no need to be coy roy: the PAUL SIMON '70s SINGLES poll

HOT DAMN

Between:

Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (1972)
Kodachrome (1973)
Loves Me Like a Rock (1973)
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (1975)

...but even if these weren't here, there're some hot damns.

I probably would've gone up to Late in the Evening.

this is for me the prime simon years. i love a lot of s&g and a lot of his '80s stuff, but these songs and the albums they came from just reverberate for me. it's grown-up music, and as much as anything i can think of it helped form in my rural childhood mind a mythological idea of city life, or at least what city life meant in the '70s. it all feels urban and cosmopolitan. and sad, but also hip. sort of barely hanging on, but being cool about it.

yeah the one-trick pony songs arguably fit as well here as with his '80s stuff, but the album was 1980 so i just put the cut-off there. arbitrary i know. but this is hard enough to choose from without throwing in "late in the evening."

(also i think the real lyric is "DON"T need to be coy roy," but "no need" is the way it is in my head i guess.)

i guess my short list is "me and julio," "kodachrome," "american tune" and "slip slidin'." and "50 ways," and "still crazy."

maybe i don't really have a short list. these are great songs.

kodachrome, i think
reminds me that i should get a best of for this period. any suggestions?

I ALMOST chose kodachrome, but went with Loves Me Like a Rock

xp "negotiations and love songs" is a really good solid collection

it has 80s stuff too, though

yeah "negotiations" is a good comp, even though it doesn't have all of these songs. the '70s compilation was greatest hits etc, but it's out of print. really all his albums are pretty crucial straight through rhythm of the saints.

Did anyone ever use the word "crap" to a greater effect in song than Paul Simon?

So many good ones, but going with "Duncan," in which he can't hide behind any of the imported gospel/soul/reggae ringers and goes one-on-one against all the other singer-songwriters and kicks their butts. Except maybe Loudon Wainwright III, whose "Motel Blues" is about somebody in the same hotel, if not the couple in the next room.

the imported gospel/soul/reggae ringers

don't forget the oak ridge boys on "slip slidin' away."

Did anyone ever use the word "crap" to a greater effect in song than Paul Simon?

(or well i guess the o.r. boys count as imported gospel singers. but really i think his choice of collaborators in this period is pretty hard to beat. steve gadd, for another.)

also i left "my little town" off the list because it's a simon & garfunkel song, even though it's on their solo albums. a technical distinction i guess, but it seems more of a piece with the s&g catalog than the '70s simon stuff.

Yeah he had some great drummers on those records, like this guy and this guy

But I guess he had some great drummers back in the S&G days, including the one who tells this funny story about The Boxer

that's a great interview. simon really is an amazing rhythm guy, his solo career especially is just full of great players and great rhythmic stuff.

(ok, i'm overloading on the "great". but it is a paul simon thread.)

Yeah, I was starting to try to cook up some theory that he knew the seventies studio thing would one day disappear so he was going to make the most of it while it lasted.

Until in later years he sunk to the level of exploiting Los Lobos (I figure somebody's gonna mention that sooner or later, so might as well get it out of the way)

i think gadd should get royalties for "50 ways," for that matter.

"Me and Julio" is always the first song that pops in my head when solo Simon crosses my mind, so I have to vote for it.

I went with kodachrome

mother and child a close second

meh... the boppy stuff's great and whatever, but "American Tune" towers over this poll. shit, the bridge of "American Tune" towers over everything up to Still Crazy/Slip Slidin'...

Late In The Evening would make this a very interesting race.

PS this may be the most horrible thing on all of youtube

what's up with singers who just can't sing?

"50 Ways" is his most overrated single, IMO, there's very little that I like about it and more than a little about it that annoys me (e.g. the guitar lead, the rhymes).

For me this is a "Slip Slidin' Away" vs "Me and Julio ..." deathmatch, and I can't decide ...

What a great R.S. cover. Tipsy's observations about 70s city life through these songs really resonates for me too. You take these songs and then Annie Hall and that's the stuff that gets a suburban kid who has never been to the city dreaming.

"Kodachrome," but, man, what a fine list of songs.

I went with "Kodachrome", which I think of alongside "Crocodile Rock" as 1973's singles exemplars of girl-group throwbacks (the chord changes are right out of the Ronettes, to my untrained ears). Come to think of it, 1973 is full of throwbacks. Just focus on covers albums: Lennon's Rock and Roll, Bowie's Pin Ups, Ferry's These Foolish Things, Nilsson's A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, and just a few months later, Nilsson's Pussy Cats and Ferry's Another Time, Another Place. That's a pretty striking convergence.

Stranded in a Limousine (1977)

^^^^real underrated

There is no choosing among these. At best the shortlist knocks off two, maybe three songs. Stone cold classic across the board.

"American Tune" towers over this poll

almost voted for that, and otm about the gorgeous bridge. i love the way the song moves between personal, political and mythical and still seems understated despite being called "american tune." but i settled on "slip slidin'" because it's a big idea writ even smaller and i love the groove.

i mean...

He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again

... that's a short story in 24 words.

collectively these probably have as many of my favorite lines as any group of 12 songs i could put together

"Slip Slidin' Away": the best-ever "song thrown onto a greatest hits to justify buying the LP"?

which PS 70s album do i start with?

i'd say this

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00024WYKS.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

but there's not exactly a wrong answer.

i think gadd should get royalties for "50 ways," for that matter.

i mean...

He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again

... that's a short story in 24 words.

Oh god yes... and not to make too much of it but it's a neat little narrative trick he pulls there too. You don't actually know father is separated from son until the last line.

But "still you don't expect to be bright and bob vivant/so far away from home" has made me misty more times than I care to admit and I'm not an easy weeper.

Can't choose.

Duncan is so good.. however, it looks like no one else is voting for it.

oh wait.. someone else did.

Overnoted rock & roll trivia #739: the title for "Mother and Child Reunion" came from the name of a chicken and egg dish he saw on a Chinese menu.

This heyday run of singles fits perfectly into the years when I was listening to the radio and thinking about the music I did and didn't like, but before I got my first stereo, and Sturgeon's Law was in full effect, and a Paul Simon song coming on the radio was always a "ah, thank god" deep sigh of relief.

And I dreamed I was dying....... *string stab*

Gets me every time

...it doesn't get much more beautiful than "Still Crazy After All These Years". I mean, if just for that Rhodes intro alone!

― Geir Hongro, Monday, February 16, 2009 3:44 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

voted for M&C reunion, but ^^^ totally OTM

That's a good thread idea: the best new song thrown onto a greatest hits.

I voted 50 Ways. This isn't on the list but:

(That wasn't even true. I voted Slip Slidin' Away.)

the best new song thrown onto a greatest hits. - Say It Isn't So.

that's a candidate. Also: the P-Furs' "All That Money Wants."

Or War, "Summer."

"Mary Jane's Last Dance"?

Still Crazy after All These Years

Went with fifty ways, but instantly got voter's remorse for not going w/Julio.

chart trivia (according to wikipedia):

of these, "50 ways" was the only billboard #1. "kodachrome" and "loves me like a rock" both went to #2, "mother and child" to 4, "slip slidin'" to 5, "me and julio" to 22, "gone at last" to 23, "american tune" to 35, "still crazy" to 40 and "duncan" to 58. "mardi gras" and "limousine" didn't chart. and fwiw, "my little town" peaked at #9.

surprised there isn't more talk of still crazy after all these years, which is one of the few fully-orchestrated pop songs i can hang with.

so hard to choose though--mother and child reunion is great in its simplicity and open-ended lyrics, 50 ways is a really unique song, loves me like a rock is so simple and fun, and slip slidin' away is about as pure as songwriting gets. gonna have to think about this a bit more.

also the comment upthread about how good simon is for kids is totally OTM. i fell in love with graceland when i was 6 or 7. his voice is so clear it's easy to never miss a lyric, and his images are so simple and vivid that as a (more) imaginative kid i could just sit there for hours thinking about them.

"still crazy" has another one of his great bridges, "4 in the morning/crapped out/yawning." i also like the menace in the last verse, "i fear i'll do some damage some fine day," the sense that something real is at stake. a life going by the wayside.

"one fine day," i mean.

OTM!

Why couldn't you have posted that 1 minute before I voted instead of 1 minute after. Not that Kodachrome isn't a great song, but that lyric is pretty amazing.

Slip Slidin' Away. The acoustic demo version is even better.

Voted '50 ways'. Still cuts right through the heart

"50 Ways" is one of the first songs I remember ever loving, when I was six years old or so, though I thought the lines were "You don't have to be cordouroy" and "You don't need to discuss muss."

Sometimes I'm still in wonder that Paul Simon invented the phrases "crazy after all these years" and "slip slidin' away" and "bridge over troubled water," let alone the songs.

Way to ruin a perfectly good sobbing mood ;_;

Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (1972)
Kodachrome (1973)
Loves Me Like a Rock (1973)
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (1975)

endorse, but would sub "slip slidin away" for "like a rock". went with 50 ways.

topics of perennial, pointless and entirely too literal-minded discussion: what actually happens in "me and julio" and "stranded in a limousine"?

(some interviewer actually asked simon that about "me and julio" a few years back and he just said, "i'll never tell.")

late in the evening is 80s huh

of the former, wiki sez:

In a July 20, 1972 interview for Rolling Stone, Jon Landau asked: "What is it that the mama saw? The whole world wants to know." Simon replied "I have no idea what it is... Something sexual is what I imagine, but when I say 'something', I never bothered to figure out what it was. Didn't make any difference to me."

which i dunno, never been able to sort out one way or the other. teh gay? messin w girls? drugs? vandalisms? who knows.

the former is obv about bin laden

ha, that would appear to be the interview flogged by the rolling stone cover atop.

Mother/Mama mentions

Mother and Child Reunion: mother and child reunion
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard: first line
Duncan: my mama was a fisherman's friend
Kodachrome: mama don't take my kodachrome away
Loves Me Like a Rock: who do you think loves him like a rock

mama oh, papa oh, see what I have seen
there's a mean individual stranded in a Limousine

(some interviewer actually asked simon that about "me and julio" a few years back and he just said, "i'll never tell.")

What an ass. Like it wasn't all on the cover of Newsweek already.

it's symptomatic of my childhood that i was discovering paul simon and doonesbury at the same time, and always pictured the radical priest as the rev. scott sloan.

Have you been editing the wikipedia page again?

Some believe the incident in the song refers to an arrest at an antiwar protest on a college campus (the "schoolyard"), with the "radical priest" (whom the singer claims will appear with him "on the cover of Newsweek") being either Philip or Daniel Berrigan, priests noteworthy for their antiwar activity during the Vietnam War. It has been said also that the "radical priest" could be the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, chaplain from Yale, upon whom the Scot Sloan character in Doonesbury was based.

haha no. i didn't know scott sloan was even based on a real person.

I voted for "Still Crazy", but secretly wish "Something So Right" was a single so I could've voted for that

also, there seems to be only one version of this on youtube and it's not a very good performance.

great chords in this song. the phrasing is so wonderful too.

also, this reminded me how wonderful American Tune and Duncan both are. i think i'll listen to Greatest Hits, etc tonight in the headphones to go to sleep.

voted still crazy, but 50 ways is a great song

man what a run, and I don't even know a few of these... might've gone for Late in the Evening if it was included but Still Crazy seems like the standout, the real archetypal track. Vague insinuations of mass murder + sentimental "man I'm so old" self-pity + pitch perfect 70s production sheen (ooh turn up that Fender Rhodes piano and lets get SMOOTH), just really fantastic. His performance of this track on SNL's first season, with the pornstache and wide-collared shirt, alone on a stool, is classic.

...much less his second performance in a giant turkey costume.

Lawd, this is a tuffie.

I'm going with "Me and Julio", just because I think it's a distillation of everything he was best at, i.e., wry witticism floating lightly on a Brooklyn/Queens street corner talking-guitars melody which shouldn't work nearly as well as it does. Simply, jazzy, streetwise, literate, with a bit of the pungent Jewish sensibility keeping things from getting too mawkish.

the hepness has always felt a little forced/borrowed.

see Paul Simon, career

That's kinda the secret of his appeal though isn't it? Like Jerry Lewis or something, the 'straight' world's ambassador to/from the hep......
He can do the street corner jive stuff that always sounds like it comes from some hyper-real version of the 50s- 'she called him speedo but his christian name was mister Earl' -but the listener knows that PS is the observer reporting back, not actually of that kind of world.(if there even is that kind of world) The 'hepness' is absolutely reassuring, never threatening

Utterly fascinating career/ persona actually - looking at that solo clip of American Tune above and you're reminded that he lived in England for a while and learned from the likes of Jansch/ Davy Graham but when the modal picking meets the pop sensibility, something totally other and sui generis comes into being.

Someone here (I think) in the Blossom Dearie RIP thread complimented here for her ability not to emote all over a song - to deliver it like a typeface was the phrase used. I think PS has that a bit: the clarity of his diction and the childlike appeal of his voice noted above alway make him sound like he's telling a story that may have happened to someone else sometime but never him. Something in the delivery assures that he's not 'Lincoln Duncan', that he's not the 'Me' in 'Me and Julio' and so on..... and in some way, it's that teacherly tone that gives American Tune its power: if even that nice Mr. Simon thinks we've screwed up, then truly we must have.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

When they're outta Capri Sun, they'll get me a release
We was all on the cover of Newsweek

the cuica takes it

we had all these on a C-90, they're all pretty ingrained. probably would have voted for "stranded in a limousine" on grounds of remembered fondness, although some others here might be better songs

i was the only one voting 'limousine' lj, w2g :(

the vocals on that song are just so cool, ditto the sax riff, and fucking DITTO the piano

i haven't heard it in about 10 years and it's still fucking amazing

i've been listening to 70s Paul Simon pretty much exclusively lately. take me to the mardi gras was kind of robbed.

This may have gotten linked upthread, but here's a demo version of "Me & Julio" that's pretty great - different melody in a couple places, and totally different lyrics on the "radical priest" verse!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-UJ24dwM2E