Fact One: Paul Simon is the name of a group of Estate Agents in North London
Fact Two: Garfunkels is the name of a chain of appalling restaurants in the centre of London, only beaten by Aberdeen Angus Steak Houses for poor services, wretched food and ambience you could cremate an elderly relative to (if dead – I am not suggesting any form of fire based euthanasia here).
These two facts should of course be enough coincidental proof to inter Mssrs Simon and Garfunkel to the I Hate Music top ten of shite, but I do occasionally feel duty bound to look at their recorded output. Look – not listen. Shall we take an oft toted example of Paul Simon’s lyrical genius – Homeward Bound. So the story goes the diminutive wonder was sitting in Crewe Railway station, waiting for a train. This being Crewe, he was subject to the laws of British Rail : both with respect to timetabling and conduct of carriage. So what insight do we get from Pauly:
“I’m sitting in a railway station (cf: stating the obvious)
Got a ticket for my destination” (cf: British laws on holding a ticket valid for your entire journey).
Its pleasing to hear that the troubadouric answer to Paul Daniels had insulated himself against getting a ten pound penalty fare, but perhaps the track might have been more exciting if it later referenced
“An inspector asked for my ticket,
I pretended it had fallen out of my pocket
He said that he would call the cops
And charged me ten pounds and the price of a standard single ticket to the next stop”
Art Garfunkel probably would have nodded, said this was rather good and then stomped around trying to find another film about rabbits he could sing the theme to. If only Paul Simon’s solo career had been as brief. Instead he sits at home with his Collins World Encyclopaedia trying to find hitherto undiscovered civilisations whose music he can rip off wholesale. I would like to think the sanctions breaking recording of Graceland was a major contributor to the bringing down of Apartheid, but unless PW Botha had the album played to him until he capitulated I cannot see how. Instead he launched South Africa’s answer to the Flying Pickets on the world, and raked in the profits. The less said about the Capeman project the better. Let us just restrict ourselves to the scientifically proven fact that on Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover there are not actually fifty ways. This is quite obviously because Rhyming Dictionary Simon has never actually left a lover, he’s always been dumped. Ask Carrie Fisher. I think her way may have involved coming off of drugs. Cold turkey is bad, but waking up for the first clean day in ten years and finding Paul Simon in your bed – not nice.
As a digression, it has recently come to my attention that there are no good double acts – be it in music, comedy or the field of murdering upon Moors – whose names are not billed alphabetically. Peters & Lee, Cannon & Ball, Sonny & Cher, Little & Large and – unsurprisingly -Simon and Garfunkel all have reverse alphabeticaly billing, and are all lousy.
Back to the folksie trappings of S&G, together again for the twentieth fucking reunion gig (I don’t know this for sure but if you stick a pin in a calendar you have a fifty fifty chance). Up on stage goes the frizzy but balding giant man-child that was Art, and the balding but meta-balding dwarf of dissonance and boy is it obvious they hate each other. This I understand – I hate them – but hey kids, do you think they are in it for the money? “Play The Sound Of silence will ya, and this time do it properly else I’ll rip out your tongues and break all your limbs – then you’ll finally get some clue of what silence sounds like”. If the Lemonheads can cover one of your tracks and make it better, then there is no sack of shit big enough for you to be compared to.
My final piece of evidence is slightly more sinister however. It involves the throwaway line “Hello Darkness my old friend”. Anyone on first name terms with Darkness must be in league with the dark powers and must therefore be demons in approximately human form (like eight is approximately ten). They are recruiting for their own special pit of hell reserved for them and their foolish fans. And estate agents, and piss-poor London restaurateurs no doubt.
(Not No Doubt. They have their own acre of hell where the ska is watered down and it is illegal to dance properly).