) link
otm
― horseshoe, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:17 (twelve years ago) link
my favourite line in that song is "the bride was contagious/ she burned like a bride"
― ℗⎣▲✘ (ico), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
she burned like a bride
it's sad...
― Neanderthal, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:18 (twelve years ago) link
even Carrie Fisher must have soul
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:19 (twelve years ago) link
fwiw aretha tore brooklyn apart with a paul simon song the other night...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIjeUIeSKgg
― Thus Sang Freud, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:22 (twelve years ago) link
I love when Aretha sits down at the piano.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:22 (twelve years ago) link
If I were Rick Rubin I'd beg Aretha to record a piano and vocal album.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:23 (twelve years ago) link
Can someone please explain to me where the artistry is in One Trick Pony
I have to say, from the original post, Simon at his power-in-the-formula best is on display in "Late in the Evening" - who the fuck else could pull of "smoke myself a J" there? not Leonard Cohen, to be fair!
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:36 (twelve years ago) link
pull off
can't even fuckin type for shit any more, it sucks
― pathos of the unwarranted encore (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:37 (twelve years ago) link
whereas Simon specializes in breezy wasn't-this-always-just-sitting-right-there? melodies, enviably effortless feel
this is kinda what i was driving at i guess
― g++ (gbx), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:42 (twelve years ago) link
how do i shot artistry
― Gatsby was a success, in the end, wasn't he? (D-40), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:43 (twelve years ago) link
This was Simon's response to that Los Lobos interview:
This Los Lobos thing has come up before, so I wanted to talk to you direct. They said all this stuff to Songtalk magazine in the States, and I’ve replied to it all in an interview that hasn’t run yet, but its all there. There was a bad atmosphere at those sessions (with Los Lobos on Graceland) from the start; I don’t know what it is with them. The whole deal for them working on Graceland was all worked out beforehand between Los Lobos and Lenny Warnoker (Managing Director at Warners USA) and there were no complaints at the time. It was made clear from the outset that we didn’t have a song. There was no song. It was being written from scratch. I was – and still am – a fan of the band. What I really love is the accordion sound. So we started jamming in the rehearsal room and nothing was really coming together, and so I said do you have any ideas we can work on. What I wanted for the Graceland track was like a generic Los Lobos dikka-de-dikka guitar sound. And so we came up with something around a riff. They never once said that this guitar line is one of ours and we don’t want you to have it. So we worked on recording this track for about three days, which is a long time to work on one track. I had to teach David Hildegger how to sing this song! And then David Hildegger came up to me and said “we’re not happy with this track. We wanna do a ballad”. But I couldn’t have that. At that time it was the last track of the whole album – eventually we did one more – and I just said at this stage I don’t care whether the album comes out without Los Lobos on it. I was getting really tired of it – I don’t want to get into a public slanging match over this, but this thing keeps coming up.
“So we finished the recordings. And three months passed, and there was no mention of “joint writing”. The album came out and we heard nothing. Then six months passed and Graceland had become a hit and the first thing I heard about the problem was when my manager got a lawyer’s letter. I was shocked. They sent this thing to my manager, not me. If there was a problem they could have contacted me direct, they’ve got my home number, we talked a lot. If you ask me it was a lawyer’s idea. You know, “the records a hit, and there’s $100,000 in it”. They had nine months from the recordings to talk to me about all this, but I heard nothing. And its still not sorted out because they still keep bringing it up – I heard they’d done this interview for you. I don’t want to get into a public slanging match with them, because I really like their music.”
― President Keyes, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:45 (twelve years ago) link
i always hate it when ppl have to bag on someone who is awesome do defend someone else who is awesome.
as said by others, never really occured to me to compare cohen and simon tbh
― om nom nom nnamdi asomugha (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:47 (twelve years ago) link
i mean simon's strength isnt in the words-qua-words, though he's obviously got a gift for them, its the performance; i mean if you put leonard cohens words written down next to paul simons words written down cohen probably comes across as the stronger poet. but the difference between a song like story of isaac and a song like graceland--to me--is that cohen is, like, singing a poem over some guitar--if i'm being charitable i can say that at least he's making an attempt to create an engagement between the content & sound of the lyrics and the action of the music--but in "graceland" all these things exist together, playing off one another, changing the force and meaning of each component. and yet it comes across as totally seamless, as though it's off the top of simon's head.
i actually think you sort of secretly acknowledge this when you talk about the things that simon is good at. i dont know, i guess i am not really doing a "whole career" thing here, though lets not forget that simon was in his 20s throughout the S&G years and cohen didnt move to NYC till he was in his 30s. also its like "hi leonard could you write about something besides god for, like, once. no, besides sex too."
― max, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:48 (twelve years ago) link
Simon and Byrne would be the more obvious comparison
― President Keyes, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:49 (twelve years ago) link
i think only insulting thing anyone said about leonard cohen on this thread is when i called him "boring old leonard cohen." which i didnt even mean!
― max, Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:49 (twelve years ago) link
you called him stupid
― g++ (gbx), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:50 (twelve years ago) link
The way Simon and Los Lobos remember the events is close enough that I still side with Simon if forced to pick one.
― livin in my own private Biden hole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 7 August 2011 18:50 (twelve years ago) link