PAUL SIMON POLL RESULTS THREAD AND DISCUSSION

Johnny Ace is the last song on Hearts and Bones - definitely check it out!

"Feelin' Groovy" was reinvigorated for me by Mr. Burns singing it on the Simpsons, somehow.

"At the Zoo" - can't play anything well enough to play this but I can say it's fun to sing along to. Maybe suffers a bit from transparency of metaphor but agreed, the litany is entertaining at face value, seems like a good song for kids too.

"Keep the Customer Satisfied" - had never even occurred to me that this was a drug thing although now it just seems ridiculously obvious. One that I like because my mother liked it, especially the "words I never heard in the BYE-BUL!"

Reallllly surprised "Still Crazy" is so low. Seemed just obvious to me. I've also liked it to different degrees at different times, now that I actually am getting to "that age" and have more old lovers to be wistful about (and old battles that don't seem like that big of a deal anymore) I relate to it a lot more. And man, such a smooth sound, it's like this time portal to a pretty chill but sorta sad version of the mid-70s. What was that review/post/comment that said something like "the song for anyone who's ever owned a Volkswagen Rabbit"?

"Gumboots" always reminds me of being a kid and having this whole dialogue worked out with my best friend, where one would sing the line from the song and the other would comment back, chiefly - "Believing I had supernatural powers I slammed into a brick wall" -- "Well, you're pretty stupid!"

"johnny ace" barely missed being on my ballot. it's great, one of simon's more haunting numbers, while being pretty plainspoken at the same time.

voted Gumboots high I think, love the casualness of "you don't feel you could live me but I feel you could"' esp using FEEL there instead of think

wow this is happening! i voted for only one of those songs and it was gumboots, couple others barely missed

I still don't know what to think of the Glass outro in "Johnny Ace." I can understand how it belongs conceptually but...

What was that review/post/comment that said something like "the song for anyone who's ever owned a Volkswagen Rabbit"?

I'm pretty sure I've actually heard this song in a VW Rabbit. One of my dad's friends had a Rabbit and I was in it not infrequently as a kid (kids were pretty much the only people who could fit in the backseat), and he always had music on including a lot of Paul Simon.

Anyway, "Still Crazy" is the only thing so far that I voted for. As a grade-schooler in the '70s hearing my parents' records, I think I absorbed Simon as some kind of avatar of adulthood. His stuff from that period signified the mysteries of the grown-up world to me, songs that I couldn't quite tell what they were about but helped shape my ideas of what grown-up experience might feel like. And I wasn't wrong, either. "Four in the morning, crapped out, yawning." Yeah.

(Of the others, especially happy to see "Johnny Ace" and "Gumboots.")

btw lamp can i make a request that you roll out the rest of the results slower if possible during a time when we r awake so that we can comment on each result, namaste

img for "at the zoo" is giant lol

never knew abt "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" breakup content, but it seems retroactively obvious.

i went to the zoo the day after i voted for "at the zoo" :)

"late great johnny ace" is kind of a slow burner for me; it took a long time for me to absorb it. it's diffuse.

"still crazy" is a great song but i don't enjoy listening to it that much. so depressing.

iirc plax loves "gumboots" and is going to be mad at its low showing.

you should maybe stick to the chicken suit version

xp

iamgine how I'm going to feel about the absence of "Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine"

xp

I think it does feel maybe a little more "stock" than some of his other lyrics - there are flashes of specificity but the ride past the gates of the factories is maybe a little too on-the-nose.

always thought this was purposeful; the small-town stockness is exactly the target of the singer's vitriol. this song means a lot to me; i used to think it was too mean, but now that i'm living in the town i grew up in it seems exactly right.

did you vote, dr. morbs? yay if you did!

ones that i voted for so far are "train in the distance" + "my little town" fwiw

sorry to be this person, but just listened to "fakin' it" for the first time and it's super-annoying

!

also voted "My Little Town", love the piano (Art!) & really the whole arrangement is slamming, esp as it ends

i love how paul simon's face always looks sad even when he's smiling

^^^youtube still for "my little town" elicited this thought

:)/:(

sad eyed lady of the lowlands

sad as a lonely little wrinkled balloon

aw i love that line. there's another good song i failed to vote for.

#38 THE 59th STREET BRIDGE SONG (FEELIN' GROOVY) - like shakey, i rejected this early on for being too cornball, but not without a twinge of regret. remember singing it in 2nd grade music class, loving the weird, sighing syncopation of "dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep".
#37 AT THE ZOO - another childhood favorite that i cut too quickly, really regret this one. similar to "the 59th street bridge song", but less cloyingly fruity, delivered with an insinuating intimacy that keeps it from getting too cute. also similar in that my favorite thing about it is the syncopation of one line: "you can take-a-the crosstown bus". the "whoa-whoa-whoa, mmm-mmm-mmm" bit here reminds me strongly of the "lie-la-lie" melody from "the boxer", but better for the understatement. should have cut that one instead :/
#36 KEEP THE CUSTOMER SATISFIED - totally voted for all these weeds songs.
#33 STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS - good, but not a personal favorite. cut it to make room for "rene & georgette magritte". so sue me.
#32 SO LONG, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT - like still crazy, almost but not quite made the cut. strange tune, hits me strong some days, other days not.
#31 GUMBOOTS - love it. didn't vote for it.

Been saying for a while that I learned what cobblestones were by having a second-grade music teacher parse the sng line by line as our class learned to sing it--but today I'm also remebering that i also learned what "no deeds to do" and "dappled" meant, and what Simon meant by "Hello, Lamppost, whatcha knowin'?" It was like my first literature class in a way, for real.

"Gumboots" is a quintessential example of how solo Simon, in his lyrics, doesn't pretend to be any dumber or less rich or more of an everyman than he actually is.

The John Adams coda to Johnny Ace is an oddity; I wonder why it's there?

that's philip glass, right? i kinda like it, though it is a kind of odd touch.

Simon wrote the lyrics for this Glass piece (tho he didn't sing it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1irfiYgf2pA

"'An Evening With Phillip Glass'--only an evening!"

little bit off topic, but someone just played this for me. the intro has been sampled to death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6NU1Ze5rHA
paul simon, the father of hip hop?

are there Spanish-lang covers of "Julio," btw?

O____O at the dude running onstage at the most key moment on the first performance of Johnny Ace
Kudos to PS for barely flinching, not missing a note, etc.

yeah apparently he never played it live again after that! little bit freaky.

dunno about spanish language versions of julio, but this is great if you haven't seen it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1dlWmrRstc

1) I was at that show

2) It wasn't me

xp

You're "Soy Bomb", right?

fwiw soy bomb has since become an established conceptual artist and surgeon

yeah a little sad that gumboots is off the table so quickly. my favourite song off graceland. i love that little tight kit, how everything chirps away, all so compact and tight, all the rhythms ticking along together. everything jammed together into that little taxicab. its a song that's made me feel really romantic about new york too. the specific cosmopolitanism: a little overheard dialoge, fibre optic virgin mary on the dashboard, just drop me off at the next block. it makes sense to me that this was the seed of the whole project. the big themes haven't really opened out yet, its not the expansiveness of african skies, the lights over broadway, the big swaying rhythms, angels in the architecture. its just this little moment, this little portrait of a moment. but still so heartfelt along with the slight defensiveness. all glib urbanity and then this flash of vulnerability. you don't feel you could love me but i feel you could. i guess it wouldn't work for me if it wasn't so specific, a vignette. the cabdriver minding his own business, humming along w/ a highlife compilation.

are there Spanish-lang covers of "Julio," btw?

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Monday, March 19, 2012 5:41 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

btw i was today on my million listen of the song for the first time appreciating his good pronunciation of julio

he always enunciates with perfect grace.

― estela, Thursday, August 19, 2010 10:18 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is "julio" and "schoolyard" internal rhyme or assonance and consonance at the same time or what? whatever it is, it is very pleasant. also i didn't vote for that song because i am a big liar.

Haha! I've never noticed that until now, when I tried it in a New York accent.

it cracks me up so much how he cuts that kid off on sesame street.

haha i know i have always heard that he's kind of mean irl and that moment makes me believe it

nobody steals the spotlight from paul simon! not even some cute as a button kid!

lol totally ok kid make way for the pro now

hello placard
whatcha knowin'

man, i love Bookends the way it is, but "Save the Life of My Child" sets the bar SO high in this psych freak-out way. never really sat down with this album turned up loud enough to really enjoy the curtain-raising track (ahh, it's like i'm right there in the coffeeshop with the other beatniks...), which in turn means being absolutely bombarded by that first Moog blast in "Save." and then there are all these almost-dissonant shrieks during the breaks, like a succession of wispy, screaming Garfunkel heads dissolving into frame one after another. "America" then comes in to weld the same sonic fullness to something entirely more anthemic and harmonious. that suite right there could make an incredible first side of a double 10" or something.

imagine if the whole album were all AS insane as that. eat your heart out, Smile! but then again it's a great album as is. feels like one of the best things to come out of that period of people being rocked by Sgt. Pepper and expanding their ambitions and all that (is that still considered more or less accurate or is it Beatle propaganda?). i get the sense it was received as a Major Album at the time, but i don't remember ever really seeing it namechecked when i was learning the musical metanarrative of "The Sixties." is it effectively S&G's Revolver?

clemenza otm upthread about how jaw-dropping "America" is when i let myself listen with fresh ears. i know it was when i first got into them at like age 17. but damn!

it’s a heavy album. “old friends” is especially intense. really love that weird little mini detour with the piccolo or whatever and the typewriter is very British-y to me and makes me think of that era of McCartney kinda

I mean the detour in “fakin it”, accidentally clipped a sentence about how much I dig that one

"Fakin' It" also has the crazy opening, with the Mellotron (?) and stomping, Cecilia-esque percussion bursting in while already fading out... anticipating by decades the sound of an album with continuous transitions getting chopped up by skipping to an individual track on CD or MP3. so yeah side 2 is a little trippier than I remembered last night while only on side 1!

hello i am having a paul simon day today & remembering how great this poll was <3

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

Life, I love you.

Liberace was the last-minute fill-in for that number when Stravinsky was unavailable.

And the Young Folks were subbing for the Fugs.