Paul Simon

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

that said, I think we could both be onto something. I said 'deliberately' bad or self(-image)-sabotaging, you provided the contextual sauce. Idea; legwork and ingenuity, lol

Great stuff, thanks!

> my drunken Xmas morning throwaway

In this case, I must confess great minds drink alike. Merry Mimosas are to blame

Maybe I’m late to this lore, but that ^^ 5-hour Simon documentary has a section on recording The Boxer and how the crash at the chorus was made with a snare drum played next to an open elevator shaft.

Yeah, Hal Blaine loves to tell the story about how a security guard was startled when they did that, I think.

mig, that analysis makes me think of Simon's "Have a Good Time", where the singer's cynicism about unearned optimism is more obviously extended to the society around him.
I thought "Mama" in the "Kodachrome" chorus was an actual (if vaguely sketched) mother figure; he does say in the coda that taking away his Kodachrome would "leave your boy so far from home", seems more a child's plaint than a boyfriend's.

Has anyone sprung for “Miracle and Wonder” yet? I listened to the excerpt on Broken Record, and I felt like it was long on Gladwell and kind of disjointed, but maybe it was less of an excerpt and more of a trailer?

Since it’s “only” 5 hours long (most of the audiobooks I buy are 20+ hours, cuz I’m cheap), I’m a bit leery to spend $15 on it if it’s going to be more of the same.

I did spring for it, am about 3.5 hours into it, and loving it. Lots of Simon playing songs on an acoustic guitar and walking through choices in the music and lyrics. There's a Gladwell essay within it that creates an overall theory about Simon's songwriting (related to his being from Queens), but there's definitely enough Simon overall that Gladwell doesn't overshadow it.

That said, the except on Broken Record isn't so different from what follows.

Thanks, Eazy. I did enjoy the excerpt, a little more than I had characterized it. I’ll just chew up a credit on it, ffs, Simon’s songs have been part of my life since birth & a huge influence besides, & I dunno why I was being so flinty about it.

I had the same feeling at first, as someone who has enjoyed so many Broken Record interviews for free. This one is carefully edited and put together in a way that feels more like a five-hour documentary that happens to be audio-only, rather than just podcast interviews.

Finished this and would definitely recommend it. They spend as much time (or more) on Rhythm of the Saints as Graceland.

Only downside is having the "climax" of the documentary being Simon getting somewhat personal, when he clearly hates doing that in public outside of his songs. It reminded me of the Bill Cunningham documentary culminating in exposing this very private person, rather than letting him speak through his work and public life.

If this had been made earlier, it unquestionably would have been a holiday-ready coffee-table book Conversations with Paul Simon, and maybe it still will be.

As is, it's a really satisfying listen to dive into as we all hunker down for a bit.

What so many hats on his album covers

One man’s ceiling is a taller man’s floor

Rhiannon Giddens, accompanied by PS on acoustic gtr., did a great "American Tune" on that recent Simon tribute TV special (the only performance I saw).

Also like Willie Nelson's studio versions of that and "Graceland."

and Elvis's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," at Madison Square Garden ca. '71. When he gets to bridge of the song, especially.

was listening to this yesterday
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_to_Stranger

The weird instruments are neat but they often just sound like either a synth or a crappy guitar - still it's interesting

Hmmm:

Paul Simon has announced the release of his highly anticipated musical work, Seven Psalms. Intended to be listened to as one continuous piece, the 33-minute, seven-movement composition transcends the concept of the “album” and will be released in its entirety on vinyl, CD and across digital platforms on May 19.

Glad he's not 100% retired yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiDc4DbFQZY

Hidden track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51Fn2r-8hHI

Preview of the new album, free NY Times article

“Seven Psalms” sounds like a last testament from the 81-year-old Paul Simon. It’s an album akin to David Bowie’s “Blackstar” and Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker,” which those songwriters made as mortality loomed; they each died days after the albums were released.

…that’s quite the premonition.

Dang.

what the fuck!!!

Paul Simon won't die, he'll just be homeward bound

i don't think i could write that graf without following it up immediately with one about how he's not sick / dying, he still feels fine, he's healthy / productive, etc. (assuming those things are true.)

I'm reluctant to be one of those ghouls who speculate about strangers' health, but his facial appearance and slight hand tremor in the trailer suggest he is dealing with Parkinson's. He may be farewelling his performing days, rather than life. Seems like a beautiful record.