Perhaps. But the people who must bear witness to unseemly emotionality are entitled to finding it unbearable.

To the earlier comment about hysterical men - surely we are all entitled to the whole range of human emotions.

As regards Graceland - I can’t stand it. It’s smarminess knows no bounds. I find Simon’s use of ‘world music’ to enhance his own far less appealing than say Peter Gabriel. I don’t believe the success of the album ultimately helped African music in general (although a couple of artists did benefit).

I vaguely remember KLOS and KROQ, and I think Dr Demento was on one of them, can’t remember which one though.

KFWB was the big LA rock station in the early 60s, but it turned to an all-news format by the end of the decade after being outdone first by KRLA and then KHJ. In the early 70s, I listened to KNAC (a small progressive station out of Long Beach), KRTH, KLOS, and KROQ. I’ve been on the East Coast for the past six years, so I don’t know what the stations are like today. KRTH became an oldies station–a latter day simulacrum of KHJ in the 60s and 70s (the more things change the more they stay the same). KROQ became one of the top alternative pop/rock stations of the 80s and 90s.

Or something like that, anyway.

(And thanks to all who’ve discussed the Graceland/boycott issue, which I now understand WAY, way better than ever before.)

Doctor Mod, When I lived in Los Angeles I listened to KRLA a lot, KFI too. I must have listened to some fm station, but I can’t remember which…probably the one that had Dr. Demento on Sunday nights (and for all I know, still does).

Appropos not much, except the passing reference above, I’ve always wanted to hear the Troggs do “Dangling Conversation.” Musically, it’s surprisingly like their type of three-chord wonder, and perhaps only Reg Presley’s voice could do justice to the couplets about Dickinson and Frost. Reg, in my version, would add “And the silence in the stairwell/And the shadows on the wall/And the morning sun is shining/Like a red rubber ball,” followed by a general musical freak-out to end things.

“Sail on silver girl” - I always took it as a moon metaphor, the moon shining in the sky (what song is that which has the lyric about looking at the moon and seeing you?) in the singer’s darkness, full and glowing.

I don’t think this is hysterical as much as passionate, chivalric even. (”I will lay me down” not being a literal statement, but more like throwing down one’s life for another’s - sacrificing - in order to show how serious the singer is about what he feels. It’s a lot more than putting a cape on a puddle.) The ending is the weakest part of the song, I agree, and yes, it’s brilliant technically - building and building as the singer lets more and more emotion show. It builds up to the pitch of “Soul and Inspiration” and is as bold and unironic as that song.

Well, indeed: it’s always a big punt: not all self-appointed national liberation movements (Indian National Congress v Iraqi National Congress) turn out to be the real deal.

however the line simon’s attackers (those who were not ANC) SHOULD have taken is
i. OK this LP is possibly GREAT and
ii. yes he has helped these particular musicians
— NEVERTHELESS THE CULTURAL BOYCOTT MUST BE UPHELD, even for such ostensibly good purposes

however mostly they took the opposite line on i. AND ii., which totally muddied the position. Tactically they shd have conceded all points not relevant to the position being taken: not to do so appeared to be allowing a future get-out clause for a Great LP which Helped Black Musicians (even if Graceland wasn’t yet it to these quasi-punkers)

(nor was ANC position as clearcut as it should have been — difft officials in fact took different positions in difft interviews) (not hugely difft but enough, again, to switch the debate from one of tactical urgency to a vague bigger question of the politics of culture — viz when does commodity art stop being “just” commodity art usw — which they were ill-equipped to prevail within, and which, frankly, they should not have ended up in)

(a key side issue was this: should non-combatant supporters of the ANC cede all judgement on all issues to the ANC?)

The line “Sail on, silver girl” is often reputed to refer to a needle (meaning the song is about heroin) but it actually refers to Simon’s girlfriend and later wife who found a few gray hairs and was upset. The lyric was meant as a joke. (thanks, Helen - York, England)

Oh, and a resurrection update: I’m sure I remember Phil Cool releasing a version of this - I don’t particularly recall seeing a 45 of it, but I do remember a video where he did his famous Rolf impression.

1. I know every note of the first side thanks to it always being played at school.

2. The boys who played it didn’t play the second side so much, and even when they did they always skipped “Homeless”.

3. The song I was most looking forward to hearing again turns out to be “Graceland” by Boo Hewerdine and The Bible. :(

And at age 14 I absolutely loved Simon & Garfunkel. I thought “Sounds of Silence” was the greatest song ever written (well, it was either that or “Spring Hill Mine Disaster” or “A Day in the Life”). I probably would have placed “The Dangling Conversation” and “I Am a Rock” in my top twenty. I thought those songs were beautiful and thought those songs were profound. I copied out the lyrics to “I Am a Rock” and gave them to one of my teachers. I probably lied to myself and believed that I believed that “The Dangling Conversation” was better than “I Am a Rock,” but actually “Rock” rocks harder, and in my viscera I preferred it. Also, I got what Paul Simon was saying, so - contra Xgau - I know damn well that Paul wasn’t saying nothing. He was layering gobs of pseudoideas and pseudopoetry atop everything, but he had messages that were coming through loud and clear: To be smart and sensitive is to be desperately lonely; that not only is suicide an option, a way of choosing one’s fate, it’s a form of social commentary and social protest; that whether anyone understands or is understood by anyone else is something of a crap shoot; that the words and social rituals that mainstream culture bequeaths us are contaminated and dysfunctional, that something needs to break through from somewhere else (words of prophets on subway walls and all that). And of course in retrospect I don’t see Simon’s themes as being much different from those of certified cool cats like Dylan and the Velvets and the Stooges: “Heroin” is “I Am a Rock,” “Sister Ray” is “The Dangling Conversation,” albeit in less kitschy, bullshitty form.)

I was disappointed by Bookends because it seemed so emotionally toned down. Of course later I was to realize that this was Simon’s actually becoming competent and no longer ridiculous or full of shit as a lyricist. But, for what it’s worth, I’ll stand by my original aesthetic judgment: for all the posturing and psuedointellectualism of “I Am a Rock” and “Sounds of Silence,” those are the two best things those guys ever recorded, separately or together; and this is because they’re the most deliriously emotional, the most beautiful, the ones that rock (”Sounds of Silence” being best in the hit version where Columbia simply pasted drums and guitar onto the original S&G vocal tracks. The Bloomfield-imitation guitar was by Fred Carter, Deana’s dad). I think that “Mother and Child Reunion” and “The Boxer” are great songs, but they don’t carry anything like the electric thrill of those two early S&G hits.

OK, so, the song in question, when I heard it previewed in some Simon & Garfunkel documentary, I think in 1969. I hated it. Thought it was sentimental shit, vast empty goo goo. Couldn’t stand the melody, which reminded me of these long slow love ballads that “legitimate” singers would foist on the world. The central metaphor was dumbfounding. “Like a bridge over troubled water/I will lay me down.” What? Into the raging river? That’s sure comforting. What the fuck is he talking about? (I still can’t make heads or tails of it.) I doubt that I even noticed “Sail on silver girl” until today. It’s not so bad. It’s - I don’t know - pretty. It may not be saying much, but at least it’s not saying something stupid.

As for what I think of the song now? Don’t really know. Still boring after all these years, maybe. Or maybe I can appreciate the beauty of the godawful ballad. I’m trying to come to terms with ballads, since Kelly and Ashlee sing ‘em, occasionally. Compared to all the indie glug I’m listening to for Paper Thin Walls, I might appreciate “Bridge”’s sonic professionalism. Or might not.