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The Death of Paul Simon
He contemplates the hereafter. We contemplate his legacy.
Reports of his demise are greatly exaggerated.
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Music, Memory, and Mom
Sonya Cotton grieves out loud on her sublime tribute to her mother, and asks for a little help from you.
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The Man Who Invented Male Camel Toe
Forget about that. Tom Jones is striving for redemption these days.
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Tom Waits Lives
His new concert album tells us he won't go gently.
I remember laughing out loud when I first saw Drew Friedman's illustration of Paul Simon and David Byrne bumping into each either in what looks like the wilds of Borneo. The Internet tells me it was published in SPY Magazine, sometime in the '90s. Sounds about right.
Another thing that sounds right: Paul Simon's "The Afterlife," a track from forthcoming album So Beautiful or So What being previewed at the moment on Stereogum. Or it sounds like Paul Simon, at any rate. The song itself is pretty slight, relying on percussive texture over melody -- and then arranged and produced with old-world skill and taste, naturally -- but it leaves a lot of space for a witty account of Simon's post-mortem visit to what appears to be a bureaucratic heaven.
Per Friedman's snarky drawing, it also sounds as if the Napoleon-sized songwriter is still touring the world for inspiration. In the case of "The Afterlife," he's keeping one tiny foot in Africa, and the other in Louisiana. Of course, the Simonist Empire's expansionist policies date back to the '70s at least, when "Mother and Child Reunion" brought pop-Caribbeana to his uniformly WASPy audience.
Whatever may come with So Beautiful or So What, and Simon claims that his influence on this record is bluegrass, I'd say that any occasion to revisit those old nuggets of sophisticated pop genius is worth taking, as Simon plotted his course from Latin America, to Harlem, and later on to Cape Town.
LISTEN TO THIS:
Paul Simon - "The Afterlife"
The man's legacy, as every blogger on earth has pointed out in the last 72 hours, is currently felt in the vanguard indie rave of Vampire Weekend -- but Christ alive, let's hope that's not what he'll be remembered for. Even going down in history as a victim of Drew Friedman's poison, pointillist pen would be better than that! ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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6
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Steve Burgess
1 year ago
Vampire Weekend
I don't know whether Vampire Weekend grew up listening to Graceland or not. But it irks me a little that so many observers credit Paul Simon with influencing their sound. The man didn't invent South African music.
Tangler
1 year ago
Huh?
Ummmm ... is this a music review?
Does it have a point?
I've read it three times, and I'm still puzzled.
Perhaps the author was on deadline?
warbler
1 year ago
yawn...
Listened to Afterlife, and concluded that's just where Simon's music currently rests.
An addendum to Burgess' point, I've never really forgiven Simon for his arrogance, thinking he was above and beyond the anti-Apartheid artist boycott when he made Graceland. I don't care how good an album it was, he sold his soul to the devil in making it.
What is Garfunkel up to these days? I'd much rather hear his golden tones.
Steve Burgess
1 year ago
Simon's ethics
Can't agree with the logic, Warbler. Simon didn't play in South Africa--they recorded Ladysmith Black Mambazzo elsewhere. And if the South African boycott applied to every South African black or white wouldn't that have precluded dealings with Nelson Mandela?
More troubling for me was an interview with Los Lobos I read years ago in Musician magazine. They too worked on Graceland--they were honoured to be invited. But when they showed up Simon just put them in the studio and said basically, "Do your thing," i.e. create your instinctive ethnic magic. So they shrugged and said, "Let's play that new stuff we've been working on." Said material ended up on the Graceland album--without any songwriting credit for members of Los Lobos.
warbler
1 year ago
Graceland redux
Steve,
According to a Rolling Stone article (David Fricke, July 2, 1987) back around that time, there's reference to "his musical field trip to Johannesburg in February 1985, during which he recorded much of Graceland...."
In that same article it mentions that Simon was "publicly censured by the African National Congress and other antiapartheid organizations in the United States and Europe for violating the United Nations cultural boycott of South Africa."
At that time the United Democratic Front accused Simon of "the exploitation of the talents of the African musicians for the furtherance of Simon's own aims."
Many of his musician cohorts of the day also took issue with him: Paul Weller of the Style Council, General Public's Dave Wakeling, protest bard Billy Bragg and Jerry Dammers of the Specials (who co-wrote the U.K. hit "Free Nelson Mandela") signed a letter to Simon calling for a "complete and heartfelt public apology" for breaching the UN boycott.
We may disagree on the logic, but the controversy was very real at that time, and I remember it souring my opinion of Simon.
The Los Lobos controversy is equally troubling and I recall how Simon blew it off like it was nothing.
Anyway, Simon is washed up by the sounds of his latest stuff. As for expropriating World Music, I always liked Peter Gabriel's efforts a hell of a lot more than Simon's. Gabriel's efforts have always been more of an homage to foreign sounds, rather than usery of them.
Troutsky
1 year ago
Time time see what's become of me
Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime
Ilook around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter