Paul Simon Goes Mystical Prog Acoustical

April 14, 2023 7:08 PM

"On January 15, 2019 I had a dream that said "You're working on a piece called Seven Psalms." [Trailer, 5m14s] Paul Simon is releasing a 33m long piece in seven movements, Seven Psalms, composed in the wee hours of the morning. "This whole piece is really an argument I'm having with myself about belief, or not."
posted by hippybear (26 comments total)

Thank you for this. Paul Simon was a link with the father I lost not long ago, and I hadn’t seen this.
posted by PussKillian at 7:25 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm lukewarm on a lot of Paul Simon's output, but I thought the album he put out with Brian Eno a few years ago was fantastic, and this looks like it 's coming from a similar place. Very much looking forward to it.
posted by the bricabrac man at 7:36 PM on April 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I thought the album he put out with Brian Eno a few years ago was fantastic

Surprise [YT playlist]

Yes, that album is delightful. I think Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean is really great late Paul Simon.
posted by hippybear at 7:41 PM on April 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

If I came out of a dream wherein I had been told "You're working on a piece called Seven Psalms." I'd likely find it interesting, and maybe in conversation to two of my closest friends I'd bring it up. If it turned out that one or both of them came out of a dream after being told "You're working on a piece called Seven Psalms." there would be a pause maybe, or maybe not, as we asked ourselves and/or each other if there was any weight to it; almost certainly it'd drop into the dust.

But none of us are Paul Simon. I know the shape of a guitar, and the heft of a guitar, but I couldn't play for example Bo Donaldsons gem "Billy Don't Be a Hero" and I wouldn't want to even if I could, and if either of my friends could play it I'd rethink the friendship(s).

But Paul Simon, with 25 phone calls he'll have unreal talent in his home, and they can and will turn a message from a dream into something worthwhile. Or not, but he's got a lot better shot at it than I do. I've had a few dreams that I'd consider putting to music if I had Simon's talent, and his experience, and the contacts in his cell phone.

Putting it out is a risk. Well, he's an artist, he is in fact An Artist, and he's taken plenty of risks his whole life. You might be a craftsman without risk but you're not going to be An Artist. I like that he's got the jam to put it out there.
posted by dancestoblue at 10:58 PM on April 14, 2023 [10 favorites]

He gave up Art entirely once
posted by chavenet at 2:06 AM on April 15, 2023 [31 favorites]

Those fragments are sublime. I can't think of another songwriter who is as articulate in explaining the process of composition – as he did here with Dick Cavett
posted by MinPin at 4:10 AM on April 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

None of Paul Simon's solo work has meant as much to me, nor have I enjoyed it as much, as the four studio albums he released between 1964 and 1970 with you-know-who. But then, I'm a weird, autistic depressive with a lot of personal flaws, so maybe my opinions shouldn't count for a lot.

The Concert in Central Park was pretty great, too.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:11 AM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Paul Simon is not really my taste (though I'll have to try out the Eno/Simon thing). However, I love his willingness to attempt things that are sometimes considered, errr, not his style? Also, I totally get this, I've woken from dreams more than once with a song or song fragment, that I realized were not songs I had heard before.
posted by evilDoug at 6:25 AM on April 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was about 18 or 20 years old when Graceland came out. My roommate in college used to play that album over and over (along with other really good music) but even back then in 1990 or whatever, Simon's "world music" collecting came across as kind of exploitative. I wouldn't have used that word back then, but it felt like the band was Simon's circus or something. Like he was the Ringmaster, singing his soulful Simon tunes over his "collection" of "exotic" sounds he had collected from around the world.

True, many great musicians from other continents and countries and cultures got enormous exposure. Ladysmith Black Mambazo (for instance) became hugely famous and toured and made a lot of money thanks to Simon "discovering" them. But it just felt off that this white guy from New York was kind of headlining with all these other musicians who got second or third place credits. These were Simon's songs and music... "backed up" by the other musicians.

I was not a super-woke white kid at the time. But it felt weird to me even then. I liked (and still like) some of the Graceland songs, as well as the output from other "world music" influenced musicians at the time (Peter Gabriel is another example).

I'm not being super erudite about my feelings then and/or now in this comment. But Simon and other musicians who adopted this Word Music aesthetic kind of lost me when they did so. I'm still split on how I feel about it. There's so many musicians I never would have heard of were it not for Simon, or Gabriel or David Byrne, to name a few. And those huge names really did give many musicians from around the world (who otherwise would have remained pretty obscure to me and my kind here in the USA) a chance to gain larger audiences and make money.

Guess I'm saying I appreciate Simon's earlier stuff. But it's complex, and just felt like sharing here.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:26 AM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

What, first he stole song-writing credit from Los Lobos, now's he stealing son-writing credit from David? Simon's professional scumbaggery aside, I do intend to give this a listen when it's released. He may be a scumbag in his dealings with musicians he considers "beneath" his status but I can't deny he's a GREAT musician and songwriter --when he's actually writing his own songs.
posted by KingEdRa at 7:02 AM on April 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

Paul Simon has been exploiting Christianity and religion since his earliest days. Beginning with "Benedictus" (1964), "Blessed" , "Silent Night/7 O'clock News) (1965), "American Tune" (which steals the melody of Bach's "O Sacred Head Now Wounded"), "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (title and tone are a gospel steal), "Loves Me Like a Rock" (total steal from Swan Silvertones, Dixie Hummingbirds, etc., gospel), the whole tone of Graceland with the gospel group, Lady Blacksmith, and many more. I say "exploit" because the religious music Simon uses as built up by spiritual communities over the course of sometimes centuries with the goal of glorifying God. Simon walks right up to, but never enters the God-zone. As he is doing with "Seven Psalms", he's just playing footsie with belief -- appropriating the gravity of sacredness to undergird his own legend.

Mind you, I say all this as a great fan of Paul Simon, who believes that he is indeed a genius (and from what I gather, something of an asshole), whose songs have given me hours and hours of pleasure over the course of my life. (And don't get me started on African American singers and songwriters who've made millions pillaging their own gospel tradition.)
posted by Modest House at 8:22 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not being super erudite about my feelings then and/or now in this comment. But Simon and other musicians who adopted this Word Music aesthetic kind of lost me when they did so. I'm still split on how I feel about it.

I view that whole phase of music (which started for me circa 1980 with Talking Heads' Remain in Light, then David Byrne and Brian Eno's My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, and what Peter Gabriel got into on his third album) as something that had to happen. Western explorers were inevitably going to discover (for them) new lands which they were going to plunder for riches. And for the record, I was all over that stuff at first, couldn't get enough of it, which sparked all kinds of strange and wonderful diversions and deviations in my listening (and creating) -- oft times moving backward through various discographies (ie: Peter Gabriel put out Music & Rhythm, the WOMAD sampler which had a track from Holger Czukay which I loved, which twigged me to Can,, which hurled me into an entire lost continent of superlative noise that I'm still exploring, and so on)

BUT

in 1983 King Sunny Ade came to town with his genuine Juju music, and that changed everythings. This stuff was just so overwhelming rich and deep and expansive and complex ... and musical magnitudes beyond what my western heroes had been conjuring. Like here was your actual "lost continent", not lost at all, and urban, electrified, sophisticated ...

WOW

So when Graceland showed up a few years later to all manner of rapturous acclaim (and unit shifting success), I couldn't help be at least a little bemused. Obviously, it was better than most of the crap that was getting played on commercial radio, but I'd already given up on that realm, there being excellent alternatives at the time (in my town anyway -- two non-commercial radio stations dedicated to playing anything but what was all the rage with the "popular kids").

A friend comes to mind who worked at a cool indie record story whose main focus was jazz but they extrapolated nicely from there. Every year there was a folk fest at a park in their general neighbourhood, which was good for business, of course. But in 1986 (as he put it, exaggerating of course), "I'm pretty sure we sold more copies of Graceland that weekend than everything else put together. I was really starting to hate those people."

Anyway, TLDR = I have no idea really except maybe "World Music" is possibly the most foolish label ever attached to a "genre" of music. Seriously, how the fuck can you categorize ALL THE MUSIC IN THE WORLD THAT ISN'T WHAT A NARROW CHUNK OF WESTERNIZED HUMANITY GREW UP THINKING OF AS NORMAL as more or less the same thing ... and still think of yourself as a serious person?
posted by philip-random at 9:27 AM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

KingEdRa: That article is BRUTAL. I vaguely remember hearing about a kerfuffle surrounding Graceland. But that interview really seals the deal on my opinion of Simon. Fuck that guy.

Los Lobos has been a hard working band for many decades. Some of their stuff is sublime. I've seen them live in intimate venues three times. Twice, they put on a spellbinding show. The third time was for a New Years Eve performance, and at the very best... they phoned it in. Played a bunch of radio-friendly tunes (including La Bamba) and ended it with a pretty cool Auld Lang Syne. But the show was a real, real dud overall. Kind of killed my interest in them.
posted by SoberHighland at 10:17 AM on April 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

WOW indeed phillip-random

That is an amazing performance
posted by Windopaene at 11:13 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Awesome, why did I come back to read the comments.
posted by PussKillian at 11:40 AM on April 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

Pay Los Lobos, Paul. Do you believe in that?
posted by aiq at 12:00 PM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

I‘m hit and cold on Paul Simon and willing to give anything he writes a listen. Saw him in concert a few years ago with that 25 phone call band he had. Wow. More raw talent on one stage than I have ever seen perhaps.

And I love Graceland and it still stands up but yes to those who had supported Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Miriam Makeba and that whom scene for years before.

I’ll never forget Trevor Noah describing LBM as “Paul Simon’s Black friend.” Lol.
posted by salishsea at 3:30 PM on April 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Hard to believe I read this many comments and haven't seen a mention oft Chris Blackwell and Island Records on one end or of Ry Cooder on another. Point being, people just get way MF too wound up about who's bringing it to the front or taking credit instead of just freakin' loving the fact that people with insatiable curiosity and great ears have been sifting through the world's incomprehensibly vast musical output and interpreting, reshaping and bringing it to otherwise unknowing ears for as long as ears have been hearing the beats and rhythms of their travels or their travels have been bringing them to new ears.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 5:14 PM on April 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

OK, this is getting contentious, so this is my last comment. Want to say that there certainly were some colonialist attitudes or actions in Chris Blackwell's legacy... but Chris Blackwell essentially let the artists he "discovered" just record their own music and then sold and marketed their music as written and performed by [Artist] on the label. Chris Blackwell didn't sing over the top of Bob Marley and the Wailers and then call it a "Chris Blackwell Album written by Chris Blackwell featuring Bob Marley and the Wailers"

Apples and oranges.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:43 AM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's far from the most contentious discussion we've ever had about Paul Simon's work here. Just two I recall: You Can Call Me Al and love, death, spirituality, baseball

Trailer looks interesting. I'll definitely give a listen. It sounds far more like "art music" than prog, and sometimes I find that unfocused and wandery, but this could be really good.
posted by Miko at 7:05 AM on April 16, 2023

OK, if this is far from the most contentious discussion about Simon... I'll chime in again. Steve Berlin may have not used the best words to describe Simon at the time. I agree, "colossal failure" is not the best way to describe Simon back then. But Simon at that time just had a couple of records that bombed, and a much-hyped Broadway show that also bombed. Simon was looking like a guy who used to do great music... but was becoming a washed-up relic from the 1970s. There's a ton of examples of once-great musicians who fizzled out after a point. Simon looked like he very might well be one of them

I don't see why Los Lobos would lie about their experience. Again, they were a long time working band who were having a string of successes at the time. They got called in by their record label to help out Paul Simon and they got screwed. I thought the Metafilter ethos is to "believe people" when they call out bad behavior?

I don't hate Paul Simon, but calling the Los Lobos story bullshit based on some less than perfect wording is pretty thin gruel. And Los Lobos came from a hardscrabble background. The idea of Los Lobos successfully suing Paul Simon and his record label back then is a huge stretch. "They should have sued him" is not a defense of what Simon did.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:07 AM on April 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

a much-hyped Broadway show that also bombed

No. If you're thinking of Capeman, that was 1998, 12 years after Graceland.

I fully agree that Los Lobos somehow got alienated, but I find their argument that the song was "stolen" a super stretch. As evidence, the rest of their output. Nothing that good.
posted by Miko at 9:16 AM on April 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't doubt Berlin's story. I don't doubt that Mr. Simon was an asshole on occasion (more than one obviously). But when I think of that Graceland album, I don't think of Myth Of Fingerprints. It certainly didn't get a single release. So to use its ugly back story to write the whole thing off doesn't exactly work for me.

As for the rest of the cultural appropriation stuff (and other stuff) -- well that's obviously a discussion that needs to be had. For me, it generally gets down to the music. Is it good enough to bother to defend? Which makes Graceland difficult for me, because (as I already mentioned) it hardly bowled me over at the time. But on the other hand, viewing from a more historic context, it was actually quite a breath of fresh air given the vast quantities of corporate sludge that was miring up the radio airwaves of the time.

And for the record, it was very popular in South Africa.
posted by philip-random at 1:06 PM on April 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

I had no idea that Paul Simon was a MetaFilter No Go Topic, but I've learned!
posted by hippybear at 2:07 PM on April 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

I'm not keeping score, but I think the number of people who responded very favorably to this post outweighs the disenchantment expressed by others. I'd take PussKillian's comment (in first) and take the win.

I appreciate this post for similar reasons. Thanks man.
posted by elkevelvet at 10:26 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

From this thread I am learning that there are people who don't like Paul Simon?

Next you'll tell me that there are people who don't like The Princess Bride. How could that be?

I mean... Is he problematic? Sure, I guess, but who isn't? As problematic favs go, though, he's one of the tamest. I mean compared to my previous fancrushes Woody Allen or even Joss Whedon, he's a teddy bear. And his music makes me laugh and cry, sometimes both at once.

So I'm just gonna keep enjoying the awe he inspires in me and not worry too much about the fact that he might have acted like a jerk sometimes. I can't wait for the new album and am excited to eventually see the documentary from which this footage was apparently taken.
posted by OnceUponATime at 11:30 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]