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Paul Simon: “How terribly strange to be 70”

On March 1, 2007, Simon made headlines again when he was announced as the first recipient of the recently-created Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

I don’t think I can fully explain how INTEGRAL Paul Simon has been in my life, but I’ll try. In fact, I’ll try twice: once, now, for the albums related to his solo career, and again on November 5, for the earlier stuff with Art Garfunkel; November 5, Artie turns 70 as well.

Paul Simon (1972) – Here’s a video of a young woman playing Duncan at a Paul Simon concert; there’s a song I once could relate to.

There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973) – for a time, my favorite Paul Simon/S&G album.
Kodachrome – I used it. Quite a bit, in the day.
One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor – just a few months ago, I noted that some tax break for small struggling businesses was a good thing. Someone took great exception to this. I replied, “Well, as Paul Simon would say, ‘One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor'”. I used to cite it a LOT.

Still Crazy After All These Years (1975) – like Paul, a breakup album for me, big time. I watched the Grammys when, in “Simon’s acceptance speech for the Album of the Year award…he jokingly thanked Stevie Wonder, who had won the award the two previous years…for not releasing an album that year.” I LOL. Probably my favorite album.
I Do It for Your Love – ‘the orange [carpet] bled the blue”; not literally, but a good reflection of an apartment I once shared.
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover – listened to grand debates about whether this song was namechecking comic book icons JACK Kirby, STAN LEE, and ROY Thomas. And if so, who the heck was Gus?
Have a Good Time – I used to play this song every March 8: “Yesterday eve was my birthday…”

Paul Simon appeared in my favorite movie, Annie Hall (1977).
He put out the first of two many greatest hits albums (1977) which featured Slip Slidin’ Away. “You know the nearer your destination…”

After One Trick Pony (1980 movie and soundtrack), featuring Late in the Evening…

Hearts and Bones (1983) – this album sold not at all well. “The album was originally intended to be a Simon & Garfunkel reunion album called Think Too Much, following their Central Park reunion concert in 1981, and the world tour of 1982 – 1983… However, creative tensions appeared between the duo during the sessions…This led to the duo abandoning the project altogether; Simon wiped Garfunkel’s vocals from the completed tracks and reworked the songs for a solo album.” And many people in my circle of friends were LIVID about this, that he didn’t have the right to wipe off Art’s vocals. I defended Paul, but I was clearly in the minority.

It was generally believed that Paul Simon’s commercial appeal as a musician was about over, even by Paul Simon. He did appear on We Are the World single (1985).

But then, Graceland (1986), which was so beloved by the girlfriend at the time, it was wearying. Still, a great album, with Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, You Can Call Me Al, and Homeless.

On The Rhythm of the Saints (1990) tour, I saw Paul Simon for the one and only time, in the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany in March 1991 in the nosebleed seats. And the percussion on The Obvious Child was STILL too loud. (The show was similar to the Central Park show in August of that year.) The girlfriend and I broke up very shortly after this show. Guess I wasn’t “Born at the Right Time.”

I just never warmed up to Songs from The Capeman (1997). That said, I should note that the killer wanted to go to college at my alma mater, New Paltz.

You’re the One (2000) was more to my liking, though there’s no single song that stood out for me.

Surprise (2006) was well-promoted and had songs that moved me. It included the song about narrow-mindedness, How Can You Live in the Northeast?; the unfortunately appropriate Wartime Prayers, and Father and Daughter. A different mix of the latter song appeared way back in the children’s film The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002). I took great exception to the last line in the chorus: “There could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you.” Says YOU, Paul Simon! Of course, at the time it was first released, I didn’t HAVE a daughter, but still…

So Beautiful or So What (2011) – Amazingly still relevant. The Afterlife is a funny song about death.

Here’s what I ended up picking as my Top 10 Paul Simon solo cuts. Except for the top 2, it’s pretty fluid. Any one of about 15 songs, most mentioned here, could have been on the list. (All songs linked to recordings.)

10. Mother And Child Reunion (from the eponymous album) – I love the story how Paul wrote this after seeing it on Chinese restaurant menu; it’s a dish with chicken and egg.
9. Something So Right (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon) – this feeds right into my general pessimism, and surprise.
When something goes wrong, I’m the first to admit it
I’m the first to admit it
But the last one to know when something goes right
Well it’s likely to lose me
It’s apt to confuse me; It’s such an unusual sight
8. Getting Ready for Christmas Day (So Beautiful or So What) – I listened to this single, released in November 2010. Paul doing something new for him, sampling, in this case of a 1941 sermon by the Rev. J.M. Gates, interestingly from the year he was born.
7. The Late Great Johnny Ace (Hearts and Bones) – this is a song about a 1950s singer who died, but also about the death of John Lennon. The Philip Glass ending I always found haunting.
6. American Tune (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon) – the tune is quite similar to the JS Bach hymn O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, and it has a wounded lyric.
Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken, And many times confused
And I’ve often felt forsaken, And certainly misused.
But it’s all right, it’s all right, I’m just weary to my bones
5. Gone at Last (Still Crazy After All These Years) – at some point in the 1970s, I heard the Jessy Dixon Singers perform this sans Simon and the late Phoebe Snow, and it was still great.
4. Graceland (Graceland) – a wonderful story-song traveling with his “child from my first marriage” and a great guitar line.
3. Still Crazy After All These Years (Still Crazy After All These Years) – the first line was literally true, eventually: “I met my old lover on the street last night. She seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled.”
2. The Boy In The Bubble (Graceland) – The first song on the ‘Graceland’ album, and I was so obsessed with the intro of it, that sometimes I’d play it again. An extended version of this was “released on vinyl clocking in at 6:13, including a heavier focus on rhythms between the verses.” My friend Rocco owned it, and my local record store promised to order it for me, but they were unable to restock it. Thanks, YouTube.
1. Loves Me Like a Rock (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon) – growing up to be President. AND the Dixie Hummingbirds on vocals.

“On March 1, 2007, Simon made headlines again when he was announced as the first recipient of the recently-created Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The Prize, created by the Library of Congress, was awarded to Simon during a Concert Gala featuring his music at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., on the evening of May 23. The event was nationally broadcast on PBS on the evening of June 27, 2007” and of course, I watched. Here’s Love Me Like a Rock, featuring Stevie Wonder.

Paul Simon at the 9/11 anniversary ceremony in 2011, performing The Sound of Silence.

M is for Martha

Mary sat and listened to Jesus as he talked, but Martha objected to the fact that she was left with all the work.

I always liked the name Martha. Partly, it’s because my first girlfriend was named Martha. I used to serenade her with the song Martha My Dear by the Beatles [LISTEN], from the white album. It was only later I discovered that Martha was Paul McCartney’s English sheepdog.

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (pictured), of course, was the first First Lady of the United States, though she wasn’t so dubbed at the time. Martha is one of those classic girls’ names that, while extremely popular in the US in the 1880s (#14 in 1882), never lost at least a core of support; it didn’t leave the top 100 until 1966 and was still at #709 in 2010.

I’ve heard the slightly derisive term “being a Martha.” This referred to Luke 10:38-42 when Martha of Bethany and her sister Mary “offered hospitality to their friend Jesus…Mary sat and listened to him as he talked, but Martha objected to the fact that she was left with all the work. Jesus told Martha not to worry about small things, but to concentrate on what was important.” This proved to be a key concept in Christian hospitality; don’t NOT invite someone over, just because your home is not immaculate.

My daughter is fond of a PBS TV program called Martha Speaks, which “is an animated children’s television sitcom based on the 1992 children’s book of the same name by Susan Meddaugh about a talking dog named Martha…who is owned by ten-year-old Helen… When Helen feeds Martha some alphabet soup, the soup travels to her brain instead of her stomach, resulting in her ability to speak. The show focuses on synonyms and vocabulary, with each episode featuring an underlying theme illustrated with keywords.” LISTEN to the opening title theme song, which features these lyrics: “Martha Speaks and speaks and speaks and speaks and…Communicates, enumerates, elucidates, exaggerates, indicates, and explicates, bloviates, and overstates and (pant, pant, pant) hyperventilates!” And here is a video guide to the episodes.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

The Limestone Mansion

We did get two pieces of news from the outside world.

About three weeks after September 11, 2001, I told my wife, “We’ve got to go SOMEWHERE.” She countered that we could have a vacation right there at home. With all due respect, that was a terrible idea; my wife, I knew even then, was/is absolutely no good at what’s come to be called the ‘staycation’. She always finds something in the house that needs to be fixed or cleaned. We absolutely needed a different venue.

As it turned out, she had won, several months earlier, some drawing to stay one night at a place called the Limestone Mansion, in Cherry Valley, NY, only about an hour from Albany, and less than 20 miles from Cooperstown.

On Columbus Day weekend, we traveled to Cherry Valley for two or three days. It was a charming little town. My two most specific recollections were 1) finding a shop that made wedding cake toppers with same-sex couples, almost 10 years before gay marriage was legal in New York State, and 2) buying, as a result of the in-store play, an album by a group called the Afro Celt Sound System.

The Limestone Mansion was great. Wolfgang and Loretta were wonderful hosts. The food was quite fine. The room had great character. And the fact that there were no televisions was a definite plus. Not having phones in the room was not a problem either.

Still, we did get two pieces of news from the outside world. One, which I overheard on someone’s portable radio, was that the war in Afghanistan had begun – sigh. The second, via the one phone on the premises, is that our niece Markia was born. Those two quite disparate pieces of news have defined how I’ve thought of Columbus Day weekend ever since.

L is for Lyle Lovett

I got to see Lyle perform live once, as the headliner at the 1998 Saratoga Folk Festival.

There are very few times that I remember the first time I really became aware of an artist: the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Santana in the Woodstock film. Such is the case for a guy with funny hair.

I was watching the Today show, the NBC-TV morning show, in 1989. Back when it was only two hours – it’s now four – in the 8:30 a.m. half hour. Bryant Gumbel, the co-host introduces “country” singer Lyle Lovett, at which point he, his band, and background singers performed the first two songs off his third album Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, an instrumental called The Blues Walk, and Here I Am [LISTEN]. Afterward, a perplexed Gumbel said to Lovett, “THAT was country?”

I think the IMDB post on him got it more accurately: “His albums… incorporate elements of country, Western, folk, swing, jazz, bebop, blues, and gospel music.” Soon, I went out and bought that album, which also included the Tammy Wynette classic, Stand By Your Man [LISTEN to this live version], which was later used at the end of the movie The Crying Game.

Subsequently, I purchased his first two albums, the eponymous album, which features God Will [LISTEN – and turn up the volume], and Pontiac.

Clearly, my favorite song from the Joshua Judges Ruth album, appropriately, is Church [LISTEN]. I Love Everybody, which had his then-wife Julia Roberts singing background vocals, features Record Lady [LISTEN]; Lyle and Julia had met on the set of the movie The Player.

Probably my favorite album, though, is The Road to Ensenada, with Don’t Touch My Hat, That’s Right, You’re Not from Texas [LISTEN to this live version] and an old song recorded, by, among others, the Beach Boys, Long Tall Texan [LISTEN to this version, with Randy Newman, on David Letterman’s program].

He released a number of other albums. During a less-prolific period, due to no doubt to being “caught by a bull and rammed into a fence on his uncle’s farm in Klein, Texas” in 2002, he put out Smile, a compilation of his songs from various movie soundtracks. LISTEN to I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord from the Robert Duvall movie, The Apostle. In addition to proving the music, he has acted in a number of films as well.

I got to see Lyle perform live once, as the headliner at the 1998 Saratoga Folk Festival; here is a wonderful review.

Lyle Lovett is an eclectic guy; I LIKE that.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

What have I learned from 9/11?

The blending of Christianity and patriotism, as though they were the very same thing, made/makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I’m not going to get into where I was ten years ago today, mostly because I did that at some point. Rather, I just wanted to muse about stuff.

I’ve still not heard a credible explanation of why WTC 7 fell. One does not need to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder about some things that happened that day.

I remember that playing the “real American” card started very early on after the attacks. There were some guys collecting money for the victims’ families that very week. Well, I didn’t know what organization they were representing. But one guy’s demeanor, in particular, gave me pause. He suggested that not contributing to the cause was tantamount to treason. Maybe those who failed to contribute were unAmerican, even terrorists.

The American Red Cross had initiated blood drives in order to treat the many survivors of the multiple attacks in 2001. Of course, there weren’t that many survivors, but they moved forward anyway. I was scheduled to donate the week following, but they called me to NOT donate. They knew they had a bunch of one-off donors, and they figured I’d come back, but that these folks likely would not. I recall there was some criticism of the organization at the time, especially directed at the director at the time, the late Bernadine Healy. From the Red Cross section on Myths and Legends:
After 9/11, the Red Cross collected so much blood that it had to throw much of it out.
Blood is a perishable commodity, with a shelf life of about 42 days. Typically, between 1 percent and 3 percent of units collected reach their expiration date before they are used. That rate was only slightly higher (5 percent) for blood units collected from people anxious to help after 9/11, including more than a quarter-million people who gave blood for the first time.
In the uncertain days following the terrorist attacks, having a robust supply of blood available seemed prudent. It takes two to three days for blood to be collected, tested, and processed, and only blood already on the shelf can be used in the immediate aftermath of an emergency.

Have I mentioned lately that, purely from an aesthetic point of view, that I really disliked the Twin Towers? Someone said it looked like the boxes the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building were wrapped in. As a result, I had irrational guilt over their destruction.

I was surprised/confused/appalled to see how quickly the so-called USA PATRIOT Act was passed, less than two months after 9/11. One might have concluded that such extensive legislation was in the hopper even before 9/11.

As the article in Truthout, “What a Difference a Decade Makes”, points out, surveillance has swelled to the point that all of us are targeted: “Over the decade, the government’s powers of surveillance have expanded dramatically. They are directed not just at people suspected of wrongdoing, but at all of us. Our phone calls, our emails and website visits, our financial records, our travel itineraries and our digital images captured on powerful surveillance cameras are swelling the mountain of data that is being mined for suspicious patterns and associations.”

The blending of Christianity and patriotism, as though they were the very same thing, made/makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I crashed Albany Pro Musica to sing the Mozart Requiem on a very windy 11 September 2002; that was the only day ever that I wore a tuxedo to work. Exactly two weeks later, I began my weekly vigil, with a number of people who had been there weeks and months before, in my opposition to the war in Iraq. What the heck did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Took a bit of grief over that. And it would have been one thing if it were only “regular people” who jumped all over France for failing to support the curiously illogical war in Iraq; it was US Congress that opted for the jingoistic ‘freedom fries’. How embarrassing.

Someone famously wrote that, after 9/11, irony was dead. Not so. One example is some conservative “humor” book with this goody:
Start a rumor:
Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security has decided to revise its color-code warning system.
If a small-scale terrorist attack—fewer than 100 expected dead—is imminent, Ms. Napolitano will describe the situation as “calm”—Color Code: Turquoise
If a larger-scale terrorist attack—in the league of 9/11—is imminent, Ms. Napolitano will describe the situation as “relaxed”—Color Code: Ecru.
If Al Qaeda is about to destroy New York and Los Angeles simultaneously with a selection of strategically positioned nuclear devices, like in 24 only way worse柚s. Napolitano will describe the situation as “vibrant”—Color Code: Taupe.
All of this is intended to show the Muslim world that the Obama administration will not “overreact” to terrorism the way the bad old Bush administration did.

Big yucks. Islamophobia is alive and well. But I think we’re better than that.

Despite it all, I think I need to try to follow the advice of the International Institute For Human Empowerment, a representative of which wrote:

The events of 9/11 crystallized for me, the belief that we must unite as peoples of the United States, and indeed of the world, against those who seek to destroy our freedoms. The beautiful diversity that we share was challenged, making us fearful, and causing us to begin to close our hearts to those whom we might have trusted.

We have a choice. We can be afraid of anyone different from ourselves, look out only for ourselves, and live so that only the fittest survive. We can allow terrorism to win by shutting ourselves down.

Or, we can decide in our hearts and minds that humanity is one family with many beautiful expressions of color, language, and customs. We can say that we will honor all those lost and those who mourn, by declaring that we will unite toward a True Democracy–where all are equal, and all are free!

The choice is one we each will make.
***
The MAD magazine 9/11 cover – the untold story.