Album: Bookends
Year: 1966

. . .

A Hazy Shade of Winter was originally recorded for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album, but at some point, they decided to instead release it as a single, perhaps figuring that a more rock-and-roll oriented song would do better than their previous single, the chamber-pop The Dangling Conversation, which was their first single not to go top 5, stalling out at a (relatively) dismal 25.

And so, based upon a cooly dynamic Paul Simon guitar riff and a relentless double-time drum part by Hal Blaine which either he or Art Garfunkel augmented by stealing the tink-tink-tink three-beat tambourine offbeat from (I Cant Get No) Satisfaction giving the whole thing the satisfying thwacka-thwacka-tink-tink-tink, thwacka-thwacka-tink-tink-tink which drove the earlier song.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2214: Simon Garfunkel A Hazy Shade of Winter

Album: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
Year: 1967

. . .

How do you deal with a problem such as Bob Dylan?

Thats gotta be a question that all of the other major 60s songwriters had to be asking themselves as he put out one mindblowing album after another in the mid-1960s. Some, like Brian Wilson Pete Townshend, totally ignored him. Others, like Lou Reed and Neil Young even Ray Davies, leaned into the freedom he suddenly provided.

And the Beatles and Stones stole from him a bit and then went on to do their own things.

And Paul Simon? Perhaps because Dylan might have been one of the Greenwich Village folkies who made fun of Simon Garfunkel in the early days, he wrote one of the biggest, broadest Dylan parodies ever recorded, 1967s A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamarad into Submission), which starts the satire with the title and never lets up.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2213: Simon Garfunkel A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamarad into Submission)

Album: Parsley, Sage, Rosmary Thyme
Year: 1967

. . .

Yes, I know. You totally and utterly hate this piece of hippie-dippie bullshit. Hell, even Paul fucking Simon hates this piece of hippie-dippie bullshit, one of the cheesiest songs ever written.

And now Ive put it in your head. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2212: Simon Garfunkel The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin Groovy)

Album: The Sounds of Silence
Year: 1966

. . .

As the opening track of Paul Simons solo debut, the U.K.-only The Paul Simon Songbook, is actually more aggressive than the version that closes The Sounds of Silence, as Simon really lays in to the acoustic guitar as the song moves forward.

Both versions though, start with the same acoustic guitar flare as Simon sets the scene for this introverts anthem: A winters day / In a deep dark December, before the Wrecking Crew kicks in, led by the great Hal Blaine on drums.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2211: Simon Garfunkel I Am A Rock

Album: The Sounds of Silence
Year: 1965

. . .

OK, so the roots of this go back to 1961, when Bob Dylan recorded House of The Rising Sun for his debut album using an arrangement that he basically stole from fellow folkie Dave Van Ronk, who had been playing it since the 50s which was heard by The Animals, who decided to turn it into an electric rock song.

Said electric rock song was a massive hit in 1964, inspiring Dylans meddling producer, Tom Wilson, to dig up some musicians and dub them over an outtake that Dylan had recorded in 1961. This version didnt pass muster, and didnt get released until the mid-1990s. And that on an interactive CD-ROM. (Of course, this wasnt even the first attempt at electric Dylan, as his first single, Mixed-Up Confusion, was an electric rock song recorded and issued at the end of 1962, and promptly swept under the rug in the wake of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan. But I digress.)

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2210: Simon Garfunkel The Sound of Silence

Demo, 1990

. . .

Its a truism that bad times make for great art. That you can only truly create great art when everything else about your life is shit.

This is a truism that I dont necessarily believe, mostly because I hate putting any kind of limitations on the circumstances under which your muse kicks into overdrive. That said, it was certainly the case that Better Than Nowhere, one of the greatest songs to come out of my Fresno scene, was inspired by hard times.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2209: Similar Animals Better Than Nowhere

Demo, 1990

As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I wrote a pocket history of Sedan Delivery, back in the earliest phase of the band, we played many of our shows with a pair of other like-minded Fresno bands: Town Cryers and Similar Animals.

Town Cryers made an album called In The Cool Part of Town, about which Ill be writing when I get there, but the only Similar Animals music Ive ever had were couple of demos and a live show recorded at the Olympic Tavern on June 1, 1990. At that point, Sedan Delivery was on hiatus while Doc was out on tour with the Town Cryers, and Joseph had joined Similar Animals as their bassist.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2208: Similar Animals Letters and Magazines

Album: About Her Steps
Year: 1985

. . .

This absolutely stellar KFSR classic was the brainchild of one Walter Salas-Humara, who both under the name the Silos and not has released tons of albums since, most of which Ive missed, though Ive caught a couple here and there.

That said, Ive never heard any of his songs I loved more than Start The Clock, which somehow combines three different incarnations of the Velvet Underground into a single tune.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2207: The Silos Start The Clock

Album: Ágætis byrjun
Year: 1999

. . .

Sigur Rós are from Iceland, and unlike so many European exports, they didnt deign to so something so vulgar as to sing in English. At least not until 2008, and in fact for at least one album, 2002s ( ), they made up their own language, which is admirable, but probably more work than is strictly necessary.

All of these things are gating factors normally for me, but Svefn-g-englar is such a piece of atmospheric beauty that I almost didnt want to go to Genius or Wikipedia and spoil myself by learning too much about it.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2206: Sigur Rós Svefn-g-englar

Album: Witchdoctor
Year: 1989

. . .

Its an article of faith for me that every late-80s local scene had at least one band that woulda shoulda coulda made it big, had only bad luck or record company problems not intervened.

And for Tuscon, Arizona, that band was the Sidewinders, who featured the often-noisy twin-guitar onslaught of Rich Hopkins and David Slutes, over which Slutes would often tell fables about the heat and the desert in his deep baritone.

[Read more] about Certain Songs #2205: Sidewinders Witchdoctor