Randy shines. Paul shines. That’s a lot of shining, and this is one darn good song!
Continue reading...305: Randy Newman & Paul Simon, ‘The Blues’
090: The Cyrkle, ‘Red Rubber Ball’
1966–when Paul Simon mistook Jeff for Art and gave away that unforgettable, bouncy ‘Red Rubber Ball’.
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078: Paul Simon, ‘The Late, Great Johnny Ace’
John Lennon was murdered 40 years ago today. Paul Simon wrote a song around that event. Even today, my mind gets teary when it lights on John Lennon’s death. He appears in Paul Simon’s song only obliquely, because the song isn’t about John Lennon, and it’s not about Johnny Ace. It’s about Paul Simon, and about you, and about me.
Continue reading...197: Paul Simon, ‘Hearts and Bones’
Hearts and bones. The soft and hard, that which can only feel pain, and that which can only be broken. The vital and the inflexible, the palpitating and the rigid. The pulsating, quivering, throbbing passions within us, and the structures and strictures and scaffoldings that hold it all up. It’s about how they cohabit within us – intimate, interdependent, synergetic, yet profoundly and inherently separate. Like a married couple.
Continue reading...165: Paul Simon, ‘Jonah’
Who would have thought that ‘feelings’, the notoriously amorphous and slippery quick of our inner lives, could be so precisely dissected, reconstructed, and formulated in a mere song? Paul Simon’s ‘Jonah’ will swallow you whole.
Continue reading...158: Paul Simon, ‘Surfer Girl’
‘Surfer Girl’ is a schlocky, heartfelt ballad of unrequited teenage love, Brian Wilson clawing his way out of the gooey larva of his California pubescence. Paul Simon works his magic on it, tapping the genius that is Brian, elevating it to a work of great beauty.
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