Posted on 03/01/2020 4:47:58 PM PST by Twotone
A few weeks ago, my kid had to take a 20 hour Greyhound trip. I sent him a playlist of road songs and of course, America was right in the mix.
Yes, I love some of their lesser-known songs as well like, “The Sun Is Burning,” “Bleeker Street,” and “Sparrow.”
I have a soft spot for “me and julio down by the school yard”. I spent a few years of my childhood in a small community with a lot of hispanics, and a radical priest. I still can’t believe somebody actually wrote a song about it.
Absolutely great music, Simon and Garfunkel. Most all of their songs really.
Big fan
America, bookends, and the boxer would be my top 3 (at least today).
Growing up in Dayton,Oh our “teen club” was The Caverns - in the basement of a shopping center. The stage was 12” tall so the performers were “right there”.
A local band, The McCoys (Hang On Sloopy) featured a young Rick Zehringer (later Rick Derringer). After their set, they stayed on stage to be the backing band for S&G on their PSRT tour.
My main memory was being really impressed with the guitar virtuosity of a young Zehringer who later became a highly acclaimed session guitarist in LA playing on many albums - from Steely Dan’s hot slide on “Show Biz Kids” to the blazing solo on Weird Al’s cover of “Eat It”.
In 1980 or 81, I saw Simon and Garfunkel perform at the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan.
Only in your mind did that happen. They did not perform together between a 1978 Carnegie Hall appearance and the Concert in the Park on Sept 19, 1981 (which I was at). They then did a world tour in the summer of 1982. Michigan was not on that tour.
We were both wrong my friend.
They did perform at the Silverdome but it was July 20, 1983, not 1981
https://www.paul-simon.info/PHP/listconcerts.php?tour=-2&year=1983
Absolutely beautiful song. Lyrics,
harmony, instruments played by actual
musicians.
It has comforted me many times.
The Boxer is fantastic too.
Paul Simon is one of the great poets of rock.
It’s a still life water color
Of a now late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives
And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives
Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
“Can analysis be worthwhile?”
“Is the theater really dead?”
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You’re a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives
That's Steve Gadd on drums, he played with Paul for many years.
The Late Great Johnny Ace
I was reading a magazine
And thinking of a rock and roll song
The year was 1954
And I hadn’t been playing that long
When a man came on the radio
And this is what he said
He said I hate to break it
To his fans
But Johnny Ace is dead
Well, I really wasn’t
Such a Johnny Ace fan
But I felt bad all the same
So I sent away for his photograph
And I waited till it came
It came all the way from Texas
With a sad and simple face
And they signed it on the bottom
From the Late Great Johnny Ace
It was the year of the Beatles
It was the year of the Stones
It was 1964
I was living in London
With the girl from the summer before
It was the year of the Beatles
It was the year of the Stones
A year after J.F.K.
We were staying up all night
And giving the days away
And the music was flowing
Amazing
And blowing my way
On a cold December evening
I was walking through the Christmas tide
When a stranger came up and asked me
If I’d heard John Lennon had died
And the two of us
Went to this bar
And we stayed to close the place
And every song we played
Was for the Late Great Johnny Ace
And I turned my amp up loud and began to play
And it was late in the evening
And I blew that room away!!!!
For a long time, I thought the lyric for the second line in
“Feelin’ Groovy” was
“Got to make the Morning Mass!”
when it actually was;
“Got to make the morning last!”
This was back when I was an Altar Boy in the St. Cecilia
Church. Naive, for sure. Why would Paul Simon, a Jew, be singing about going to a Catholic church for Morning Mass?
That’s funny.
For the record, it was always “last” in my head.
February 28th, 1970. One week after my late wife today me she loved me the first time. Met in September of 1969 in the dinner line and became best friends. The following February we made our feelings for each other official to little surprise of our friends. A year and a half later we were married. Troubled Water was always one of my top “Sweetie” songs. Played it at her much too early funeral at age 46.
For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her. Another top “Sweetie”. The song is almost an exact description of our first night together as more than friends.
My late wife was a high school and college English/Literature teacher and used S&G songs to teach poetry.
At some point in time, we’ll set aside the effin 1960’s.
S&G where wonderful, but . . .
David Bowie’s 1971 “Changes” launched more progress and innovation in music than the tired hippie singer/songwriter shiite.
Around the same time, Frank Zappa was redefining collaborations and the approach to “pop” music.
A short time later, Sid and the gang reinvented everything all over again, but the hippies kept groovin.
S&G played the Burnt Out Hippie Genre for decades, the Grateful Dead did it with better weed.
50 years is long enough. Let the tired, old, sleepy, hippie smoldering crap finally go out.
We mean it, man!
Agreed.
L
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