Song, by Toad

I was talking a friend the other night and I think I may have found the only other person in the world who likes this album.  After the impact made by Graceland, Paul Simon’s career seemed to come to an abrupt halt in rather spectacular fashion when it ran into the brick wall of Rhythm of the Saints.  Maybe he slightly over-egged the pudding, maybe he wasn’t disciplined enough after the success of Graceland, maybe he had too many pre-conceived notions of what he wanted to achieve… ach whatever the reason, the album just didn’t click with the public, and that was it from Paul Simon for years.

Rhythm of the Saints didn’t really click with me either, I have to confess, so by the time Songs From the Capeman was released in 1997 I will admit approaching it with some trepidation.  It barely made a scratch on the public consciousness, but I actually think this is a great album.

Simon works a lot in an area which is politically sensitive, in that he is often more obviously open to the accusations of cultural colonialism which dog Vampire Weekend.  For all the Lion King charicatures of their last album irritated the shit out of me, I think Vampire Weekend tend to draw their influences not from the cultures from which they are accused of pilfering, but from sources once and twice removed, which makes that accusation a little harder to seriously level at the band.  Paul Simon, on the other hand, seems to go a lot closer to the source, which if anything is also closer to what could conceivably be described as actual exploitation.

Am I accusing Paul Simon of being exploitative, then?  Well, no I’m not.  I am not Puerto Rican, and know so little about the place that it’s really not my accusation to make anyway.  And besides Simon does, at least from my superficial perspective, seem to genuinely immerse himself in the culture he is working with, and try and approach his work from the perspective of genuine understanding.  I could be totally wrong about that, of course.

This album, for example, far from being a tourists’ eye view of some ethnic culture or other, was actually written for a Broadway musical* specifically about the life of Salvador Agron, who was sentenced to death for the murder of two teenagers in a gang fight in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, in 1959.  So as well as being a strong and deliberate political statement about racial divides and class culture in the States (as well as many other things), it does seem to me to be a genuinely sensitive attempt to understand, rather than simply mimick.  As I said, though, that’s really not my place to say.  You can read a little more about it, starting with those Wikipedia links, and then judge for yourself if you are so inclined.

So political bollocks aside, is it any good?  Well of course, I think so or I wouldn’t be writing this.  There are, admittedly a couple of songs which I find saccharine to the point of physical pain – I Was Born in Puerto Rico springs to mind, and I really squirm at Time is an Ocean – but there’s a shitload of great stuff on here.

The two songs downloadable below, Bernadette, Satin Summer Nights, Trailways Bus, Quality, Killer Wants to Go to College – all of them have a laid back, uninsistent sort of vibe and a nice rhythm.  A lot also include the kind of male-female duets which made Calexico’s Roka so incredible.  I suppose I’d say that there’s just a lot of warmth about this album.  It’s written with sympathy, but doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the situation it describes.  There’s no obvious hit, and it’s all perhaps a bit sweary and generally a bit downbeat for radio, so maybe that contributed to it never really capturing the public imagination, but in general I think this is a really underrated record.

Paul Simon – Adios Hermanos

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Paul Simon – Vampires

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*Yeah, because Broadway’s never exploitative, superficial or sensationalist, right?  Oh.

I have pretty much had to burrow backwards in time to discover where this song came from, but find it I think I finally have.

The last time I ever bought a Counting Crows records was Hard Candy, and I was sufficiently underwhelmed not to bother with them again.  I was already rather losing interest by that point anyway, but two brilliant singles changed my mind.  Not the singles themselves, mind you, but their quite splendid b-sides.  Blues Run the Game was one of those and it never occurred to me that it was anything other than a somewhat unfortunately abandoned moment of Crows genius.

As I have a habit of doing with music I love, I put it on a CD for my folks and of course they loved it too.  However, some months later my Dad came back to me and said ‘Did you know that was originally a Simon & Garfunkel song?  I just heard their version of it – it’s brilliant as well.’  Again, I never really questioned this either, given Simon & Garfunkel were pretty great songwriters whether or not you like their soft-focus hippy delivery, which I do most of the time.  And it would make sense that Adam Duritz & Co. would be exploring the back catalogue of legendary American songwriters on their b-sides.

Anyhow, yesterday it turned out that this still wasn’t the whole story.  Before striking folk gold as half of Simon & Garfunkel Paul Simon spent some time in the burgeoning English early 60s folk scene where he happened to produce the only complete album by another American refugee, the extremely troubled Jackson C. Frank.  I was reading this post at Motel de Moka and I discovered that, following a fire in his school classroom which killed several classmates, Frank was able to use the insurance money to travel to England, which resulted in his collaboration with Simon.  Apparently he is still well known in folkie circles, although I’d never heard of him, but the likes of Bert Jansch and Nick Drake rated him very, very highly apparently.  To read the whole story go to Motel de Moka – I’d really recommend it.  It’s a rather sad tale of a troubled artist whose problems ultimately overwhelmed his artistic output, and apart from a few abortive session tracks in 1975 he only ever released a single, self-titled album.

So this post is the result of one long, obtuse train of musical thought that started for the music back in 1964 and for myself back in about 2001.  Given the fact that for so many people the work of Jackson C. Frank has largely vanished into the obscurity of time I somehow feel that I am performing some sacred act of reverence here in passing it on to a new audience to hear.  Enjoy the songs.

Counting Crows – Blues Run the Game
Simon & Garfunkel – Blues Run the Game
Jackson C. Frank – Blues Run the Game
Jackson C. Frank – Marlene