We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Bookends
Year: 1968
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One of the things I’ve realized writing these posts: Paul Simon is a helluva guitar player. Every single song I’ve written about after “The Sound of Silence” has a killer acoustic guitar part. I just hadn’t really noticed before, because a) acoustic guitar and b) they’ve always been in the service of the song.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2216: Simon & Garfunkel – “Mrs. Robinson”
Album: Bookends
Year: 1967
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During the entire year of 1967, when their peers were releasing at least one, sometimes two albums per year — plus accompanying non-album singles — Simon & Garfunkel put out a grand total of two singles. There were a few reasons for this: Paul Simon had become caught up in the seriousization of rock ‘n’ roll, and decided to focus on album writing instead of single writing. At the same time, he ran into a case of writers block, These two things were probably somewhat related, as raising your ambitions means that every outpouring from your muse is that much more suspect.
Also, he’d been roped into contributing to the soundtrack for Mike Nichol’s The Graduate, which — well, let’s talk about that in the next post..
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2215: Simon & Garfunkel – “Fakin’ It”
Album: Bookends
Year: 1966
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“A Hazy Shade of Winter” was originally recorded for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album, but at some point, they decided to instead release it as a single, perhaps figuring that a more rock-and-roll oriented song would do better than their previous single, the chamber-pop “The Dangling Conversation,” which was their first single not to go top 5, stalling out at a (relatively) dismal 25.
And so, based upon a cooly dynamic Paul Simon guitar riff and a relentless double-time drum part by Hal Blaine — which either he or Art Garfunkel augmented by stealing the tink-tink-tink three-beat tambourine offbeat from “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” giving the whole thing the satisfying thwacka-thwacka-tink-tink-tink, thwacka-thwacka-tink-tink-tink which drove the earlier song.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2214: Simon & Garfunkel – “A Hazy Shade of Winter”
Album: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
Year: 1966
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How do you deal with a problem such as Bob Dylan?
That’s gotta be a question that all of the other major 60’s songwriters had to be asking themselves as he put out one mindblowing album after another in the mid-1960s. Some, like Brian Wilson & Pete Townshend, totally ignored him. Others, like Lou Reed and Neil Young & even Ray Davies, leaned into the freedom he suddenly provided.
And the Beatles and Stones stole from him a bit and then went on to do their own things.
And Paul Simon? Perhaps because Dylan might have been one of the Greenwich Village folkies who made fun of Simon & Garfunkel in the early days, he wrote one of the biggest, broadest Dylan parodies ever recorded, 1967’s “A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission)”, which starts the satire with the title and never lets up.
Album: Parsley, Sage, Rosmary & Thyme
Year: 1966
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Yes, I know. You totally and utterly hate this piece of hippie-dippie bullshit. Hell, even Paul fucking Simon hates this piece of hippie-dippie bullshit, one of the cheesiest songs ever written.
And now I’ve put it in your head. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Album: The Sounds of Silence
Year: 1966
. . .
As the opening track of Paul Simon’s solo debut, the U.K.-only The Paul Simon Songbook, is actually more aggressive than the version that closes The Sounds of Silence, as Simon really lays in to the acoustic guitar as the song moves forward.
Both versions though, start with the same acoustic guitar flare as Simon sets the scene for this introvert’s anthem: “A winter’s day / In a deep dark December,” before the Wrecking Crew kicks in, led by the great Hal Blaine on drums.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2211: Simon & Garfunkel – “I Am A Rock”
Album: The Sounds of Silence
Year: 1965
. . .
OK, so the roots of this go back to 1961, when Bob Dylan recorded “House of The Rising Sun” for his debut album — using an arrangement that he basically stole from fellow folkie Dave Van Ronk, who had been playing it since the 50s — which was heard by The Animals, who decided to turn it into an electric rock song.
Said electric rock song was a massive hit in 1964, inspiring Dylan’s meddling producer, Tom Wilson, to dig up some musicians and dub them over an outtake that Dylan had recorded in 1961. This version didn’t pass muster, and didn’t get released until the mid-1990s. And that on an interactive CD-ROM. (Of course, this wasn’t even the first attempt at electric Dylan, as his first single, “Mixed-Up Confusion”, was an electric rock song recorded and issued at the end of 1962, and promptly swept under the rug in the wake of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. But I digress.)
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2210: Simon & Garfunkel – “The Sound of Silence”
Demo, 1990
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It’s a truism that bad times make for great art. That you can only truly create great art when everything else about your life is shit.
This is a truism that I don’t necessarily believe, mostly because I hate putting any kind of limitations on the circumstances under which your muse kicks into overdrive. That said, it was certainly the case that “Better Than Nowhere,” one of the greatest songs to come out of my Fresno scene, was inspired by hard times.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2209: Similar Animals – “Better Than Nowhere”
Demo, 1990
As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I wrote a pocket history of Sedan Delivery, back in the earliest phase of the band, we played many of our shows with a pair of other like-minded Fresno bands: Town Cryers and Similar Animals.
Town Cryers made an album called In The Cool Part of Town, about which I’ll be writing when I get there, but the only Similar Animals music I’ve ever had were couple of demos and a live show recorded at the Olympic Tavern on June 1, 1990. At that point, Sedan Delivery was on hiatus while Doc was out on tour with the Town Cryers, and Joseph had joined Similar Animals as their bassist.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2208: Similar Animals – “Letters and Magazines”
Album: About Her Steps
Year: 1985
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This absolutely stellar KFSR classic was the brainchild of one Walter Salas-Humara, who — both under the name the Silos and not — has released tons of albums since, most of which I’ve missed, though I’ve caught a couple here and there.
That said, I’ve never heard any of his songs I loved more than “Start The Clock,” which somehow combines three different incarnations of the Velvet Underground into a single tune.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2207: The Silos – “Start The Clock”