Paul Simon impact on music

[baby tuckoo]

You're right, of course, Whist, and I should have looked it up. I too doubt the validity of the charges about "The Capeman".

"Darkman" was an attempt at a super-hero franchise in the early 90's. I didn't see them.

I realize you meant no slight to L/M. And you are right about the poetry standing alone better than Beatles words. What you said, though, was "in every respect." This seems extreme, for the range of L/M exceeds, I think, Simon's substantial ranginess.

Lennon's ventures into the dark go beyond mere disillusionment. Again, let me remind you that I am an old (since the absolute beginning) fan of Paul Simon.

[Whistler]

I overstated and retract the "in every respect" remark. I concede that the Beatles were probably more diverse and experimental musically.

And I'm an old fan, too, bt! Bought each of the albums as they first came out, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth.

[baby tuckoo]

Yes, indeed. I still have the vinyl. The poster out of "Parsly, Sage . . ." is in my classroom. The occasional (very very occasional) student will say, " My Dad has that on his wall!!"

It's getting to the point where even the parents of students are younger than I. Sigh.

[vison]

*sigh* indeed, you whippersnapper. Jeez.

I agree that some of Paul Simon's lyrics can stand alone as poetry, and I agree that Lennon/McCartney's lyrics need the music.

So does Bob Dylan, and nearly everyone else.

Whistler? You ought to listen to CBC radio! One thing I like about it is, you never know what you're going to get in the way of music or anything else, for that matter.

The CBC is the first place I ever heard any African music and it's also the first place I heard Loreena McKennit.

Mind you, it's also the first place I ever heard Nirvana and I still, after all these years, don't get it. I guess I never will.

[axordil]

Still being amused by the notion of Ladysmith Black Mambazo being used by Simon. Shabalala and the rest the group were monumentally grateful to him for what he did, and sang about him on at least one of their own albums.

There is a lightness of craft to even the heaviest Simon lyric that is hard to describe. What I mean is that he is comfortable writing lyrics that are overtly poetic and thoughtful and crafted...and yet that weight does not overburden them; when he's at his best, it sounds off-handed, as if he just talked that way all the time.

Thinking about some of the lesser known S&G material, Capeman (a musical about a notorious murderer...now THAT's a risk), and of course Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints...and even the more autobiographical material that snuck in during the early 80s (Hearts and Bones is for me painful to listen to in spots, or perhaps cathartic).

Things like:

Moves like a fist through the traffic
Anger and no one can heal it
Shoves a little bump into the momentum
Its just a little lump
But you feel it
In the creases and the shadows
With a rattling deep emotion
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, white ocean

Yes boss. the government handshake
Yes boss. the crusher of language
Yes boss. mr. stillwater,
The face at the edge of the banquet
The cool, the cool river
The cool, the cool river

I believe in the future
I may live in my car
My radio tuned to
The voice of a star
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edge of a thunderstorm
And these old hopes and fears
Still at my side

Anger and no one can heal it
Slides through the metal detector
Lives like a mole in a motel
A slide in a slide projector
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, white ocean
The rage of love turns inward
To prayers of devotion
And these prayers are
The constant road across the wilderness
These prayers are
These prayers are the memory of god
The memory of god

And I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours I feel sure
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
For the mothers restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run
Who says: hard times?
Im used to them
The speeding planet burns
Im used to that
My lifes so common it disappears
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

[Whistler]

vision:

I can't get CBC, but I do subscribe to internet Radio 365, which offers thousands of the most eclectic and eccentric stations imaginable. I highly recommend it for those of you (and I'm sure that means all of you) who aren't satisfied with mainstream music. There are stations there that cannot possibly have more than eight listeners. But if you are one of the eight people who loves whatever that station plays, it's beyond value.

[Jnyusa]

Darkman" was an attempt at a super-hero franchise in the early 90's. I didn't see them.

You missed nothing, bt. Though those are the movies that brought fame to Sam Rami, iirc. Just about everything he's done since then has been better.

Where lyrics are concerned, I think Bob Dylan stands alone with the music, too. But not many song writers can. I wouldn't put Lennon in that category, and the Beatles would have been greatly diminished without George Martin sewing together the scraps they brought him. As individual musicians, no one of them came up to the level of Dylan or Simon, not with a consistent ability to create solid lyrics and a melody long enough to be a whole song. Still, I enjoy old Beatle music! Doesn't matter much to me who really wrote it as long as it entertains.

Jn

[vison]

I have a hard time listening to music. I generally only listen in the car and even then my mind wanders. Now and again I get caught up in it, but sadly not as often as the music no doubt deserves. I read here and elsewhere of my fellow posters being deeply moved by the lyrics of "pop" songs, and I can honestly say I don't often pay much attention to the lyrics, it's just sound to me, either pleasant or unpleasant. Although after you've heard them a million times they are etched into your brain. I often have Rock 101 on, mostly oldies, just goodtime music that I don't have to pay attention to.

The other day I was listening to Robert Cray. About four songs is the limit for Robert Cray, to me. You do have to listen to his songs, they aren't background music but stories and since they are all the same story I get bored, no not bored but --- burned out on the world he lives in -- very fast. He's wonderful, but in small doses. He calls it the Blues, but I don't know. I don't think of him as a Bluesman like B. B. King or Buddy Guy. Cray is too cynical for the Blues.

On the other hand, I put The Seldom Scene's "Baptizing" on, and I can listen to it over and over and over again, singing along a lot of the time, and often weeping over the sad lyrics. I am a sap for sentiment.

Wampus sent me her lovely CD, this is something I can put in the CD player and just enjoy as the lovely sounds fall into the air.

Music doesn't create a mood for me, I choose the music to fit the mood I'm already in. Which is why I have to be wary of Bluegrass, since it makes me cry and I am probably already crying when I put the CD in the player.

So then I dig out Graceland, or even Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits and it's great, one lovely thing after the other, some sad, some pickmeup, some funny, all worth listening to. When I can concentrate. Which isn't all that often. Too busy listening to the voices in my head, I guess.

[Whistler]

I never listen to the voices in my head because they tell me to do terrible, terrible things.

Especially the one that sounds like Oprah Winfrey.

[vison]

I never listen to the voices in my head because they tell me to do terrible, terrible things.

Especially the one that sounds like Oprah Winfrey.

Yeah, if I had a voice in my head that sounded like Oprah Winfrey, I'd be wary of listening to it, too. Um. I don't know that I'd recognize her voice, though. Give me a hint?

My voices are just telling me stories. "Get this down, you fool of a woman!" they shout at me.

I'm writing as fast as I can.

[axordil]

As individual musicians, no one of them came up to the level of Dylan or Simon, not with a consistent ability to create solid lyrics and a melody long enough to be a whole song.

Shouldn't that be as individual songwriters, not musicians?

But at any rate, Lennon and McCartney were also writing pop, not folk. The demands of the genre are quite different...and while one could make an argument for pop being an inherently shallower form, not a lot of people go dancing around with the hooks of folk songs stuck in their heads. It's a music designed to make you move, not think, and it's a tribute to John and Paul that they added depth to what had been a medium pretty much devoid of it.

Compare and contrast the valedictory efforts of the Beatles and S&G: Abbey Road and Bridge over Troubled Water. Both are technically advanced, thoroughly professional, highly polished (thanks in no small part to, yes, George Martin, but also to Roy Halee, who had filled much the same shoes for S&G on PSRT and the Bookends album too). Both were produced pretty much while the acts were disintegrating.

No point to that last, really. There's probably something there worth talking about, but I'm too tired to figure out what it is at the moment.

[PrinceAlarming]

I have found that Beatles' lyrics need their accompanying music more than Simon's, which usually can stand on their own.

Now, although I was born in the early 80's, I am a huge Beatles fan... I remember when I first listened to Sgt. Pepper's on CD. It blew my barely teenaged mind. It wasn't the lyrics, though. It was the way the album was composed, the way the songs bled together. It was and is the music that makes the Beatles so interesting to me.

I don't think Paul Simon became too worried about orchestration until his solo albums. Mr. Simon is very much a poet, and an excellent guitarist, and one of my favorite artists... But he wasn't changing time signatures mid song and creating a symphony of a rock album. Paul Simon may have Lennon/McCartney beat as a lyricist (I do agree with you, Whistler) but I think Simon set out to create beautiful, poetic music... The Beatles were experimenting with, well... drugs... and sounds.

There are some really great videos on YouTube.com of Paul Simon and Geroge Harrison doing a show together. I have posted the link for "Here Comes the Sun."

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5wVnmoEu8Ro

George Harrison might not have been the poet Simon is, but here wrote some great songs... Although if you recite "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" it gets very poetic.

[WampusCat]

vison, Robert Cray was the opening act at the Eric Clapton concert we attended a couple of weeks ago. He was terrific, but after half an hour I was ready to move on.

And I'm so glad you still enjoy the CD!

Back to the topic at hand...

Beatles songs bear repeated listening; no wonder a whole new generation finds them fresh and worth loading onto their iPods. Paul Simon's songs -- while well worth hearing! -- also stand up to repeated reading. Like the best poetry, his lyrics unfold over time. At least that's my experience.

[Jnyusa]

Ax, yes, I should have said songwriters.

I was a big Beatles fan, too. I think that Sgt. Pepper was probably the apex of that group. The L/M collaboration was still intact and the stuff was good and it was really written by them. I also think that George Harrison is terribly underrated as a songwriter. Of all the individual work done by individual Beatles, his is the best, imo.

But of course four people, each writing from their own musicianship, plus a silent partner with the talent George Martin had for making make whole cloth out of just about anything, plus the orchestration that Martin arranged - that's going to sound fuller and more complex than one guy with a guitar. If it didn't, what would that say about the Beatles? It's not quite fair to compare a corporation to a poet and a one-man band. S&G had orchestration on their albums too, of course, and I'd be very surprised to learn that they arranged it themselves! And Dylan's music is mostly known to the public from others artists who performed it with plenty of back-up. But there was a whole permanent team of musicians presenting itself to the public as 'the Beatles' and that's not really comparable to what Simon and Dylan were doing.

Comparing them as individual musicians, the work written by Dylan or Simon is a more praiseworthy package than the body of work written by any individual Beatle, imo, if we consider only what they actually wrote and not everything that was attributed to L/M by contract. Harrison is the only one who had the 'social sense' of D & S but he was not as prolific as either of them. As individuals the Beatles each produced some great songs, but not that many if you stop and think about it. Their early albums are stuffed with cover songs, their work after Sgt. Pepper is contractual attribution, and when they went out on their own they were lucky if they had one singles hit per album.

I loved the Beatles! I still love to listen to them. But I don't think it's justified to think of them as the greatest musicians ever. They were a phenomenon based on music much more than they were great musicians in their own right. They became very good musicians over time - they worked to earn their fame, but I don't think that any one of them had the raw individual talent that Dylan, for example, had.

Jn

p.s. I think it really cool, Prince Alarming, that you discovered the Beatles so long after their original fame. My daughters are in your age group and they also discovered the Beatles when the Anthology came out. It's a very odd feeling to have been part of the original phenomenon - the screaming girls, the haircut revolution and all and then to watch my kids try to make sense of it and to evaluate the music independent of all that.

[The_Hutter]

They also do Homeward Bound, as well as her come the sun

[axordil]

Going back to the original topic for a brief moment, did it strike anyone else as interesting that Graceland went up the charts based mostly on its videos, because it didn't find a niche on the radio dial at the time?

[JewelSong]

I don't think it is fair to compare the Beatles to Paul Simon. Apples and Oranges and all that!

But I wonder if either of them were influenced at all by the other. Any thoughts?

[The_Hutter]

hey hey this is about paul simon impact on music and not the beatles, compare them yes,

dont just talk about the beatles

[baby tuckoo]

I don't believe there's a plan, but I do believe in serendipity, perhaps because it's such a cool word.

Anyway, on my short drive to work this morning, on a station that is generally very "new acoustic and americana", the show host (not DJ: each host plays what he feels within his/her show's premise) played "April Come She Will."

Just for me. I'd never heard a Simon song on that station before.

BTW, Whist, you might seek out KVMR on your station feed. You can also get it streaming. Best community radio on earth for more than 20 years. Based in Nevada City, just outside Sacramento.

Ax, I think you're right.

[axordil]

If it gets really out of hand, The_Hutter, the Powers will move the extraneous Beatle chit chat into its own thread.

What I was getting at in discussing Graceland, BTW, was that apart from oldies stations playing stuff from before 1972, no station I could find seemed to have a place for Paul Simon when Graceland came out. He wasn't "hard" enough for the rock stations, not hip enough for the pop stations, et al. So most of the initial listens I got came courtesy of MTV, which had the "Boy in the Bubble" and "You can Call me Al" videos on a LOT. Which was cool in that they were good, but not so cool in that the SONGS were good and not getting exposure, even when the album did well.