And it's not the fucking Princess Leia thing, either- although she just revealed that she was boning Harrison Ford on the set of Empire Strikes Back and that seems a little out of line to me. Anyway, thing is, I LOVE Simon and Garfunkel. They are the sound of being young to me and, unlike the Beatles, I have purposefully avoided over- analyzing their records because I enjoy the period association I get with them. If I hear "At the Zoo" and close my eyes, I can feel 7 all over again. I've got corduroys on a bowl haircut and endless energy from a steady diet of orange soda and Bazooka. I've got my orange Huffy with the banana seat and I'm ready to cruise all the way to the forbidden train tracks. If "The Only Living Boy In New York" doesn't break your frigiin' heart with every listen, it's probably time to call it a day.

In fact, my earliest memory in life is "Cecilia". I have a very clear memory of looking up from my crib and hearing that song playing on a sunshine yellow plastic radio and of someone, a male figure, leaning over the crib and clucking his tongue at me. Maybe that's all bullshit, but I cling to it as deeply meaningful so just play along, OK? Cecelia is the patron Saint of musicians so I'd be shattered if I ever found out this memory isn't real.


The very first song i ever learned on guitar was "Feeling Groovy". That was my entire repertoire for a long time and I used to hammer those chords on a nylon string guitar over and over with my Jr. High Choral Director, Mrs. Weingart, intoning "D....A...G....A..." over and over. Probably my least favorite Simon & Garfunkel song, but it meant a lot to me at the time. Also, I am pretty sure I still owe the Columbia Record and Tape Club for several Simon & Garfunkel albums, including their live in Central park, which was a double and I chose that part of my introductory offer, being a conniving little shit even then.

And "Bookends'? Forget it. One of the best albums ever, that's all. It's in my top 5 no matter what mood I'm in. I've got a vinyl copy from my teenage years with the chords written in blue pen on the lyric sheet. There was no internet then and, believe you me, I worked hard to figure them all out. Any time you want to hear "America", you just come see me. I'll play it for you, no problem.

So, my problems with Paul Simon are many, but often center around the feeling that he can be quite ungracious when discussing his old partnership. He often dismisses S&G as the work of naive kids and goes to great pains to point out how much more sophisticated his later work is. Don't get me wrong, I like "Kodachrome" and a lot of his early solo work, and like every human alive I was enamored of "Graceland" when it was enormous, but none of it has ever touched me the way his work with Artie does. Paul's fine, but Simon And Garfunkel were magic. And I think it's insulting that he dismisses the audience that gave him the opportunity to have such a wonderful long career. Read his interviews, I'm not making this up.

Then there's the jazz thing. OK, I get it, he learned some hip chords over the years. What the fuck, you pick some shit up as you go along, right? That doesn't mean you have to put them all over every song and hire the Brecker Brothers. Mind you, I actually kind of admire how he took jazzer session cats like Steve Gadd, Anthony Jackson and Richard Tee and made them play like a rock band. Those three are fantastic, actually, but the whole thing smells a little like Steely Dan to me (with better lyrics). Now, Joni Mitchell gets a pass because everybody knows she just played all those chords with one finger and it was probably Crosby who put her guitar in that tuning in the first place. Then again, back to Paul Simon, "Loves me Like a Rock" is all G, C & D, so he didn't completely lose the plot. He writes by going to an office and dating the staff paper and working for 8 hours with a lunch break, so it's to be expected he would disappear up his own ass on occasion.

But the real reason I often feel like pinching the little bugger is that he's so damn good. I want to reject the intellectualism of his later work, but there's just such a fine sense of melody driving it. Take, for instance, one of my favorite songs of his; "My little Town". This was truly a Simon And Garfunkel song despite being recorded 5 years after they split. I read in an interview that his intention was to write a nasty song for Artie to sing, since he had been doing a lot of MOR lightweight material, and that he was picturing Worcester, MA when he wrote the tune. The lyrics are devastatingly good narrative- fucking John Updike, OK? What kills me is the insane meandering chord sequence in the verse. It's almost like the harmonies spell out Paul's resistance to re-teaming with Artie. No way in the world is this verse ever going to get played on the radio- even album rock FM- there are augmented chords all over and the root motion seems to defy the listener to fix on a key, and there are odd bars of 2 at the end of phrases, one really never does get one's bearing when, out of nowhere, the heaviest chorus you've ever heard in your life happens.

"Nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town". What kind of chorus is that? But it's huge and it's dark and it's Simon And Garfunkel. Amazing, and it got to 9 according to Wikipedia. I can think of no other writer who could have fought his way out of that verse so successfully.

So that's why he pisses me off, but I take great comfort in knowing that whenever S& G play together, Paul Simon has to sit on the side of the stage and watch Artie sing "Bridge Over Troubled Water". He's also the schmuck who gave away "Red Rubber Ball" to the Cyrkle.