Friday, May 20, 2005
More non-Belinda news, with a slight Belinda allusion at the end. Nothing about the budget vote, though.
So I'm sitting here in the St. Albert Public Library, where I was to meet a tutoring victim who doesn't seem to have shown up. This being the case, I decide to browse their DVD section where what should I find but Mike Nichols' Catch-22, based on Joseph Heller's novel of the same name which, as those of you who have talked literature with me for more than two and a half seconds already know, is one of the finest books ever written.
This find is exciting partly because I, for reasons unexplained, still haven't seen the movie. It's also exciting, though, because it reminds me that I've been meaning to post about the back-story to Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" which was, until recently, one of the duo's most underrated songs (its inclusion on the Garden State soundtrack has helped it get its due).
Off the 1970 "Bridge Over Troubled Water" album (whose title track remains, by far, the most overrated Simon & Garfunkel song of all time), the pair's 1970 studio finale, "The Only Living Boy in New York" is, like all S&G songs, written by Paul Simon. You can learn this from reading the album notes. What you cannot learn from reading the album notes is that it was written to Art Garfunkel.
See, before Simon & Garfunkel were Simon & Garfunkel they were Tom & Jerry, a name they adopted because they feared anti-Semitism would hurt record sales. Simon was "Jerry Landis" (Landis was his then-girlfriend's last name) while Garfunkel was "Tom Graph" (Garfunkel had a propensity for employing graphs to analyze music charts). Together they achieved modest success despite not being, you know, very good (sample lyric, from "Hey Schoolgirl", Tom and Jerry's biggest hit: "Hey schoolgirl in the second row/The teacher's looking over so I got to whisper way down low/to say "Hoo-watcha-looka-cha, let's meet/after school at three."").
After they became Simon & Garfunkel (in 1964), one of their greatest accomplishments was being selected to do the soundtrack for Mike Nichols' The Graduate (there's a mildly amusing story there about how the working title of "Mrs. Robinson" was "Mrs. Roosevelt" until Mike Nichols found out, but I won't go into it here) (for something much more amusing click here). Nichols became relatively good friends with the two men, and when he was making Catch-22 he casted both of them in it - Simon as Dunbar and Garfunkel as Nately.
Unfortunately, the part of Dunbar was cut, meaning that when shooting began (in Mexico) it was without Simon who stayed behind in New York. Simon came to feel that Garfunkel was more interested in being a movie star than a musician, and this was one of many (many many) factors in their break up.
"The Only Living Boy in New York" was a song of reconciliation:
(Two more tracks off of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" - "Song for the Asking" and "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright" - are also blatantly about the disintegration of Simon & Garfunkel. In the latter, on which Garfunkel was the lead singer, Simon addresses the former architect wannabe Garfunkel as Frank Lloyd Wright. In the end, as Garfunkel repeats "So long. . . so long. . . so long" Simon can be heard chiming in with "So long already, Artie!")
Okay, that's it for my slavish fan posting for now. As promised in the title:
So I was persuing the Edmonton Journal today, and what headline should I find? "Stronach, McKay avoid eye contact". And this, I hasten to add, is Edmonton's *higher* quality daily.
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So I'm sitting here in the St. Albert Public Library, where I was to meet a tutoring victim who doesn't seem to have shown up. This being the case, I decide to browse their DVD section where what should I find but Mike Nichols' Catch-22, based on Joseph Heller's novel of the same name which, as those of you who have talked literature with me for more than two and a half seconds already know, is one of the finest books ever written.
This find is exciting partly because I, for reasons unexplained, still haven't seen the movie. It's also exciting, though, because it reminds me that I've been meaning to post about the back-story to Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" which was, until recently, one of the duo's most underrated songs (its inclusion on the Garden State soundtrack has helped it get its due).
Off the 1970 "Bridge Over Troubled Water" album (whose title track remains, by far, the most overrated Simon & Garfunkel song of all time), the pair's 1970 studio finale, "The Only Living Boy in New York" is, like all S&G songs, written by Paul Simon. You can learn this from reading the album notes. What you cannot learn from reading the album notes is that it was written to Art Garfunkel.
See, before Simon & Garfunkel were Simon & Garfunkel they were Tom & Jerry, a name they adopted because they feared anti-Semitism would hurt record sales. Simon was "Jerry Landis" (Landis was his then-girlfriend's last name) while Garfunkel was "Tom Graph" (Garfunkel had a propensity for employing graphs to analyze music charts). Together they achieved modest success despite not being, you know, very good (sample lyric, from "Hey Schoolgirl", Tom and Jerry's biggest hit: "Hey schoolgirl in the second row/The teacher's looking over so I got to whisper way down low/to say "Hoo-watcha-looka-cha, let's meet/after school at three."").
After they became Simon & Garfunkel (in 1964), one of their greatest accomplishments was being selected to do the soundtrack for Mike Nichols' The Graduate (there's a mildly amusing story there about how the working title of "Mrs. Robinson" was "Mrs. Roosevelt" until Mike Nichols found out, but I won't go into it here) (for something much more amusing click here). Nichols became relatively good friends with the two men, and when he was making Catch-22 he casted both of them in it - Simon as Dunbar and Garfunkel as Nately.
Unfortunately, the part of Dunbar was cut, meaning that when shooting began (in Mexico) it was without Simon who stayed behind in New York. Simon came to feel that Garfunkel was more interested in being a movie star than a musician, and this was one of many (many many) factors in their break up.
"The Only Living Boy in New York" was a song of reconciliation:
Tom, get your plane right on time
I know your part'll go fine
Fly down to Mexico
Da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da and here I am
The only living boy in New York
[...]
Tom, get your plane right on time
I know that you've been eager to fly now
Hey let your honesty shine, shine, shine now
Da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da
Like it shines on me
The only living boy in New York
(Two more tracks off of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" - "Song for the Asking" and "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright" - are also blatantly about the disintegration of Simon & Garfunkel. In the latter, on which Garfunkel was the lead singer, Simon addresses the former architect wannabe Garfunkel as Frank Lloyd Wright. In the end, as Garfunkel repeats "So long. . . so long. . . so long" Simon can be heard chiming in with "So long already, Artie!")
Okay, that's it for my slavish fan posting for now. As promised in the title:
So I was persuing the Edmonton Journal today, and what headline should I find? "Stronach, McKay avoid eye contact". And this, I hasten to add, is Edmonton's *higher* quality daily.
