I'm sorry but Paul Simon is so overrated

xp there it is

cohen is robert culp and simon is elliott (gould)

cohen is dickens and simon is eliot

i don't know if the mustache really added to the look but hey 1975

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fwieE8fRwg&feature=related

cohen is dickens and simon is eliot

― horseshoe, Wednesday, August 10, 2011 11:52 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

came back here to do this one

xpost Paul Kinison

lol i'm your man

that "still crazy" performance sounds great, but simon sort of comports himself like will ferrell in the jazz flute scene from anchorman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScG0wN05msA

ok yeah a+

lolol

A favorite Anton Corbijn photo of Cohen there.

As long as we're posting 70s photos:
http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kp9rw15etK1qzcki4o1_250.jpg

Simon showed the new composition to Garfunkel the same day, and shortly afterward, the duo began to perform it at folk clubs in New York. In the liner notes of their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., Garfunkel claims, "'The Sound of Silence' is a major work. We were looking for a song on a larger scale, but this is more than either of us expected."[6]

The duo recorded it for the first time on March 10, and included the track on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., which was released that October.[7] The album flopped upon its release, and the duo split up, with Simon going to England for much of 1965.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hUy9ePyo6Q

that "still crazy" performance sounds great, but simon sort of comports himself like will ferrell in the jazz flute scene from anchorman

― horseshoe, Thursday, August 11, 2011 12:01 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this is like half the reason it rules!

That's an awful photo of Leonard Cohen, please remove it.

no way that pic is all-time

haven't been following this terrifyingly long thread but i don't think anyone could argue that paul simon is cooler than leonard cohen

He's dressed like a teenage girl.

Ha ha that pic of cohen is amazing, is that death of a ladies man era

That was before a visit to NYC's Anvil in '78.

watching that old s&g clip, you can see why execs thought simon wouldn't get much play as a solo artist, he's so ubernebbish even garfunkel looks cool next to him

but that's his bag, right? sad sack par excellence, which makes his carping about being second best to dylan kind of o_O

dude was never going to be dylan or young or cohen or whatever, just own yr shit and move on

keep imagining an alternate history where s&g hang it up for good after their first album bombs, it subsequently becomes a cult fave from the 60s, and simon to this day records charming lo-fi albums in his motel room in ithaca

first mention of Neil Young here - kinda interesting to consider him a contemporary/peer (and as another "also-ran" to Dylan)

Judging by this thread, I'd say Simon is underrated as a lyricist. He has a very distinctive and memorable style. I don't think Cohen is a very apt comparison. I love Cohen (some of the time anyway), but his stuff screams "I am writing serious poetry" in a way that Simon's best work doesn't. The job of a lyricist is to put words & music together in a memorable way - I honestly don't care how the words look on the page - it has nothing to do with my enjoyment of the music. I think Simon implicitly gets this. His best stuff has a disarmingly casual, almost tossed-off feeling, but there's clearly a ton of craft behind it. He comes up with memorable conceits, and can evoke a lot of feeling without any watch-me-emote histrionics. I think actually David Byrne is a pretty good reference point, in the lyrics department. Both have a gift for finding the transcendent in the banal, and both hide more than a bit of prickliness underneath a surface cheeriness.

I honestly don't care how the words look on the page - it has nothing to do with my enjoyment of the music. I think Simon implicitly gets this.

he literally says this word for word in the Playboy interview linked upthread

i agree w/ that argument about lyrics ... i mean i basically have to as a rap fan, the idea that its about how it looks on a page is basically an anathema to the genre in many ways

he's a fantastic lyricist, he tucks a lot of idiosyncratic details in his stuff and still makes them come off as conversational and natural

angels in the architecture

I'll revise my earlier statement. As a lyricist, Simon is talented, with the exception of "My Bodyguard" and a few others. However as a melodian, his work in the last 35 years has been dreadful.

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/images/wiki/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/42/Shrug.jpg/250px-Shrug.jpg

yeah, paul is great in this movie
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41RKH7KAG0L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

It's true that Simon makes a terrible melodian, but have you ever tried using him as a harmonium?

Artie's got a squeeze box he wears on his chest,
And when Edie gets home she never gets no rest

http://adamsalamon.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/sorry.jpg

"You Can Call Me Al" is the actual title? Even worse.

nah the actual ACTUAL title is Don't Go Home With Your Hard-on

Dude invented the phrase "bridge over troubled water"!

Dude invented the phrase "slip-sliding away"!

Like, invented them out of thin air!

Just had a "Kodachrome" flashback. It's 1973 and I'm nine and my cousin (15) and my sister (19) and I are riding around in our white LTD when this song comes on. And my cousin, he goes "Listen to this!" and the two of them laugh hysterically and conspiratorily over the fact that the word "crap" is used in a song on the radio.

There had never been a time I didn't feel soft in the middle. I walked by an American Apparel party on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and finally understood the line "I don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard." I was enamored of unrequited love, and the plea "You don't feel you could love me, but I feel you could" became a mantra. This of course went hand in hand with "Losing love is like a window in your heart." You don't even need to be divorced to know that. You don't need to know what a National guitar is, either—I didn’t until I looked it up just now. I had always imagined some kind of "national guitar of America," not a guitar made of metal, but both meanings have some potency, I think.

http://nplusonemag.com/graceland-at-twenty-five

I think "Graceland" is overrated, but not Paul Simon in general.

Gotta love anyone who has a hit song about Kodachrome.... did Simon have any comments on the discontinuation of said film last year? I loved the stuff. The colors on other films fade with time, and who knows if we'll still be able to read our SD cards, CD-ROMs, and hard drives 40 years from now, or if ink-jet prints won't crumple, but 1930s Kodachrome slides and movies still look as vibrant as the day they were made.

http://nplusonemag.com/graceland-at-twenty-five

― o. nate, Friday, August 12, 2011 4:10 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is an amzing piece, all the same id like to hear it read in the voice of 'earl' of 'my name is earl'

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lps6v2NEaE1qjpaxko1_250.gif

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lptpdpWgA51qjpaxko1_250.gif

pure sex

Talked to a gal this weekend who thought for decades that the song was called "Coat of Chrome."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmAAaXI8riY&ob=av2e

I think I thought that too for a while til I bought the 45.

Tonight I listened to my favourite Radio 2 programme about standards, mostly c.1920s-1950s.

The theme was songs with the word 'crazy' so it made a rare foray to 'still crazy after all these years', which presenter Russell Davies praised.

What was interesting was, he agreed with Horseshoe's view of the song as being about a murderer! Though maybe a would-be killer rather than one who has already done it in the song.

I had never really heard the song all the way through before. Need to hear it again.

I post this mainly for Horseshoe's benefit.

I feel like the "murderer" reading sort of steps too far away from the tone/mood of the song, or maybe it's just like - - - for the people that bought and connected with this record at the time, it totally wasn't a "twist" song about one of those "always was a quiet guy, kept to himself" cases... It was about a feeling that they themselves had or recognized...y'know? This sense of being in your 30s (in the 70s), a little rattled, some notches on the bedpost now and most of the old dramas with people settled down into warm recognition (maybe with a few lines around the smiles) - the important thing isn't that he could picture himself going off and doing something nuts, but that he "would not be convicted by a jury of (his) peers" - because they're going through the same thing and can all relate to where he's coming from.

...I dunno!

no no you guys this one's pretty easy

"I look outside my window and I watch the Cars" - Paul is in London where Roy Thomas Baker is producing their debut, he sees them arriving at the studio daily for tracking
"I fear I'll do some damage one fine day" - he is thinking of covering one of their songs in his own style
"but I would not be found guilty by a jury of my peers" - old hippies will love my Cars cover no matter what it sounds like
"still crazy after all these years" - I am an axe murderer