Wednesday, May 13, 2009

"All I need is one mic."


Since I'm posting this, you gotta know this will have nothing to do with Nas. Rather, I'm referring to legendary songbird Paul Simon's debut LP The Paul Simon Songbook. The Songbook was recorded using only one mic. These are what most musicians today would call mere demo-tracks, released as a full length LP with the single "I am a Rock."

After "The Sounds of Silence" and subsequently The Graduate blew up, most of these songs were eventually re-recorded by Simon with that fuckface Art Garfunkel. (Note: that was a joke. I actually like Art and am fond of his work as an actor for Mike Nichols in both Catch 22 and Carnal Knowledge with a sexy Murphy Brown and creepy Jack Nicholson.)

This album is cool for its simplicity. Just a man and his guitar. On a few of the tunes, you could hear Paul Simon (who prior to this was going by the pseudonym Paul Kane <--can't imagine why that didn't catch on) tapping his foot in time to the tune.

A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission) is one of my favorite songs ever. The song is Simon's tribute to/critique/satire of Bob "The Bard" Dylan. It's also, er...kind of a rap song, which brings us full circle to Mr. Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones himself.

Go forth and download.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

How does one submit music to your blog?

Brandon said...

Hit me up at bmlarson@gmail.com

Gandolf_The_Gr8 said...

This blog is unreal. Such a sick and eclectic music collection. Plus the availability of full albums gives a chance to actually get to know the artist more than 1 or 2 songs encountered on pandora or last.fm. Thanks. Props, word up, keep not frontin' and stuff.

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!

Anonymous said...

hello


just signed up and wanted to say hello while I read through the posts


hopefully this is just what im looking for looks like i have a lot to read.