Paul Simon

He was a mean individual

^^ would watch

also yeah "The Coast" is amazing. Turrican, I think you and me were the only people to vote for it on the Simon ballot poll, maybe. But mannnn that main guitar figure is just so compelling and lovely.

"The Coast," "The Cool, Cool River," "Can't Run But," "Further to Fly" -- these are best-ever compositions.

yeah Rhythm.. is amazing and Graceland isn't even all that great really.

The demo of "The Coast" is worth a listen just for the alternate first verse alone.

"The Coast" and the title track are among the most r e l a x e d pieces of music ever.

Cool Cool River is soooo good!

And is in 9/8 for bonus points.

'Spirit Voices', 'Born At The Right Time' and 'The Obvious Child' are all amazing too, IMO. I don't know if it's better than Graceland but I certainly listen to it more!

huh I had never really dug into the whole arc of S&G's career/output. Weird how much of it was in fits and starts - a hastily recorded debut album that disappears, Paul goes to England and records a solo album (and produces Jackson C. Frank), Garfunkel goes off to act in Catch 22, their big breakthrough single is orchestrated and released without their input, Paul has writer's block for most of 1967, etc. It's almost like they were never really a functional unit apart from maybe 1969.

Yeah, that's very true! One of the main reasons for their on-and-off activity post-Sounds of Silence is that Simon took a long time to come up with a batch of material. He was really picky when it came to songwriting.

damn STS

good songs

Just realized I missed him in Chicago last night on his farewell tour.

Great setlist:

America
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
The Boy in the Bubble
Dazzling Blue
That Was Your Mother
Rewrite
Mother and Child Reunion
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
Can't Run But
Wristband
Spirit Voices
The Obvious Child
Questions for the Angels
The Cool, Cool River
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
You Can Call Me Al
Graceland
Still Crazy After All These Years
Late in the Evening
Homeward Bound
Kodachrome
The Boxer
American Tune
The Sound of Silence

The Cool, Cool River

yeeessssssss

damn that setlist is fire

i just impulsively spent a small fortune to catch this tour so uh thanks i guess!

this show was a lot of fun btw though i think the think that will stick with me was a sort of chamber music version of rene & georgette magritte; he sang it faithfully and intimately and it was just totally gorgeous.

yeah i’m hoping he works more with ymusic (and gabriel kahane, who did some of the arranging) in the future

yeah definitely. (also thought your globe review aptly captured the vibe of the show.)

thank you : )

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/30/641385734/first-listen-paul-simon-in-the-blue-light

Sounds good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu2f5LHnVKk

is someone gonna stream his final show on 9/22?

Oh, I've been waiting to hear this since I saw the show. Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War is really good.

Can't Run But is a nice version as well. Pretty great live.

Man, all old Jewish men really end up looking like the same person.

I dig the New Orleans-ized 'Pigs, Sheep and Wolves'.

These new versions, especially Can't Run But, are horrible. The way he phrases the lyrics in that song on the new version is so bad. His enunciation of the T in 'but' drives me crazy. I had high hopes, but this sucks.

Going to see him tomorrow, my first solo experience with him since the '91 tour behind The Rhythm of the Saints.

I can't imagine a new version of 'Can't Run But' being anywhere near as good as the original. One of my favourites on Saints..., that.

Strongly disagree with brotherlovesdub here. Just having heard the new album for the first time, I'm really loving it already. No matter how good the original versions already were, these new takes exist in their own right and all have something to offer.
The original 'Can't Run But' is a big fave of mine as well, and I agree nothing could top that song with its outstanding rhythm section. But this variation is so different, I'd think that the two versions could exist on the same album without it being repetitive and with neither take being redundant.

'How The Heart Approaches What It Yearns' might be an early favourite with its gorgeous Wynton Marsalis trumpet work.

wow, that's a cuíca drum on Me and Julio...

Always thought it was Paul doing funky monkey sounds!

the more you know...

Lol

so i tried listening to _So Beautiful or So What_, omg what a disaster, almost ripped the metaphorical tone arm off at around track 5. this is rockism at its purest and most vulgar, but there were no songs. which is fine, but that's just what i want from PS.

Cool Papa Bell came on randomly – and while i think the song is great, it's weird as shit hearing Paul Simon say "mother fucker"

this revive worried me.

i'm gonna be sad when Paul goes.

we’ll always have Pa Salieu

Seriously, just seeing a generic Paul Simon thread get bumped, heart skipped a beat.

Sorry, motherfuckers.

You did it again!

What are we supposed to do, have the mods put NOT RIP on every thread?

Automatically add "RIP" to the name of every thread as a memento mori.

every thread revive - "dead or cancelled?"

the putting RIP on thread things is weird

it’s also weird that people forget ilx isn’t a news feed? you used to be able to, like, just talk about old music on here...

Some forums elsewhere have a dedicated "dead thread" that they continuously update. You could do one for ilxor's music forum. (There's probably one elsewhere in ilxor already.)

I like adding R.I.P. because it makes clear which thread is/was being used to document immediate reactions; kind of has a memorial function.

Something I find funny about the “newsfeed” aspect is how, in the old days, new threads would be launched for every news item, with article links & detailed excerpts... now the assumption is that everyone has one eye on what’s trending every second, so a thread will be bumped with just “hmm” or “lol” (and discussion ensues).

listening to my mum's Paul Simon playlist right now - it is all obviously good music but it strikes me that Kodachrome (which is particularly good, musically) is surely a deliberate attempt to write the worst lyric of all time. a lecherous, truculent commercial

I heard (free on the Broken Record podcast) the first hour of this five hours of conversation with Paul Simon and, yes, Malcolm Gladwell. The rest is available on Audible and for sale as an audiobook.

Really enjoyed it, especially given how prickly Simon usually is as an interview subject, and diving into songwriting and music-making as much as specific biography (which he's said multiple times he's just not interested in, outside of his songs).

xp

> Kodachrome (which is particularly good, musically) is surely a deliberate attempt to write the worst lyric of all time. a lecherous, truculent commercial

Amusing to me that the cheap and ugly "here's images representing several songs inside this commercial package" cover art of the album shows a picture of himself when he's young, in black and white, over the Kodachrome logo. Isn't the song about our memories being oversaturated, brighter than reality, sunny in memory when the truth was ugly?

The metaphor of Kodachrome, a technological wonder that seemed to distort reality in a beautiful way, doesn't seem to fit the first verse about how poor his education was compared with how clever he is now, clever enough to use bad grammar ironically; in fact it's almost an inversion of the theme: "when I was in school it was bad, but now I am smart" seems like a contradiction of the following verse's "I seem to recall in my memories, when I was single these girls were fun and sunny days, but if I met them again I know deep down it would be hell in black and white"

I suppose I'm trying to over-analyze a rather tossed off lyric, but let's keep going for a bit. So, is he telling his current partner here and now, though I may be with you now, 'mama,' I refuse to disown my memories of my past loves, for surely they are harmless, I know that though they are pretty memories those memories are like oversaturated kodachrome photos, better in memory than in real life? No, he isn't saying don't take the photos away. He's saying don't take my camera away - my ability to continue to record reality in an inauthentic way.

As a songwriter, steeped in nostalgia and inauthentic storytelling, eager to recast his persona from the pseudo-intellectual black turtlenecked poet of harpsichord rock in his Simon and Garfunkel days and replace that with a folksy Americana, aw-shucks I use bad grammar and it don't hurt me none even though I'm actually quite intelligent, he is a sort of false camera. He is telling the listener, don't make me lose my art, which in its simplest description is to prettify the past through my bullshit stories, of which you will enjoy several examples on the proceeding lp. "Mama" the current girlfriend is more a stand-in for his current adult contemporary audience. Don't make me be honest, he pleads. The singer-songwriter of the early 70s prizes emotional honesty but he is from the earlier generation of dylanesque stuffing and puffery.

This, then, is why the photo on the album cover is of him, young, in black and white, and clearly not a kodachrome photo. Why the two verses don't thematically match on the surface level. Paul wonders, can he see others with rose-tinted film, but himself truly as he was? Or is he still caught up in nostalgia even when looking at a truthful photograph of himself? Is even a black and white photo of yourself a sort of Kodachrome?

He is finally confessing in this song, obliquely, that he will not be able to fully share the true self in his stories, they are cleaned up and false. This is something we've certainly suspected his entire career - that Sound of Silence, I am a Rock, Kathy's Song... these were approaching reality but not the black and white truth of his depression during his failed music career c. 1964; not the almost psychotic isolation of his narcissism while harmonizing with his so-called best friend; not a true rendering of his great failed love. Of course the worst falseness was his writing Bridge over troubled Water for Artie, a man who he had repeatedly pushed away, who he could never truly be there for and support, but would repeatedly return to when it suited him.

I do think Paul eventually overcomes this limitation with the song Hearts and Bones, which is a decent attempt to skirt these limitations to express his past honestly by using poetic language truthfully, even if you can't figure out what the hell he's really talking about in his past.

that is either the most frighteningly brilliant analysis of a song lyric on this entire website, or you're simply much smarter than Paul Simon

either way I am impressed/delighted that my drunken Xmas morning throwaway surface-level response to the song brooked this