Article Response -- Simon and Garfunkel

I think Simon is one of the greatest lyricists of the last 40 years. His music sounds simple but it is complex, his use of call and response is unparrelled.

S & G, an interesting choice to use in this context because with them, it's - "Is it the songs or the singing?"

old friends - sat on the park bench like bookends.

1. What does 'final FT article' mean?

2. I was amazed to find that MS had written on S&G. What next? the pinefox on Run DMC? I am fascinated to read the thing when I get time. From a glance:

3. I love 'The Dangling Conversation'. Haven't yet read enough to see whether MS likes it or doesn't.

Final in this series of updates for today. Plenty more to come. ;-)

Finally, a group I can say I hate. I don't usually do this, like to appear to keep an open mind, etc., but the sound of those two wimps' voices makes my skin crawl. I won't deny Simon is a "talented songwriter" (in quotes, natch), but I would never voluntarily listen to him/them. And yes, I've heard them, this isn't a "hate on priciple" kind of thing.

Phew, got that off my chest...

Will SOMEONE in this bitch please sent the pinefox a Run DMC tape?

sp: 'beeotch'

A great piece, Mark.

i volunteer to do that. pinefox, email me.

If I may trump Otis - an EXCELLENT piece, Mark. An interesting look at reconciling one's grown-up ideas VS childhood affinities. (Though my description doesn't begin to illustrate how well Mark navigates this topic.)

I think I may have said before that I found this piece too emotional to even read at times. Wonderful.

Contributing to the same site as Mark S makes me feel, somehow, a fuller, better writer.

Excellent, touching writing from Mr. Sinker. On which thread did Mark's article originally appear? I remember there being a number of notable contributions on that one.

it was on the perry como death one, i think.

Some of what I'm saying is in regard to Christgau's "Rock Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe)." My apologies for not making things clear to those of you who haven't read it. (Oh, and Mark, Parsley Sage was '67, not '68, "Rock Lyrics Are..." was first published in Cheetah in 1967 but the version in the Age Of Rock anthology was revised in '68.) Fact is, in 1967 at age 13 I thought that "The Dangling Conversation" was utterly movingly profound, especially the verse that went "We speak of things that matter, with words that must be said: 'Can analysis be worthwhile? Is the theater really dead?'" Of course, in the years that followed I realized that the subtle irony was obvious and leaden, that Simon's "poetry" was full of butterfly buzz words and a lot of empty flapping, etc., all the things that Christgau pointed out. I even remember at some point in my mid twenties copying Christgau in saying that Simon & Garfunkel's lyrics meant nothing whatever. Even in 1967 I thought that "For Emily Wherever I May Find Her" was empty crap. I also thought the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" was empty crap, and I still do, and which is interesting because Christgau praised it in comparison to S&G, and the praise just points out the emptiness: "Is love all you need? What kind of love? Universal love? Love of country? Courtly love? 'She Loves You' love? It's hard to tell." Yup, and it's Christgau who's asking the questions, not Lennon. But my question here is, What if, at age 13, having all my life been hammered with the message that love was the happy ending in stories and a major, perhaps the only, goal of life, I'd been provoked by "All You Need Is Love" to ask myself, "What in the world are they saying? What is love? This word, this goal, this hole, this nothing - why should I care, and what is it they're telling me I should be caring about?" Whether or not I think the song is empty crap, it could have provoked such a question in me. I also hated "The Word," and agreed with Yarrow or Stookey (forget which) that the Beatles were just selling the word "love." But then, maybe that was John L.'s point (though I don't think so), that it was just a word, and he thought that if he really tried to say so, the radio wouldn't play it unless he laid it between the lines. (Heh heh, heh heh, he said "laid.") I guess if I loved Lennon unreasonably I'd project my own thoughtfulness onto him and give him the credit, but the point is, for a 13-year-old those are good questions. And so, this is what I'm leading to - old man Frank addressing young man Frank on behalf of 13- year-old Frank - "The Dangling Conversation" wasn't meaningless, and even if it had been, it wasn't just scratching 13-year-old Frank where he itched while coming nowhere near "the root of the problem." The song seems quite capable of taking Frank to the root of the problem, or he quite capable of riding it to the root. Or, conversely, when I got older and went on to good poetry and to good lyrics, went from "Dangling Conversation" to "Sister Ray" and "Ain't It Fun," from "I Am A Rock" to "Memphis Blues Again" and "Heroin," from "Sounds of Silence" to "Visions of Johanna" and "Not Right," I don't see how I was doing anything different; if in listening to "Dangling Conversation" at 13 I'm evading problems, then in listening to "Sister Ray" at 18 I'm evading problems. Or if in listening to "Sister Ray" I'm confronting problems, then in listening to "Dangling Conversation" I'm confronting them. Or, more to the point, you can't read off from the lyrics whether I'm evading or confronting. "Sister Ray": "Now Cecil's got a new piece. He cocks and shoots it - bang! - between three and four. Aims it at the sailor. Shoots him down dead on the floor. 'Aw, you shouldn't do that; don't you know you'll stain the carpet, don't you know you'll mess the carpet? By the way he's got a dollar.'" This is better written than "The Dangling Conversation," but it's got the same irony and far more distance between singer and narrator.

At age 13 I hated myself. I thought of myself as a scared weak lying little good boy. I went to school and got hit with a barrage of sarcasm and abuse. I was hardly singled out; even the hitters got hit. Some people took it hard, others seemed to flourish. I took it hard. The words of pop songs were a living reality to me. You talking that way - they'd laugh in my face. She's the girl who puts you down when friends are there you feel a fool. She says you hurt her so, she almost lost her mind. You better listen girl. You're pushin' too hard. You're always laughing, way down at me. You're using all the tricks that you used on me. So watch out now. You're gonna cry. You're gonna cry cry cry cry.

I couldn't listen to "96 Tears." It made me nauseous, the way Rudy Martinez said "cry" like it was this gooey contemptible thing. Answer to Mark's "What made you cry?" question: Nothing. I never cried when I was a teenager. Two exceptions: Leonard Cohen's "Dress Rehearsal Rag" and the day in 8th grade when Sue Buck told me she wouldn't date me. I didn't cry in front of her, of course. That night I was standing in my room and I started crying, and I was holding a small piece of wood I'd carved, and I let loose, heaving the wood at the wall. It hit my Simon & Garfunkel poster, causing a small gash to the right of Paul's forehead. (I did cry in movies a lot, but never outside in my own life.)

When my parents would ask how school was, I'd say "Fine." This was the easiest answer. I didn't want to embarrass myself or frighten my them. I was sidestepping my parents' own terror, but I didn't know why my parents felt terror, or even that this was what they felt or that I was constantly trying to avoid it. But no wonder I loved songs called "The Sounds of Silence" and "I Am a Rock" and "The Dangling Conversation." And I don't feel the distance between singer and narrator that Mark feels. The love affair is falling to pieces, Paul knows this, but instead of confronting it he's talking about the theater instead. He may have done it the day he wrote the song. Or he could have done it, or I could have, or anybody.

sorry about the itals - I hope this turns them off.

or this?

Beautiful, moving piece, Mark. I think I'll dig out the 'Old Friends' box set tonight.

This might work.

Nah. There were TWO mistyped italics tags. You know, the best way to check these errors is to go into the source code and find the missing tags. Fwabah.

Oh, smell me.

Insofar as I understand what Frank Kogan said, I am probably sympathetic to it. But I am not far from amazed that he thinks that moving on up to 'Sister Ray' took him from kiddy whimsy to Real Writing. Come on, Lou Reed is a major figure in pop history and a decent lyricist - but 'Sister Ray' != Great Writing. Of course, Great Writing != good pop lyrics - there are, as I have suggested in the past, particular imperatives or disciplines involved in the pop lyric which are not necessarily to be confused with 'poetry'. I just think that 'Sister Ray' is a very odd place to put your faith.

i am very disappointed that pinefox did not email me.

[the italics frank refers to were real: now they are just in his head: I abused my role as moderator in order to bask in TIDY glory, thank you. that is all.]

COR!!

Recent Paul SImon works reek like dead bats. And I never like d that smug sadass Garfuckle.

i like that kruder and dorfmeister album that looks like the cover of the simon and garfunkel album. that's hilarious. also, 'i am a rock' is a great song.

I sent Mark's S&G piece to my friend Don Allred, who had this to say:

Amazing what a song can mean to someone, especially a song I barely remember noticing. That it could, despite obvious limitations, inspire such feeling in kids, and inspire them to clear-eyed heartfelt eloquence more than a generation later, is, as Mark might say, "time's gift," and a li'l victory in passing (so pass it along of course). I remember buying "Hazy Shade of Winter" and "Fakin' It" on single, like important postcards from friends suddenly challenging their autumnal folkitude with big headlights, big wheels, engines shifting gears - drums, even - and seeming stronger thereby, without becoming too, like, happy. I associated these songs with sitting in the park, watching traffic cross the bridge to where my street became the Selma Highway, running by the first house on the other side, my buddy Arlo's, his sister's/my conjectural girlfriend's door: "Highway FIFty-o-o-n-ne, runs right by my baby's door, Highway FIFty-o-o-n-ne, don't go THERE no more." Certainly made more and more sense, at least insofar as what Selma was coming to mean; I often thought of that as I eased past the traffic on the way over to their home, the coolest place I could imagine. Guitars, records, family, friends, everything was always already in progress, and just beginning. That was where I walked into "Parsley Sage" for the first time, which was when the groove suddenly seemed like a secret ceremony, with my pre-ordained inclusion turning eerie as a canal. The more I listened, the more the feathery steadiness reminded me of Conrad Aiken's short story "Silent Snow, Secret Snow," which began as pleasantly as I could imagine, and became what was unimaginable enough without the anthologist's helpfully summing it up as "a young boy's terrifying descent into schizophrenia." "Unimaginable," and yet rang all too true to someone who liked to imagine he'd been livin' on the 99th Floor all of his life, imaginin' the world outside. But there was a sense in which the danger wasn't even about the Consequences (which of course adults were always planting signs about), or not quite. I always heard Rod Serling's weekly "Signpost up ahead: 'Next Stop, The Twilight Zone,'" as something waiting for you, that would indeed git you, receive you anyway, because you were you, sure enough, but dreamily, almost obliviously: snow happens, little dude. The callow vocals, the appropriated arrangement (basically Davey Graham's, from Paulie's pre- fame London studies, right?), the Anglo-angelic atmospheres (with Robert Frost's "the woods are lovely, dark and deep" as dangling subtext/bait), all seemed perfectly effective in a way Dylan or the Stones wouldn't have bothered with (Dyl's Baby Blue is just starting all over, and not as a snowboy, not with that "strike another match" shit). I got used to the song, til I heard it again in The Graduate: bullseye flashback, with damn-near-catatonic-from-the- beginning Benjamin now floating on his candystriped raft, schnozz bobbing almost into the pool, under the Summer Sun. "Mrs. Robinson" wasn't oblivious enough, not in the right way, the snow way.