POLL paul simon - the rhythm of the saints

album covers ever**

anyway

1 the coast
2 she moves on
3 obvious child
4 proof
5 the rhythm of the saints

wtf jordan, i feel this is out of character

:]

yeah i was kinda surprised to see js posting about a record from 1990 or earlier tbh

ban fake jordan s

obvious child will take this easily

what up yall its the real me

here's the story of how i decided to make a poll about paul simon's the rhythm of the saints

last night i was drinking beer in my bedroom and deej im'd me and said "the rhythm of the saints" is dope. i said i'd never heard it so he linked me to a few songs. i downloaded the whole thing and played it through like 3 straight times. i continued to drink beer. eventually i listened to "the coast" a few more times before "falling asleep"

then i made this poll

betting $10 the words "vampire weekend" were willfully excised from that story

http://media.photobucket.com/image/snap/becca8myhat/snap_flyerglasgow.jpg

ugh. "snap"

also what do scarequotes around "falling asleep" mean

i pretty much passed out

better than GRACELAND this album. shame it was his last good one.

The Obvious Child, obviously.

Wrong about it being better than Graceland. Dead right about the rubbish sleeve (though I do like the typography).

The Obvious Child. Probably my favorite song he ever wrote.

not to repeat what's been said, but there's absolutely no way "The Obvious Child" will ever be beat. the best thing he ever wrote, imho.

I can't see any reason to deny "The Obvious Child".

betting $10 the words "vampire weekend" were willfully excised from that story

― some dude, Saturday, June 20, 2009 4:29 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol @ this btw

was just gonna re-paste that with a "lol"

pretty sure vamp week was mentioned by 1 j0rdan s. last nite lol

could post aim transcript but its mostly boring

im going to vote for something non-obvious ... child. just cuz

"cool cool river" is super underrated so im going with that. could also go with 'she moves on' & 'further to fly' is dope too. love this album. my dad used to play it allll the time

wtf jordan, i feel this is out of character

Srsly!

Anyway, the first Simon I ever owned, and one of my first concerts. He started playing this ballad and I turned to the yuppie next to me in the buttoned-down white shirt and said, "Hey, what is this?" He said, rather huffily, "`The Boxer'" and looked away. I hated yuppies from that point on.

Also: the only concert I've ever attended at which the performer plays one hit song ("You Can Call Me Al") and then says, "Boy, that was great! Let's do it again!" And plays it again!

I voted for "Can't Run But," just cuz of the synth and the way he pronounces "cooling system."

sargnt: "can't run but" is something like hoos would title a song

btw jordan, whenever you're back in town, this is the first album we gotta discuss

"can't run but" is cool but the first time i expected it to build to something in the outro and i've been disappointed that it kinda just peters out ever since

i voted for "the coast" cuz as much as i love like "the obvious child" i think this album's about riding out the grooves on the longest songs and "the coast" is my favorite of those - the verse (or is it the chorus?) that starts with "to prove that i love yoou" and goes into "ooh ahh ooh ahh doo wah doo wah" is probably my fav part on the whole album - it's almost too jimmy buffet or something but instead it's perfect

it doesnt even bother me that he says "the rose of jericho"

Coast #1, Rhythm #2. Two of the most relaxed pieces of music ever.

"Can't Run But"

haha thats the last song i would expect geir to like

way 2 be inconsistent

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Man, I missed this one. Would've been "The Coast" in a heartbeat, with "Cool Cool River" and "Obvious Child" in at #3 and #2.

i voted for "the coast" cuz as much as i love like "the obvious child" i think this album's about riding out the grooves on the longest songs and "the coast" is my favorite of those - the verse (or is it the chorus?) that starts with "to prove that i love yoou" and goes into "ooh ahh ooh ahh doo wah doo wah" is probably my fav part on the whole album - it's almost too jimmy buffet or something but instead it's perfect

― swag serf (J0rdan S.), Sunday, June 21, 2009 12:41 AM Bookmark

Yeah for real! Love the main riff too. And "If I have weaknesses, don't let them blind me no-o-ow!"

I've gotten some merciless clowning from trying to turn people on to this album but FUCK THE HATERS, MAAAN.

THE CROSS IS IN THE BALLPARK

still rubbing the cold from my eyes at sarge starting this poll

my first real rock concert was during the "born at the right time" tour. LA forum! i was 10? 11? it was awesome.

great poll

born at the right time didn't get any votes?

I would have voted for 'The Coast' in this. One of Simon's best ever songs, IMO. Some absolutely beautiful guitar work and almost everything about the track seems to be a hook.

TO PROVE THAT I LOVE YOU

That's worth something, when you think about it, that is worth some monn-ehh!

i like this album more than graceland

Repoll this sometime!

this album is just fucking interesting. particular the interaction between the vocal melody of the obvious child and the drumming on the bridge.

cf. joni mitchell's jungle line.

i've been listening to this a lot recently and am good w/these poll results. the coast is a great song no question but the obvious child is just on another level.

i only got into obvious child recently and this is probably my favourite simon album. def abt the second half

SUMMER SKIES STARS ARE FALLING
ALL ALONG THE INJURED COAST

lamp can you like email me when this paul simon poll comes up, i took ilm off sna

i bookmarked the chillwave thread

did i start this? i dont think i voted

j0rdan started it, i think, which is not the most in character. i didn't vote either!!

i'm sure Lamp will email you when the paul simon poll happens, and i will too, obsessively, until you show up.

oh wait i didnt

this is my fav paul simon album fwiw

horseshoe i wish u knew how much i enjoy seeing yr name on sna

i was about to post about "born at the right time" and saw you already had! this is an album where my favorite song changes a lot. like all the paul simons, really.

xp awwww no i wish U knew

so pissed nobody IMed me abt thiss poll in
09

what up yall its the real me

here's the story of how i decided to make a poll about paul simon's the rhythm of the saints

last night i was drinking beer in my bedroom and deej im'd me and said "the rhythm of the saints" is dope. i said i'd never heard it so he linked me to a few songs. i downloaded the whole thing and played it through like 3 straight times. i continued to drink beer. eventually i listened to "the coast" a few more times before "falling asleep"

then i made this poll

― swag serf (J0rdan S.), Saturday, June 20, 2009 5:13 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^cuet, imo

i need to chill the fuck out i'm going to put this album on

but explains why none of the paul simon regulators showed up, except deej

respectfully can we do this again?

i feel like i started another paul simon poll recently tho. how did that pan out?

I still own this on cassette, and since I can still play tapes in my car this is a regular. I've worn out "Cool Cool River."

i always make ppl wait for the horns on that

"cool cool river" is probably what i would vote at this particular moment in my relationship with the music of paul simon. but who knows.

plax, that bridge over troubled water thread was great; i never knew what i was missing!

either did i!

man when I saw him in '90 the horn stabs were accompanied by stabbing colored spotlights from behind the stage. It was so damn cool watching him sing while this happened, wearing a sports coat.

can ppl continue to call me plax btw

this album is fucking magic

fucking "the cool, cool river"

i know, right???

the melody of the vocal line in that song is so urgent it's almost painful.

The sequencing is so unexpected -- the record ends so quietly.

lol

btw the guitar line on "Spirit Voices" is magic. It's uncanny how well Milton Nascimiento harmonizes with it.

Saudocoes
Da licenca um momento
Te lembro
Que amanha
Sera tudo ou sera naoa
Depende coracao
Sera breve ou sera grande
Depende da paixao
Sera sujo, sera sonho
Cuidado, coracao
Sera util, sera tarde
Se esmera, coracao
E confia
Na forca do amanha

christgau's review of this album is so condescending:

his life in the bush of a fully-formed middle-class music scene more sophisticated than he'll ever be

i like how he has to implicitly declare his allegiance to MPB and distance himself from P.S, like there's a natural need to oppose the do as opposed to show how they might intersect of complement one another.

also kind of makes you wonder what he means by "sophisticated". more rhythmically sophisticated? i guess so. but the beauty of simon's record is precisely the often counterintuitive way he combines a very distinct way with melody with various elements of brazilian music. i don't think he's trying and failing to make a MPB album.

I understand him not liking this; the rhythm patters along unvaryingly if you're not in the right mood. His long Graceland essay proves he was hip to Simon's jive.

on some songs that's true, yeah. not on all of them. and anyway christgau doesn't explain himself, so there's no way to know if that's the nature of his objection. he just couches it in terms of cultural opposition.

what up yall its the real me

here's the story of how i decided to make a poll about paul simon's the rhythm of the saints

last night i was drinking beer in my bedroom and deej im'd me and said "the rhythm of the saints" is dope. i said i'd never heard it so he linked me to a few songs. i downloaded the whole thing and played it through like 3 straight times. i continued to drink beer. eventually i listened to "the coast" a few more times before "falling asleep"

then i made this poll

― swag serf (J0rdan S.), Saturday, June 20, 2009 5:13 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^cuet, imo

― horseshoe, Friday, February 10, 2012 9:39 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yah this is a beautiful story

It's poignant, like when Sonny idly thumbs through the pages of his yearbook. Some have died, etc...

"It got me thinking when that first popped out," Paul Simon says, sitting in the living room of his Manhattan duplex, watching an early moon come up over Central Park. " 'The cross is in the ball park.' "The first thing I thought of was Billy Graham, or the Pope, or evangelical gatherings. But I came to feel what that's really about is the cross that we bear. The burdens that we carry are doable, they're in the ballpark." -Paul Simon

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,971667,00.html#ixzz1OLgp7kSo

barf

So this is happening...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2GN3wdfqbA

I say why why why why
I say why

was like a pencil point
a love bite

Then I fall to my knees
I grow weak, I go slack
As if she captured the breath of my
voice in a bottle
And I can't catch it back

But I feel good
It's a fine day
The way the sun hits off the runway
A cloud shifts
The plane lifts
She moves on

it doesnt even bother me that he says "the rose of jericho"

I always heard it as more literal than that, and one of my favorite couplets.

A family of musicians took shelter for the night in the little harbor church of St. Cecilia
Two guitars, bata, bass drum and tambourine, rows of Jericho and Bougainvillea

But I was wrong: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509803/rose-of-Jericho

i believe in the future
i may live in 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
these old hopes and fears still at my side

ba ba ba ba ba ba Ba Ba Ba BA BA BA PROUST!

armies of engineers
to analyze the soil

I was thinking about something during the absurd Cohen/Simon smackdown thread, but just got round to finishing my thought.

I dug out the disc with bonus tracks to relisten and marvel again at the quality of the lyrics he throws away.

"The Coast" work-in-progress

This is the echo of the echo of the first song that lullabied /
The heartbeat of the host

"Spirit Voices" work-in-progress:

My horse and my saddle and my gracious companions /
We tripped over a mountain and we fell into a vast canyon

I mean, really. Maybe the songs as eventually released were fine, but those throwaway lyrics are as good as most people will ever write.

'Can't Run But' still sounds gorgeous. I love this album - even the lower-key stuff on the record (the title track, 'Further to Fly', 'She Moves On') got to me eventually.

Still can't believe 'Spirit Voices' and 'Born at the Right Time' didn't get votes - I'll take either of those songs over anything on Graceland at this point.

I think I missed the poll, but probably would have voted for either "Spirit Voices" or "The Coast."

Crap, or "She Moves On," or or or.

I like "Obvious Child" a lot but it's no longer my fave track on this lovely record

'The Coast' would have got my vote, definitely - Simon at his absolute best!

The gorgeous guitar lick, the wonderful vocal melody, the uplift of the chorus... it's just perfection. An all-time favourite.

I can't believe I never posted it to this thread - I know I've posted it before - but I remember reading about an alternate running order that WB made Simon change. It's even up on Wikipedia.

"The Coast"
"She Moves On"
"Proof"
"Born at the Right Time"
"The Cool, Cool River"
"The Obvious Child"
"Can't Run But"
"Spirit Voices"
"Further To Fly"
"The Rhythm of the Saints"

(also would have voted for "The Coast")

Those who are not familiar with the work-in-progress versions (bonus tracks on the rerelease) ought to give them a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkgxGpoFn8Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw3-MAU7hj4

It's like those insane Townshend demos that could plausibly have been released as singles.

Yeah, that was the original track order but Warner Bros. wanted the lead single ('The Obvious Child') to open the LP... I think they were right to change the track order - the original order makes no sense to me.

spins on his crutches, says 'leave if you want if you want to leave'

xpost Fleetwood Mac has released those sorts of all but finished demos before, too. I have a hunch it's nowhere near the original demo and almost more like an alternate take with incomplete lyrics or something.

I like this live version of "Born at the Right Time" a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2rng43hdEw

The ascending guitar (poss. guitar synth, poss. Adrian Belew) line in “Cool Cool River” is my favorite thing on this record.

It's interesting, there are a million people on this and Graceland, so it's a little mysterious why they would even need Belew to blend in on guitar synth at all. I was trying to find an interview where he talked about his specific contributions. I found some neat stuff here:

https://guitarconnoisseurmagazine.com/wordpress1/2016/06/13/adrian-belew-everythihng-in-flux/

GC: Your working with Paul Simon, I’m completely ignorant of that, so could you talk about that for a minute?

AB: Through my friend Laurie Anderson, who I made three records with and one movie, she told Paul Simon that he should have me play on something with him, because she said, “He doesn’t play guitar, he makes sounds, and you might really like what he does.” So unbeknownst to me, Paul was making something called Graceland, which, once again is a seminal record, so he asked me to come into the studio in New York. I flew there and had four days there, and the first morning I arrived the engineer-producer Roy Halee put up some of the tracks and said, “Here, I’ll let you listen to this.” It was all African musicians playing, there was no…it sounded like the wrong tape, and I thought he’d made a mistake, I thought, “Well this doesn’t sound at all like Paul Simon; what is this?” And he said, “Yeah, Paul’s been doing some stuff with African musicians and you’re the first non-African to play on this.” There were no words; there was no Paul Simon on the record yet. If you can imagine what Graceland sounds like without his voice…

GC: That’s mind-boggling.

AB: It was very confusing at first. Then Paul arrived in the studio and I explained to him my concern and he was like, “Oh, of course, here let me put up this track and I don’t have all of the words but I’ll sing what I have.” So he would put up a track like You Can Call Me Al or Boy in the Bubble and he would stand right next to me, kind of quietly whisper-singing these songs to me, and it was giving me chills, of course. At the same time I instantly understood: “Oh my gosh, Paul Simon has reinvented himself and this is what it’s going to sound like;” it still gives me chills to think about it. So, we jumped in and there you go; it turned out to be a massive record, re-kickstarted his career, and once again sounded like nothing else anyone had ever done. Not many people know this but I have to tell people this: there’s a video with Chevy Chase and Paul Simon doing You Can Call Me Al and because Chevy Chase is pretending to play a saxophone, I think it misled everyone. The song, it has that part that goes, “Dah duh duhdut, dah, duh duhdut” and everybody thinks that’s a saxophone section; actually that’s my guitar synthesizer.

GC: Oh my God…

AB: (laughs) I have to say that now, I’m kinda proud of that, I was in Amsterdam not too long ago, sitting having a beer, when all of a sudden that song came on and I said to the bartender That’s me! And I never do that, but I just had to.

GC: That’s amazing.

AB: Really I’m proud of that moment, everybody knows that line, and Paul wrote the line, of course; I just played it.

Josh

I have a hunch it's nowhere near the original demo and almost more like an alternate take with incomplete lyrics or something

I think the explanation is that Simon's approach for Graceland AND RotS was to make finished instrumental tracks first, then experiment with different lyrics and vocal approaches on top of those finished instrumentals.

In one documentary he's like in a room in his house with a cathedral ceiling, bouncing a tennis ball against a high wall while brainstorming lyrics and vocals. Given that atmosphere, it is easy to imagine swapping out something like "this is the echo..." for "a family of musicians..." or whatever. It's not like he needs to call Vincent and everybody back into the studio.

^^ that was a 60 Minutes piece from 1990-91, if I remember right.

Holy fuck I'm old. Thanks A LOT, Eazy.

This is one of my all-time favourite records. I got to know it when I was 16 or 17, that was 22 years ago and it has remained in my personal top 10 ever since.
As a teenager, Further To Fly was always my favourite, but I lean more to the rest of the album these days. Now I think I'd name Cool Cool River, Can't Run But, Spirit Voices and Obvious Child as the absolute highlights. Imagine my astonishment and utter delight when exactly those four songs were performed at his farewell concert I attended recently!

It blows my mind that he was still working with Roy Halee on Graceland and The Rhythm.of the Saints - the same guy that worked on a fair bit of the Simon & Garfunkel stuff. Was The Rhythm of the Saints the last Paul Simon album he worked on?

and Simon took full production credit on those albums

Yeah, with Halee strictly credited for the engineering. I'd be very surprised if Halee hadn't been involved in the production in some way. I'm fairly certain Simon didn't do it all himself!

cooling system

a pencil point
a love bite

You know what has had me thinking about this record? Mario Brothers.

There is a part of the guitar line in "Spirit Voices" that always sounded eerily like 80s video game music to me, but I could never quite pinpoint what it was.

Then my son started playing this annoyingly repetitive Mario game and I heard it instantly. Doot-doo-doo-doo-doot-DOOT-da-dee-doo-doo. By moon, we walk, to the brujo's door. 1 UP!

When I get my shit together I will have to isolate this in a DAW so I can show y'all what I mean but seriously.

you can hear the bit I mean from 0:18 to 0:21 here, but it repeats throughout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYYQ_X3E12U

Compare with around 0:10 here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2sTvN4Tob8

What a lovely album this is.

yup

Confirmed

it's true

This is a lonely life
Sorrows everywhere you turn
And that is worth some money if you think about it
That is worth some money

surely one of his prettiest recordings? hard for me to imagine the album without that song, always feels like the centerpiece to me.

I dig it

Fans of this album; which has been your favourite since this?

So Beautiful or So What

I think Stranger to Stranger, Surprise, and So Beautiful or So What are all very respectable late career efforts.

'So Beautiful or So What' is my most favourite post-Rhythm record as well, but I love all of them - I'm even a big fan of 'Songs From The Capeman'. 'You're the One' seems rather underappreciated and was a primary target for re-recordings for 'In The Blue Light', but I'd say that many songs on that album are brilliant too.

'Rhythm of the Saints' is utterly perfect.

Valentijn otm

Love the first half of this album - track after track of total stunners. And then it mostly falls off a cliff on side 2, imo.

is 'The Cool Cool River' in the non-mostly section?

There is an evergreen debate in my head as to whether I prefer the way The Cool Cool River fades out on the album, or the bombastic horn section ending on Concert in the Park. Both so amazing.

Have always low-key loved

Maybe not in my lifetime, but in yours / I feel sure

A beautiful piece of misdirection. Following a line like "We shall suffer no more" it feels like it's gonna go into the formulation "maybe not in my lifetime, maybe not in yours, but someday" or something to that effect. But no, it's coming. In yours. He feels sure. The audacity!

God I'm looking at the Cool Cool River lyrics in full right now and it's just a masterpiece. I have deep personal connections to both Can't Run But and the Coast but it would be hard not to vote for Cool Cool River.

it's just a little lump but you feel it
in the creases and the shadows
with a rattling deep emotion

As I have said before, check out the muthaflippin DRAFTS. The work-in-progress tracks on the bonus disc reveal that even the lyrics he threw AWAY were top-notch.

"The Coast" work-in-progress

This is the echo of the echo of the first song that lullabied /
The heartbeat of the host

"Spirit Voices" work-in-progress:

My horse and my saddle and my gracious companions /
We tripped over a mountain and we fell into a vast canyon

I mean, really. Maybe the songs as eventually released were fine, but those throwaway lyrics are as good as most people will ever write.

beautiful

played this last night... it is august after all. "further to fly" really hitting last night

it's interesting on apple music now this album is listed first under the essentials section before graceland

Love the first half of this album - track after track of total stunners. And then it mostly falls off a cliff on side 2, imo.

― sctttnnnt (pgwp), Monday, August 3, 2020 1:58 PM (one hour ago)

idk how you could come up w/ a better half of an album than this record thru "she moves on," but i like "spirit voices" and the title track a lot. they're a bit looser and end the album ona. bit of a more whimsical note compared to some of the more studied emotional excavations

So Beautiful or So What would be my favorite since too, and Stranger to Stranger is also excellent. Surprise doesn't quite work all the way through, but there's at least a strong EP's worth of excellent music there. Beyond that, there's only a few other good songs worth revisiting ("Darling Lorraine" for one), but he's put out only five albums of all-new songs since The Rhythm of the Saints, so he's done all right.

So Beautiful ... is the only of his post Rhythm of the Saints albums I connected with. I got to see him play a small club behind it, was awesome.

Was this a New Jersey?

Not at all. I don't remember a sense of disappointment.

He was at risk of one post-Graceland but RotS totally delivered without rehashing it.

also pretty strong sonic connection between graceland and this... it's an expansion of that world from within as opposed to some deconstruction or pivot from it

There were, however, lazy white takes I remember glancing at (I was just becoming aware of rockcrit): "Brazilian percussion"= "South African rhythms."

Also, the album had no "You Can Call Me Al" as a hit even though (a) "The Obvious Child" and "Proof" got heavy MTV play (b) "You Can Call Me Al" only reached #23 in its second release.

this definitely doesn't have as many singles or single-esque tracks than Graceland, and overall the palette is way less interested in punching through the speakers and grabbing you, and a lot of the songs really stay in their groove and ride it into those emotional excavations. it's great. but can't imagine, for example, falling in love with almost every track as a child, the way i did with Graceland. it's just a different kind of record, for a different moment in a life. almost like /still crazy/ versus the first two solo albums, maybe. tho Graceland has plenty of that Simon wistfulness. just it also has like "Gumboots" and "I Know What I Know" and "That Was Your Mother" and the opening of "Diamonds." basically Graceland is a much more *fun* album - maybe his most fun album? but if you're in the mood, ROTS lets you ease into the sadness and the beauty, the middle-agedness, the reflection.

i think that's right. i had access to both albums as a child but i never really dug deep on RotS until my late 20s. graceland bounds from track to track with all these immediate new sounds in a way that few records ever have. i had to be much older to realize that melodically and lyrically RotS was just as good or better.

"spirit voices" is a great song... there's something about the way he sings the titular line that kinda drags along in this lazy way. love it

For years after I loved this album, I sort of hated it...it became associated with too many things I dislike.

But I returned to it a few weeks ago, and it truly is so so good.

confession, i've never been able to fully get on board with "Spirit Voices." maybe feels the most like what the bad version of this album would be --- white guy is cultural tourist, convinced he's had profound experience. but really it might just be the line "i drink a cup of herbal brew." it's a really lovely recording though.

you aren't wrong but the last part wins out for me

This thread inspired me to pull out my cassette of RotS as I'm trying to fall asleep--just a couple of tracks in, and I'm reminded that J.J. freaking Cale is on "Can't Run But"; his telltale gentle tonedoggery could only be coaxed from the fingers of one singular Okie guitar slinger (as much as Clapton would hope otherwise)

That reminds me that Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds plays harmonica on "The Obvious Child", which is slightly less surprising once you remember that at the time he was go-to guy for the authentic harp thang.

there is a crazy storm here atm & i am a bit terrified of storms so i put on Rhythm Of The Saints & it’s like the musical equivalent of a weighted blanket but like, magical & restorative

i have loved Paul Simon my whole entire life but holy shit, since I hit middle age he just hits so ~beautifully~ i feel v corny but it is so profound for me these past few years in particular

j0rd’s original origin story for this thread is pure gold btw

Love u

back atcha <3

i would change my vote to “she moves on” now. such a tender and vivid song

there were a few weeks this past summer where i basically only listened to the 91 concert in the park album… great new york summer album, when he says it’s a beautiful night in new york you can really feel it. he plays a good number of rhythm of the saints songs including ones like “she moves on” that seem to have been dropped from his sets by the 2000s.

My storybook lover
You have underestimated my power
As you surely will discover

appreciate this revive, Veg. giving this a listen this morning. my boo got us an upgrade for the turntable cartridge for Christmas and it is sounding so gently enveloping and fabulous on headphones. love the little bits of synth sprinkled throughout. and man, Vincent Nguini deserves a lot more attention... his guitar work is so lovely and so essential to the sound of the album.

Love that '91 concert album.

guys now that i have a kid i sing so much paul simes to her

can't listen to "born at the right time" without sobbing tbh

i also feel v corny, but there it is

not rhythm of the saints-specific but she just stopped letting me sing her "graceland" to sleep after basically a year of doing so.

i think rhythm has become my favorite of his albums

guys now that i have a kid i sing so much paul simes to her

can't listen to "born at the right time" without sobbing tbh

i also feel v corny, but there it is

not rhythm of the saints-specific but she just stopped letting me sing her "graceland" to sleep after basically a year of doing so.

i think rhythm has become my favorite of his albums

argh sorry for the double post

great post tho!

so nice it needed posting twice :)

I got this t-shirt on the Born at the Right Time tour — let me tell you, I was the envy of my 6th grade peers.

https://totalholisticbody.s3.amazonaws.com/band-tees-rock-tees-vintage-paul-simon-born-at-the-right-time-tour-1991-lhoxc.jpg

damn that shirt rules wtf

Scorned at the Right Time

Never been laundered, never been dry cleaned

i was pretty into comic books at the time, so i thought Paul looked kinda like the surprisingly ruthless villain in a Punisher graphic novel or something

It's funny how, for exemplifying "grown-up" songwriting, Simon's songs connect so well with kids. One of the earliest songs I remember hearing and loving was "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," though I thought the line was "you don't have to be corduroy."

was like a pencil point
a love bite

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, June 28, 2014

xp ha, that's one of my kids' favorite songs! the internal rhyming in the chorus with the names makes it a fun sing along and is reminiscent of Dr. Seuss -- "hop on the bus, Gus!"

it was one of my favorites too!
also slip slidin away

re: kids: he's just a great pop songwriter, great ear for hooks and always looking for more rhythmic interest than probably any other "folk singer-songwriter" i can think of. he puts in the work to get the songs there.

i also think there's a lot of comparison to be made with Billy Joel, who i also loved from a pretty early age (though Simon got me first - maybe 3rd vs. 6th grade?). craft out the wazoo, songs you can sing along to, and maybe this intriguing edge of unfamiliar words and sketches of vaguely 'adult' situations --- all without the dreariness of sitting down to watch a 'people movie' where a bunch of grownups are just talking all the time.

oh man as a kid i was obsessed with

cars are cars
all over the world
cars are cars
all over the world
cars are caaaaaaaaaaars
all over the world

yeah as a kid I think I associated him with the adults on Sesame Street (though I didn't see his appearance on that show til years later) — they hung out with (and liked) kids and muppets but clearly had some other unknowable life going on elsewhere.

Never been laundered, never been dry cleaned

Hazy Shirt of Winter

I HAD THAT SAME SHIRT AS A HIGH SCHOOLER, I got it at a thrift store.

The druggy boys one year ahead of me, whom I worshipped, often complimented me on it, which brought me into their good graces and eventually their inner circle.

Dr C otm

Then I fall to my knees
I grow weak, I go slack
As if she captured the breath of my
voice in a bottle
And I can't catch it back

But I feel good
It's a fine day
The way the sun hits off the runway
A cloud shifts
The plane lifts
She moves on

― le goon (J0rdan S.), Sunday, June 29, 2014 11:52 AM (eight years ago)

hard to imagine better, more economical writing than "a cloud shifts / the plane lifts / she moves on." it's up there w/ "ro-lex / mo sex" for me

The Hilburn bio has draft lyrics of "The Cool Cool River" rather different from the published ones. He was meticulous about paring down.

The Cool, Cool River is a strong candidate for my choice of the greatest song ever made.

I've always adored this entire record (there's a couple of earlier posts of mine within this thread) but of late I got even more appreciation for especially Vincent Nguini's playing. It seems to me that he played guitar as if playing elaborate bass riffs, but distinct from actual bass by picking higher notes over the full span of an acoustic guitar, creating an incredible gentle, subtle and wonderfully lush background sound of a large diversity of notes. With a huge sense of rhythm to them.

an acoustic guitar

I've been meaning to get The Cool, Cool River down on solo acoustic guitar myself, but so far struggling a lot inbetween the unusual chord scheme that's out there and some youtube video which supposedly shows all of the riffs but sounds to me like a wildly jazzed-up version. My failing to follow what's exactly happening made me so much more in awe of the song than I already was.

Good post, Valentijn.

Alfred, I LOVE all the draft lyrics (already gushed twice upthread); for a couple of these songs the work-in-progress versions could easily have been released and been beloved.

my horse and my saddle
and my gracious companions
we tripped over a mountain
and we fell into a vast canyon

That the dude can write that and then throw it away continues to amaze me.

Also when I was first learning guitar - 1989 or so - I had a book of tabs called Fingerpicking Paul Simon. I don't play fingerstyle much lately, but I still use a lot of Simonesque voicings - there's a world of fun just in the "50 Ways" intro and I throw those chords on whenever I want a spacey maj7 vibe.

Simon's helluva guitarist in his own right. It's not one of his more complicated parts, but I like his strumming beneath the guitar synth and rhythmic clatter in "The Obvious Child."

I really hate the "funny" horn fill after "We had a little son and we thought we’d call him Sonny", doubling down on a terrible lyric.

ha, that lyric always works for me, but i may be biased as my Dad's Italian family, and maybe everybody who knew him growing up, all called him "Sunny."

wound you say that the funny horn fill after the corny lyric is a bit... obvious, child?

would*

boom

Bonus track Thelma is amongst my favorite PS songs and would have easily been a great single. No idea why it didn’t make it, it’s one of the best songs from this sessions.

Never heard "Thelma" before, this is wonderful. Thanks, Moka!

The title track has always been my favorite thing here. Such a gently euphoric groove that I wish went on for another five minutes.

Always a stranger when strange isn't fashionable / Fashion is rich people waving at the door

i don't think I've heard "Thelma" in 25 years ... sounds amazing this morning.

yeah Thelma is gorgeous

Xps but

My life’s so common it disappears
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

Goddamn. It always makes me think of Eno, somehow. It's too sweet and linear for Eno, really, but there's something in the backing that's a bit of Before and After Science, even a bit of Bush of Ghosts.

Yeah, "Thelma" was a nice surprise on that 1964-1993 box set, which was also my introduction to Simon's work beyond Graceland. IIRC, it didn't seem like it was well-reviewed, but I liked it and thought it was a generally organized and mastered really well. There's probably a few more tracks I would've included and there are a few edits that seem pointless, but that's it.

so nice to read all the praise for "The Cool, Cool River." a remarkable song!

Goddamn. It always makes me think of Eno, somehow. It's too sweet and linear for Eno, really, but there's something in the backing that's a bit of Before and After Science, even a bit of Bush of Ghosts.

― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski),

NARRATOR: Fifteen years later, Eno would collaborate with Simon.

Ah so glad to see the Thelma love in here and to have introduced it to j. Sam. It’s gorgeous indeed. Very underrated song in his catalogue.

i definitely hear the Before and After Science connection! especially after the first quiet bridge section, when the backing track comes pulsing back in.

The Cool, Cool River has been the song that has stuck with me for thirty-odd years from this. The propulsion of the rhythm, ambiguous harmonic structure and typically syncopated Simon vocal.

In general I find this record to be overflowing with unpretentious melodic ideas, with memorable verses, choruses, bridges, countermelodies, calls and responses on almost every track: The Coast, Can’t Run But, The Obvious Child, Spirit Voices, and Born at the Right Time. And unlike Graceland you almost never see the strings. Knit together with a production that kind of kind of marries adult contemporary and prog and has mostly aged really well, the result for me is one of the most listenable records in a decade that doesn’t have too many.

"the cool, cool river" performance during the central park concert goes so fucking hard. i love the way it builds to the horn section. watching him do that same rendition of the song opening the 1992 grammys. A24 needs to make themselves useful and reissue the concert in the park film on 4K

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hOYtEKRHXw

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 mother’s restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run
Who says, “Hard times?
I’m used to them
The speeding planet burns
I’m used to that
My life’s so common it disappears”
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

Thanks for posting; I love that song so very much

Never knew they filmed/released that concert -- the album is maybe my Simon desert-island pick.

honestly think it might be for me too? well, nothing can really replace 'rhythm of the saints' but i'd cheat and combine them into one desert island selection. given the timing of the concert in the park i kinda consider them sister albums. i think i like the versions of earlier songs such as "still crazy after all these years" and "loves me like a rock" better than the original versions, but maybe i just don't have the same personal connections to those earlier songs. to my ears tho i think the concert in the park arrangements sand off some of the saccharine elements of the earlier songs i.e. the strings on "still crazy after all these years" are more muted.

as for the filming... was anyone here receiving PBS membership awards in 2018?

This title was released in both audio and video formats.

As a double live-album, it was released on CD, cassette and vinyl LP.
Both VHS and Laserdisc formats were released with "Cecilia" omitted from the VHS and both "Cecilia" and "The Coast" omitted from the Laserdisc.

In July 2011 a Facebook campaign was started to request a release of the concert on DVD and Blu-ray. It was released on DVD in 2018 through PBS membership rewards. The long delay could be due to the contract with Pioneer that restricted the re-issue of concerts by artists signed to Warner on any future format.

hmm there's a guy in new zealand on ebay selling the DVD for $22 + shipping i'm buying this shit

^^^ could be a Simon lyric

And there is no doubt about it
He had a PBS Membership

There's a guy in New Zealand on eBay selling the DVD
I said, "Hey, man, don't I know you from the cinematographer's party?!"
But here I am I'm still buying his shit

(bass solo)

There is a guy in North New Zealand
He calls himself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I'm falling, flying, tumbling in turmoil
I say, "Whoah, so this is what he means."
He means we're selling it on eBay

Selling it on eBay
to Memphis Tennessee
Selling it on eBay
The shipping will be free

(horn break)

Memphis being the home of FedEx of course

Of course.

You know the nearer your destination, the more you're FedExing away

Dracula FedExed himself to Memphis iirc.

A reach in the dark.
Reach in the darkness.

Obvious Child hit me like a train today