PAUL SIMON: "THERE GOES RHYMIN' SIMON"

Original released on LP CBS 69035 (UK)

and Columbia 32280 (US), May 1973

A1. Kodachrome 3’35

A2. Tenderness 2’55

A3. Take Me to the Mardi Gras 3’30

A4. Something So Right 4’36

A5. One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor 3’48

B1. American Tune 3’47

B2. Was a Sunny Day 3’44

B3. Learn How to Fall 2’47

B4. St. Judy’s Comet 3’21

B5. Loves Me Like a Rock 3’40

All songs composed by Paul Simon

MUSICIANS:

Guitar: Paul Simon, Cornell Dupree, Pete Carr, David Spinozza, Alexander Gafa, Jerry Pucket

Electric Guitar: Jimmy Johnson, Pete Carr

Bass: David Hood, Gordon Edwards, Bob Cranshaw, Vernie Robbins

Acoustic Bass: Richard Davis

Electric Bass: Bob Cranshaw

Drums: Roger Hawkins, Rick Marotta, Grady Tate, James Straud

Percussion: Airto Moreira, Roger Hawkins

Keyboards: Barry Beckett, Bobby James

Piano: Paul Griffin, Bobby Scott, Barry Beckett

Organ: Carson Witsett

Vocal Group: The Dixie Hummingbirds

Vocal Duo: Maggie & Terre Roche

Horns: The Onward Brass Band

Strings arranged by Del Newman

Produced by Paul Simon

Cover designed by Milton Glaser

«And high up above

my eyes could clearly see

the Statue of Liberty

sailing away to sea.

And I dreamed I was flying»

Paul Simon’s “There Goes Rhymin' Simon” is the logical step in Paul Simon's solo recording career, and it is a dazzlingly surefooted one. Despite its many light, humorous moments, the core theme of his first album, Paul Simon, was depressing: fear of death, its focal point a sung poem, "Everything Put Together Falls Apart," that while worthy of comparison with the best work of John Berryman, could hardly be called "easy listening." Since the album dealt with anxiety, it communicated anxiety and was difficult to accept as entertainment. This isn't true of “Rhymin' Simon”. Like its predecessor, it is a fully realized work of art, of genius in fact, but one that is also endlessly listenable on every level. Simon has never sounded so assured vocally. He demonstrates in several places pyrotechnical skills that approach Harry Nilsson's (in embellishment of ballad phrases) and John Lennon's (in letting it all hang out), though for the most part, Simon's deliveries are straight - restrained and supple, bowing as they should to the material, which is of the very highest order.

“Rhymin' Simon” shows, once and for all, that Simon is now the consummate master of the contemporary narrative song - one of a very few practicing singer/songwriters able to impart wisdom as much by implication as by direct statement. Here, even more than in the first album, Simon successfully communicates the deepest kinds of love without ever becoming rhetorical or overly sentimental. The chief factor in his remarkable growth since Simon and Garfunkel days has been the development of a gentle wry humor that is objective, even fatalistic, though never bitter. Thematically, “Rhymin' Simon” represents a sweeping outward gesture from the introspection of the first album. Simon has triumphantly relocated his sensibility in the general scheme of things: as a musician, as a poet of the American tragedy, and most importantly as a family man. “Rhymin' Simon” celebrates, above all, familial bonds, which are seen as an antidote, to psychic disintegration in a terminally diseased society. As an expression of one man's credo, therefore, it is a profoundly affirmative action. The chief new musical element Simon has chosen to work with - one he has hitherto eschewed - is black music: R&B and gospel motifs are incorporated brilliantly both in Simon's melodic writing and in the sparkling textures of the album's ten cuts, more than half recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. 

The opener is "Kodachrome," a streamlined pop-rock production that uses the image of color photography as a metaphor for imaginative vitality. The song opens with a couple of Simon's most pungent lines: «When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school / It's a wonder I can think at all.» Next is "Tenderness," a late-Fifties-styled doo-wop ballad in which Simon tells a friend: «You don't have to lie to me / Just give me some tenderness beneath your honesty.» In addition to boasting one of Simon's loveliest vocals, "Tenderness" has a nicely subdued horn arrangement by Allen Toussaint and a soulful R&B backups by a gospel group, the Dixie Hummingbirds. "Take Me to the Mardi Gras" is sheer delight - a Latin-flavored evocation of abandon in New Orleans that fades out in joyous Dixieland music by the Onward Brass Band. This sensuous flight of fancy is followed by "Something So Right," Simon's love song to his wife in which he tells her he can hardly believe his present happiness, since he is by nature a pessimist. A ballad that begins in an offhand, almost conversational tone, it builds slowly into a declaration of great eloquence. Side one closes with a witty, R&B piece of homespun city philosophy, "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor."

"American Tune," which opens side two is the album's pivotal moment. A flowing ballad with the chordal structure of an American hymm-tune, its magnificent lyrics give us Simon's definitive reflection on the American Dream. Writing from a state of exhaustion in England (Paul Samwell-Smith co-produced the cut in London, and Del Newman provided the stately string arrangement), Simon sees the country as a nation of «battered souls», but still «home,» and the American Dream either «shattered» or «driven to its knees.» In an apocalyptic reverie, he equates his own death with the death of America and sees «the Statue of Liberty sailin' away to sea.» The song, which has instrumental touches that deliberately recall Simon and Garfunkel's "America," is the single greatest thing Simon has written, a classic by any standard.

"Was a Sunny Day" reshuffles images from "Kodachrome," treating them playfully in a semi-reggae setting. A «high-school queen with nothing really left to lose» makes love with a sailor whom she calls «Speedo but his Christian name was Mr. Earl.» "Learn How to Fall" has an opening melodic phrase similar to that of Bette Midler's now-famous intro, "Friends," but a different message: «You've got to learn how to fall / before you learn to fly.» The album's last two cuts, "St. Judy's Comet" and "Loves Me Like a Rock," complete the thematic cycle of songs avowing familial devotion. In the exquisitely tender acoustic lullaby, "St. Judy's Comet," Simon enters into the imaginative life of his son, who wants to stay up late to watch for the mythical comet of the title. Simon concludes: «'Cause if I can't sing my boy to sleep / well it makes your famous daddy / Look so dumb.» In "Loves Me Like a Rock," a hand-clapping, call-and-response gospel anthem with the Dixie Hummingbirds providing the response, Simon resurrects his own childhood relationship with his mother. 

Since the anxiety-laded "Mother and Child Reunion" was the opening cut on the first Simon album, it is fitting that this incredibly powerful song of love and gratitude, reminiscent in spirit of "When The Saints," should close the second. “Rhymin' Simon'” is a rich and moving song cycle, one in which each cut reflects on every other to create an ever-widening series of refractions. Viewed in the light of the first album, Simon seems ultimately to be saying that acceptance of death is only possible through our ability to honor our human ties, especially those formed within the family structure. Only through the mutual affirmation of love can we redeem our imaginative powers from despair and be able to live with the breakdown of the wider "family" structure that is the American homeland without ourselves breaking down. (Stephen Holden, Rolling Stone 1973, June 21)

DONOVAN ~ ANTHOLOGY 5

TIMES TO REMEMBER ~ VOLUME 45

TIMES TO REMEMBER ~ VOLUME 44

Lazy trip to heaven on the wings of your love

Original Released on LP Asylum 5061 

(US 1973, March 6)

Singer / songwriter / pianist Tom Waits is more than a chip off the Randy Newman block. Though he sounds like a boozier, earthier version of same and delights in rummaging through the attics of nostalgia, the persona that emerges from this remarkable debut album is Waits' own, at once sardonic, vulnerable and emotionally charged. His voice is self-mocking, bordering on self-pity, and most of his songs could be described as all-purpose lounge music... a style that evokes an aura of crushed cigarettes in seedy bars and Sinatra singing "One for My Baby." Though it would sound like an unpromising idiom in which to work, what Waits does with it is very daring and almost entirely successful. In both his songs and in his lazy, strolling piano playing, he parodies the lounge music sub-genre so perfectly that we wonder if he's putting us on or if he's for real, and it is his especial triumph that in the end he has it both ways: He is able to deliver whole both the truth and the sham of the music. (Stephen Holden in Rolling Stone)

Tom Waits' debut album is a minor-key masterpiece filled with songs of late-night loneliness. Within the apparently narrow range of the cocktail bar pianistics and muttered vocals, Waits and producer Jerry Yester manage a surprisingly broad collection of styles, from the jazzy "Virginia Avenue" to the up-tempo funk of "Ice Cream Man" and from the acoustic guitar folkiness of "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You" to the saloon song "Midnight Lullaby," which would have been a perfect addition to the repertoires of Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett. Waits' entire musical approach is stylized, of course, and at times derivative - "Lonely" borrows a little too much from Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" - and his lovelorn lyrics can be sentimental without being penetrating. But he also has a gift for gently rolling pop melodies, and he can come up with striking, original scenarios, as on the best songs, "Ol' 55" and "Martha," which Yester discreetly augments with strings. "Closing Time" announces the arrival of a talented songwriter whose self-conscious melancholy can be surprisingly moving. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

WIKIPEDIA

BLACK SABBATH: "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"

Original released on LP WWA 005

(UK 1973, December 1)

With 1973's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", heavy metal godfathers Black Sabbath made a concerted effort to prove their remaining critics wrong by raising their creative stakes and dispensing unprecedented attention to the album's production standards, arrangements, and even the cover artwork. As a result, bold new efforts like the timeless title track, "A National Acrobat," and "Killing Yourself to Live" positively glistened with a newfound level of finesse and maturity, while remaining largely faithful, aesthetically speaking, to the band's signature compositional style. In fact, their sheer songwriting excellence may even have helped to ease the transition for suspicious older fans left yearning for the rough-hewn, brute strength that had made recent triumphs like "Master of Reality" and "Vol. 4" (really, all their previous albums) such undeniable forces of nature. But thanks to "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"'s nearly flawless execution, even a more adventurous experiment like the string-laden "Spiral Architect," with its tasteful background orchestration, managed to sound surprisingly natural, and in the dreamy instrumental "Fluff," Tony Iommi scored his first truly memorable solo piece. If anything, only the group's at times heavy-handed adoption of synthesizers met with inconsistent consequences, with erstwhile Yes keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman bringing only good things to the memorable "Sabbra Cadabra" (who know he was such a great boogie-woogie pianist?), while the robotically dull "Who Are You" definitely suffered from synthesizer novelty overkill. All things considered, though, "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" was arguably Black Sabbath's fifth masterpiece in four years, and remains an essential item in any heavy metal collection. (Eduardo Rivadavia in AllMusic)

ESPERANTO Debut Album

Original released on LP A&M AMLH 68175

(UK, 1973)

DEEP PURPLE: "Who Do You Think We Are"

Original released on LP Purple TPSA 7508

(UK, February 1973)

Deep Purple had kicked off the '70s with a new lineup and a string of brilliant albums that quickly established them (along with fellow British giants Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath) as a major force in the popularization of hard rock and heavy metal. All the while, their reputation as one of the decade's fiercest live units complemented this body of work and earned them almost instant legendary status. But with 1973's disappointing "Who Do We Think We Are" - the fourth and final studio outing by the original run of Purple's classic Mark II lineup - all the fire and inspiration that had made the previous year's "Machine Head" their greatest triumph mysteriously vanished from sight. Vastly inferior to all three of its famous predecessors, the album revealed an exhausted band clearly splintering at the seams. Except for opener "Woman From Tokyo," which hinted at glories past with its signature Ritchie Blackmore riff, the album's remaining cuts are wildly inconsistent and find the band simply going through the motions. In fact, many of these don't so much resemble songs as loose jam sessions quickly thrown together in the studio with varying degrees of enthusiasm. "Mary Long" and "Super Trouper" are prime examples, featuring generic solos from Blackmore and organist Jon Lord, and uncharacteristically inane lyrics from soon-to-be former singer Ian Gillan. With its start-stop rhythm and Gillan's fine scat singing, the energetic "Rat Bat Blue" is a memorable exception to the rule, but the yawn-inducing blues of "Place in the Line" and the gospel mediocrity of "Our Lady" bring the album to a close with a whimper rather than a shout. [A painfully revealing display of a legendary band grinding to a halt, "Who Do We Think We Are" was reissued in 2000 with the added incentive of seven bonus tracks and new liner notes by bassist Roger Glover]. (Eduardo Rivadavia in AllMusic)

KING CRIMSON: "Lark's Tongues In Aspic"

Original released on LP Island ILPS 9230

(UK 1973, March 23)

King Crimson reborn yet again - the then-newly configured band makes its debut with a violin (courtesy of David Cross) sharing center stage with Robert Fripp's guitars and his Mellotron, which is pushed into the background. The music is the most experimental of Fripp's career up to this time - though some of it actually dated (in embryonic form) back to the tail-end of the Boz Burrell-Ian Wallace-Mel Collins lineup. And John Wetton was the group's strongest singer/bassist since Greg Lake's departure three years earlier. What's more, this lineup quickly established itself as a powerful performing unit, working in a more purely experimental, less jazz-oriented vein than its immediate predecessor. "Outer Limits music" was how one reviewer referred to it, mixing Cross' demonic fiddling with shrieking electronics, Bill Bruford's astounding dexterity at the drum kit, Jamie Muir's melodic and usually understated percussion, Wetton's thundering yet melodic bass, and Fripp's guitar, which generated sounds ranging from traditional classical and soft pop-jazz licks to hair-curling electric flourishes. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

SANDY DENNY & THE STRAWBS

Original released on LP Hallmark SHM 813

(UK, 1973 - recorded July 1967)

In 1967, folksinger Dave Cousins heard a young woman named Sandy Denny singing at a club in London, and was so impressed with her voice that he immediately invited her to join his group, the Strawbs. Before the year was out, Sandy & the Strawbs landed a deal with a small label based in Denmark and recorded an album, though a few months after it was released, Denny parted ways with the Strawbs and joined Fairport Convention, replacing founding vocalist Judy Dyble. Denny's short tenure with the Strawbs made their album together, "All Our Own Work", something of an orphan in both of their catalogs, but it's a fine record that shows both Denny and Cousins to their advantage. While Cousins was the principal songwriter on "All Our Own Work", Denny recorded her signature tune, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes," for the first time on these sessions, and it sounds like an immediate classic, while Denny's vocals, strong, clear, and wise, leave no doubt she was already a talent to be reckoned with, both as a lead singer and harmonizing with her bandmates. And if the Strawbs are somewhat outclassed by Denny on this album, here Cousins is a more than capable singer, a splendid guitarist, and a strong tunesmith who offers up gems like "I've Been My Own Worst Friend," "Tell Me What You See in Me," and "Two Weeks Last Summer." (Cousins' bandmates Tony Hooper and Ron Chesterman also shine on the instrumental features.) Both Denny and the Strawbs would move on to bigger and more ambitious projects in the years that followed, but "All Our Own Work" is a lovely souvenir of their short-lived collaboration that shows they made the most of their time together. (Mark Deming in AllMusic)