PAUL SIMON POLL RESULTS THREAD AND DISCUSSION

every S&G song features reciting herbs iirc

― some dude, Tuesday, March 20, 2012 12:05 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

S&G catalog is like an ancient herb museum, tru

Bangles cover of "Hazy Shade of Winter" is one of the best ever.

btw I have always heard it as "the crusher of language," this little stab of resentment from the narrator with a poet's soul, towards his boss speaking in business-mag gibberish and probably mangling his subject/verb agreement in memos and so on.

SCARBOROUGH FAIR/CANTICLE - I don't have any emotional relationship with this at all,

that's basically the thing for me about this song

i always thought born at the right time was a sort of sequel to 'boy in the bubble,' kind of amazed wondering at the future, paul simon does koyanisqatsi

btw I have always heard it as "the crusher of language," this little stab of resentment from the narrator with a poet's soul, towards his boss speaking in business-mag gibberish and probably mangling his subject/verb agreement in memos and so on.

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, March 20, 2012 12:07 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

okay fine that makes sense. i like "pressure of language" better though

honestly i think my inability to grok 'scarborough fair" is same as the rest of s&g. garfunkel's voice freezes everything in amber or something; it gives it this museum-like quality that makes me care less about it.

― horseshoe, Tuesday, March 20, 2012 8:29 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean scarborough fair is one of not many songs from simon that has a sense of history beyond the beginning of the 20th cent. i voted high partly because i am a sucker for that oldness tho

― max, Tuesday, March 20, 2012 8:48 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

both of these assessments otm, i think. "scarborough fair/canticle" does have a weird, luminous, trapped-in-amber quality. this quality serves the song well, imo. like a lot of the midcentury pop i love best ("i only have eyes for you", "sleepwalk"), simon and garfunkel give it a gloss of beauty and stillness that has a somewhat creepy, funeral parlor quality, everything so hushed, earnest and precise. and it it was a haunted song to begin with, mournful and deathly, coming to us from across centuries. i think simon overstates the ballad's intrinsic ghostliness by attempting to press it into service as a fairly direct war protest song, but what comes through most clearly are the original lyrics, with their vaguer intimations of mortality, abandonment and loss. the museum/mortuary vibe really amplifies this.

i love "born at the right time." every time i get to it on rhythm i listen to it a couple of extra times.

very sing-along-able

they've got the Peeeeeenguins, the Moooooonglows, the Oooooorioles and the Fiiive Satins.

otm!

obvious child was actually a slow burner for me, i always thought rhythm was about the second side until people started banging on about the coast and obvious child on some thread.

love "born at the right time." every time i get to it on rhythm i listen to it a couple of extra times.

this and "The Cool Cool River" are awesome back to back early morning listening.

did gbx vote in this? i'm worried about h+b.

i voted for some h&b songs! it was torture to cut some h&b songs.

like when i add up all the s&g that is gonna be in the top twenty and then all the solo stuff i think should be there i realise there just isn't room.

i think estela didn't vote either :(

i gave h&b some quality points

h&b the song better be making it. it will, right?

ps. i didn't vote so i can only get so worried i suppose.

i mean the song h+b specifically though

i think h&b the song will be pretty high up, yeah

i assume it was plax's #1

maybe eazy's, alfred's #1, too

PSRT again: it's a seriously creepy song, even (almost) a scary one, not despite but because of its intense, frozen beauty. it fascinated me as a kid, in the same spooky way that "calfornia dreamin'" fascinated me. beautiful, yearning voices that seem to echo in a void. much darker and yet more glittering than "california dreamin'" though, which always seemed to evoke fog and bare branches, thin grey light.

i gave h&b the song some quality points

lol its my ringtone

lmao

cad you should have voted!

"hotel california" is probably another point of childhood comparison for PSR&T's lovely death vibe, that and "strawberry fields"

i know!!! i've been working/getting ready to leave the country for 2 weeks and did not permit myself time to do remedial listening :(

but i trust yall to do an excellent job

don't lose hope people my ballot will deliver the goods: 5 S&G, 4 Graceland, 11 other solo paul songs

I didn't vote for Scarborough Fair but it's a gear-switching exercise within his discography and I am kind of kicking myself for not voting for it, tbh. Being an S&G stan and all.

It's not a "Paul Simon" song as we know it. It's just his voice. And that's IT. But you guys, his voice is so beautiful in these early S&G songs! It mightn't seem enough compared to his later songs, but I dunno, that he had that instrument at his disposal from the very beginning, to me that's a lot.

It's not uniquely Paul, but that's what I find beautiful about it. Like hiding in plain sight.

It's like spending all day reading, idk, Ulysses and then reading Enid Blyton or nursery rhymes. There's so much simplicity and not a whole ton of subtext that your'e just kind of left with, well, the song, and the sounds.

12 simon & garfunkel songs
8 solo paul, including 2 from graceland

despite my promises to study up, i wound up putting my ballot together in a rush at the last minute, with little advance prep. if i had it to do over again, i'd switch out three of the songs i voted for, and the results would split evenly between S&G and solo paul.

http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/8079/homewardbound.png

This is Ditton railway station, where Paul wrote Homeward Bound. It closed in 1994.

S: Bill Murray SNL lounge singer

"remember me to the guy or chick who lives there
he or she once was a true love of mine"

Who else besides me placed NO S&G songs on a ballot? Since my parents weren't fans I never heard them growing up beyond the obvious, child. What I have boils down to what detractors have always accused Simon of being.

I'm glad you didn't. I placed 7, because I like them and wanted them represented, but they could've taken care of themselves.

It's interesting, they weren't really a "parent" thing to me - my mom knew all the songs by heart (and told me once that she'd used some S&G lyrics for an English class she was teaching at some vague point in time!) but we didn't actually have any of the records. I discovered the hits through oldies radio and got the Gallagher & Garfunkel greatest hits from one of those ten-CDs-for-one-dollar kind of deals, if I remember right. The albums I didn't get until I was out of college probably. There's a lot to like there, especially on the last two.

i only have three S&G songs on my ballot (frank lloyd wright, homeward bound and only living boy). but i coulda voted for more probably. even though I can understand the criticisms, a lot of it is great 60s folk pop.
oh and i think i prefer the live homeward bound on the greatest hits, but that might just be cuz i heard that version first.

what do detractors accuse Simon of being? i'll kill them!

i'm glad for this poll, PS is a big blind spot for me as i appear to be the only person who posts here whose parents didn't listen to paul simon (i only really know the big S&G/PS solo songs, never heard an album he's been involved in all the way through) (yes, even graceland)

i will grant that "homeward bound" seems like a pretty good song; never knowingly heard it before this poll.

i appear to be the only person who posts here whose parents didn't listen to paul simon

mine don't either! i always thought this was because they were indian but apparently mindy kaling's parents played graceland on her childhood car trips like everyone else's so she got the cool indian parents

i got billy joel instead :/

My (slightly) younger sister became a Simon maniac around the age of 8 (!) so I heard all the S&G catalog when she bought it, the the solo stuff as it was released, up through Rhythm of the Saints at least. She also went to the Central Park and Graceland shows with me.

aw.

My parents actually chortled when I bought a tape of Graceland on my own in summer '90, shortly before TROTS – they thought he was too precious beyond words and doubted his sexuality.

well, I've heard rumors about that

billy joel is the other great music I got out of my childhood! The pleasures are VERY different than with Simon but the man has tons and tons of great songs.

on the way out of the S&G CP show I remember we saw one of the Plasmatics.