Evolution of a song: a witty number from a minor musical becomes, in the hands of The Flamingos, one of the greatest singles of all time – romantic, courtly, enchanting, and most of all awestruck by love. They took the well-turned smooshiness of the lyrics and made them live. It’s their magical version that turned up in American Graffiti (and later Buffy) – but it isn’t their version that got to #1 here (in fact it wasn’t a hit here at all).
The spectral presence of the Flamingos shouldn’t prejudice me against Art’s version, but it does, a little, because Garfunkel takes their reading and pushes it slightly too far. The production, swaddling the song in soft seventies cottonwool, brings the sentiment to life – Art only has eyes for you because nothing else is getting through this big fuzzy oven glove of sound. It’s like a cuddlier “I’m Not In Love” – he is in love, or so he tells us at least: it’s hard to get much of a feeling for this “you” in amongst all the plushness.
That’s not to say I dislike it – it’s a hard song to screw up, and Garfunkel obviously adores it as much as anyone does. His voice is, as usual, deceptively drippy, softly-spoken but always firmly in charge of things, even when those ridiculous (but kind of gorgeous) backing cherubim come in. I also really like the sanctified bedroom vibe of 70s ‘quiet storm’ style production, which this reminds me of – but ultimately it sacrifices the crisp shock of love that the Flamingos captured so well, and can’t quite get out from under of their shadow.
Score: 6
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It’s a fine song, well performed by a singer with a better than nice voice, and always a pleasure to hear. I don’t think this version is the best ever (I can’t recall the Flamingos version but as I have seen American Grafitti I’ve obviously heard of it. I think this is the first and last manifestation of the grand songwriting team of Harry Warren and Al Dubin in the Popular project but that shouldn’t diminish them, and as a devotee of the pre-war musical I’m hardly going to do so.
At this point I’m going to recklessly open a can of worms and say that I have two versions of the song in the mix at the moment. The other, belonging closer to the natural period of the song, is by Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson. Hutch was a popular radio performer in the 1930s and had there been a chart in those days he might well have had a number one. In which case the Grenada-born Hutchinson might well have been the first black act to top the charts, although his radio listeners might well not have been aware of this because unlike, say, the Ink Spots he never made a feature of his blackness.
I first became aware that this was rising up the charts, believe it or not, on Radio 4. Benny Green was talking about it in his slot on Stop The Week with Robert Robinson. Which probably shows how seriously I was taking my imminent entry into the “grown up” world that I had yet to discover never really existed.
Meanwhile, though this was a number one not destined to set the world alight exactly, things were happening in other parts of the forest during its brief reign at the top which would mark a profound shift. In Spain, Francisco Franco stood down from power and thus the curtain finally came down on fascism in Europe, thirty years after the formal end of the Second World War. And, almost unremarked at the time, the body of Leeds prostitute Wilma McCann was found in a playing field and thus began a chain of events which would cast a dark shadow over northern England, and have a profound effect on its culture for the next six years.
Thanks, Rosie. I was about to jump on and complain about the popism-bordering-on-rockism that could claim the Flamingos as the undying version; it was a well-beloved standard with many versions both graceful and kicky long before, and long after, they flattened it out and steroided it up for the doo-wop market. The Flamingos were riding on the coattails of the song, not the other way round.
Sorry. As a (younger) American, I bristle at the revisionism implicit in the boomer-centric American Graffitis of the world, which suggest that pop music only started in 1956 because that’s as far back as George Lucas can remember. But what’s far worse is when people believe it.
Yes, this is a throwback in the sense that it’s a song that exists independently of the performance. These were more common in the charts in the 1950s which is why there were some many cases of the same song in the charts in different versions at the same time, sometimes multiple versions getting to number one. The great pop watershed was crossed in the early 60s, possibly in 63 with the coming of the Beatles, maybe earlier under the influence of the likes of Joe Meek, when the performance became greater than the song.
Meanwhile, the Flamingos are no more the definitive version of this than the Marcels’ Blue Moon is definitive of that. (It’s a fine version but give me Billie Holiday every time!)
Without wishing to disturb any bunnies, we have a couple of prime examples coming up that stand in perfect contrast to this in being inseparable from the performance – it’s almost impossible to imagine a serious cover version.
I don’t think I have seen American Graffiti – I mentioned it because Art’s version is close enough to that reading that I assumed the film, and that version, provided the impetus for this recording. I heard the Flamingos’ version on a doo-wop CD I got in the late 90s.
And yes, I’ve heard a bunch of other versions – enough to feel pretty sure that on this occasion at least Lucas (and the boomers!) got it right: I’ve not heard any that better the Flamingos – though of course I’d love some recommendations!
ok, but “turning it into a great single” doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a great SONG before the turn — i think there’s a perfectly defensible semi-non-“ist” claim to be made here, abt the flamingos as a portal for this song from the sheetmusic’n’jazz’showtunes era (when it was one among many many songs successful as multi-user vehicles: multi-use being the meaning of a song’s success in that era) into the rock-on-45 era (when a song and the act that “made” it are forever welded together*): it’s not THAT common a journey and the route is through a terrain-of-significant-oblivion* (of course some other version may have been this portal)
*ie the sutherland brothers and quiver DIDN”T “make” sailing in this sense
**the oblivion being the thing jonathan and rosie are complaining about, i realise — but i think it’s a mistake to pretend there was just continuity between these two aesthetic worlds, cz there wasn’t… (what other songs made it through?)
Reluctant as I am to bring politics back into Popular, saying “Franco stood down” makes the old bastard sound a lot more gracious than he was – he had less than a month left to live and Franco’s people deemed it less dangerous to pass power to the King-to-be, Juan Carlos, than to wait for a power vacuum to arise as Franco wheezed his last. Little did Franco realise that he had been royally (ha!) played by his protege, who in good time restored democracy and built a land fit for Pedro Almodovar.
Wasn’t Franco’s previously chosen successor killed by ETA? That’s why he had to go with Juan Carlos.
Though really, linking this song in any way with Franco and the Yorkshire Ripper (for crying out loud) is taking the old cultural reference game a little too far methinks.
American Graffiti is a wonderful film, well worth seeing Tom. I think you’d like the fact that pop music is always playing in the movie, it’s constantly there as background to peoples lives and experiences.
I really don’t know what Jonathan is on about though. How does the movie suggest that pop music began in 1956? What, because there’s no Bing Crosby on the soundtrack or something?
Well, I thought I had seen it – but, erm, when I tried to remember what happened in it, it turned out I was thinking of Animal House.
Tom @ 4 – “better” of course is in the ear of the listener, but I’ll take Sinatra’s 1962 version with Basie’s band, or Peggy Lee’s 1950 version any day over the Flamingos. The song, to my ears, anyway, demands a certain lightness of rhythm that even the lightest form of 50s r&b, doo-wop, can’t provide. But then I fell in love with it hearing feather-light jazz guitarist John Pizzarelli sing it, so my instincts are certainly biased.
lord sukrat is right, of course, about the discontinuity between the two worlds; my (fairly pointless) objection is to the inevitable rating of the newer world over the older one. Inevitable because the new world is the one we live in, or at least are familiar with. (The Age of Remix is another world entirely, no? But that’s a discussion for years down the road.)
LondonLee – it’s not American Graffiti in itself that I have a problem with (I haven’t seen it either), it’s the way that film and similar cultural touchstones have (at least in the US) come to stand in for a generational experience as blinkered, self-congratulatory, and ultimately false as any Woodstock-era mythologizing. I know a necessary attribute of pop is to figuratively destroy whatever has come before it, but too many people take the figurative for the literal.
The UK experience, and cultural memory, of the 1950s were so entirely different that I’m not sure any of this can mean anything to most here. Apologies for having taken up so much space on poor Art’s moment in the sun; I really need to go listen to his version now.
No apologies needed – it’s a really fascinating discussion, and not something I’d thought about much before (probably because the UK didn’t self-mythologise its own 50s that much) – of course no version of a song, in an age of multiple versions, begins as definitive: it has definitive-ness thrust upon it, and the process by which that happens is very interesting. And yes, the requirement for a version to become definitive is very much an anachronism when you’re dealing with pop from the first half of last century.
I’ll try and find those versions of “I Only Have Eyes…” – thanks for the tips!
I live in the States too and know what you mean about the Boomer generation’s belief that the world and history revolve around their memories. But you know, ‘American Graffiti’ is set when it’s set, that’s the music teenagers listened too, and the movie is too naturalistic and simple in style for Lucas to be making any grand claims about it.
‘The Big Chill’ is a far more egregious exercise in Boomer smugness if you want an annoying film.
I do like this, but I certainly could never think of it as definitive, just as an agreeable reading of the song, as redolent of its 70s period as the song in itself is of the 30s.
The version that I usually turn to is the 1934 one by Scott Wood & His Orchestra, from the soundtrack of Dennis Potter’s ‘Pennies From Heaven’. Its more concise, in that period way of having all of the lyrics in one segment in the middle third of the single, and the less leisurely tempo gives the singers sentiments a more heightened sense of urgency, while Garfunkel sounds as though he’s daydreaming (not necessarily a criticism).
Incidentally, I’ve never heard this one at all on any oldies radio show – I think that this may be the least well-remembered number one since ‘Baby Jump’.
LondonLee: Franco and the Yorkshire Ripper have nothing to do with this song, per se, nor have they anything much to do with Art Garfunkel (although given a chance I could probably find some kind of convoluted link.) But I mention them because they are part of the social context of the times, and that is the third element, in addition to song and performance, that makes a number one hit. One ending, opening up new horizons; one beginning which may not have impacted London much but those of us working in Leeds in the late 70s/early 80s felt the chill in the streets when the sun went down.
Anyway, social context is what I do. Others do the musicology.
The question which seems naturally to arise from this discussion is: how far, or how much, is the value of a particular recording of a song changed or heightened or diminished or in any other way affected by one’s prior knowledge of other versions?
With Art’s “Eyes” I find it easy to enjoy and luxuriate in its Central Park cuboid pools of warm reassurance (though, irony of ironies, wasn’t ’75 the year when NYC went bankrupt? But therein lies another debate). Surprised at the lack of mention thus far of Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler’s 1934 version (which I’m pretty certain is the “original” recording, for what that’s worth) as featured in (and I think written for) the film Dames, wherein the future Philip Marlowe wanders in a forest of giant, dissociated eyes; is this Busby or Bunuel?
The Flamingos’ version I heard first on the American Graffiti soundtrack and I was blown away by it; ethereal, unworldly, abrupt when you expect it to float and a direct line to Whitfield’s (post-Ruffin) Temptations (and Bell’s Stylistics) – apparently it’s one of Pete Waterman’s all-time favourite singles, and like its 1959 contemporary “What’d I Say?” it appears to lay out the future. A shame that both were excluded from our charts of the period in favour of such musical titans as Bernard Bresslaw and the Kaye Sisters.
But back to Art; clearly taking his cue from the Flamingos’ version, but setting it in a placidity which wouldn’t have been out of place in Woody Allen’s Manhattan; the delicate and deft touch of the finest session players that money could buy, and above all Garfunkel’s own beneficent ghost of a voice, almost too pure for earthly concerns – a lovely late arc into falsetto as the record fades and an unlikely romanticist counterpart to the downtown wiseguy rationalism of what his ex-partner was doing at the same time (Still Crazy After All These Years – and of course Paul Simon did shortly thereafter go on to appear in Allen’s Annie Hall).
Despite the success of their individual careers, it’s curious how the one-off Simon and Garfunkel reunion which came at the end of ’75 in the form of the single “My Little Town” rippled no waters whatsoever – in America it dutifully went top ten but no one got particularly excited about it and it didn’t make the UK chart at all. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t that great a song but as both the Bridge Over Troubled Waters and S&G’s Greatest Hits albums were still racking up triple digit runs on the album chart at the time it’s just curious.
marcello’s post suddenly made me wonder if graceland isn’t a kind of (unconscious) “answer record” to this: it too luxuriates in a vanished eerily gorgeous non-downtown-wiseguy sound (heard from afar long ago), with mbaqanga substituted for doowop — it also depends for its effect on a trust in an irreality (ok so does all pop probably, but specifically one based on the ghostly materiality of a particular vocal sound)
could also naughtily argue: graceland is actually secretly about how much paul simon misses the ghostly materiality of GARFUNKEL’S particular vocal sound — but he’d rather not admit this even to himself
haha relevant also (now) to any Context of Art: the films angelic-choirboy AG made bracketing this decade viz CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971) and BAD TIMING (1980)
Whatever the history of cover versions (and one google tells me there’s many) this is a beautiful version with Art in fine voice. Not sure I was aware of the American Graffitti version at the time so I came to this fairly fresh. As stated above this probably helped. This was from the album Breakaway which also included his equally soft & mellow recording of Gallagher & Lyles title song – which would have made an even better no1.
Of course, I’d forgotten that this came from ‘Dames’, but then again, any musical that also features ‘The Lullaby of Broadway’, ‘Alls Fair In Love & War’, ‘Spin A Little Web of Dreams’ and ‘Hooray For Hollywood’ wasn’t exactly short of stand-out songs!
That reading is as maximalist as Scott Wood’s is concise, 9 glorious minutes of it dilating and rippling ever further out, incorporating passers-by and a chorus line.
Not long after this, the original Winifred Shaw ‘Lullaby of Broadway’ was rereleased and nearly got into the top 40.
You really ought to seek out the amazing ‘Lullaby of Broadway – Busby Berkeley at Warner Brothers’ compilation while you’re picking up all of these versions, Tom.
Chilly Lip-Sync Snafu Thwarts Nuptial Designs
We are overlooking the Ray Conniff disco mashup version. (I’m serious about that description.)
i’m tired of the originals old disco hits but this music is good. ray conniff was a great artist & visionary who used dreamy music using lots of male and female singers to compliment the music. no single vocalist dominated his songs and the many singers singing simultaneously made it sound good.
ray is criticized by too many people who would never criticize muddy waters or jimi hendrix and the rest of them who get endless praise whose music sucks. ray deserves more recognition.
Btw, until this morning I’d had no idea that there ever was any version of this song other than the Flamingos’, which I suppose is some kind of support for the idea that the Flamingos’ version is canonical among people born in the U.S. smack dab in the middle of the baby boom (me, b. 1954). That said, and thinking that Jonathan is more or less on the right track, I don’t think “baby boom” is that useful a shorthand for what he’s trying to say – at any rate, it needs elaboration. For one thing, if you take the baby boom (people born between 1946 and 1964), then it’s likely that people born in 1947 will have more of an impact as a whole than people born in 1942, and people born in 1963 will have more impact as a whole than people born in 1968, simply because there are more of them. But I’d hardly expect people born in 1963 to have more in common with people born in 1947 than with people born in 1968 – in fact, I’d expect the opposite.
And music itself is its own story, not in sync with the other arts. You don’t get “nothing exists before 1956 (or ’51 or ’48)” in movies or novels. In fact, it was the college film societies in the late ’60s and throughout the ’70s that played a huge role in the critical upgrading of the old Hollywood films, putting Casablanca and the Marx Brothers into the top echelon and getting the average student to take gangster films and screwball comedies seriously. Music is its strange story here: for better or worse you get the overthrow of classical music as the music of the intelligentsia, and you for a while you do get “the world begins in February 1964 and rock ‘n’ roll (beginning with Orioles in ’48 or ‘Rocket 88’ in ’51 or Elvis in ’54 or ’56) is just precursor, and anything else is ancien regime. And strangely, as for the (supposedly) sure-thing canonized Great Artists, the Beatles-Stones-Dylan plus whoever you add on, they don’t cover a swath of 18 years as you’d expect but come all concentrated in the mid to late ’60s. And even though near contemporaries (and even predecessors) like Carole King and Simon & Garfunkel and Fleetwood Mac and Elton John far outsell them in the ’70s (and it’s boomers whom they’re selling to) those performers don’t get the kneejerk citation as “Great Artists” that the Beatles do. And the critics and musicians who get the process going whereby now it’s standard to look beyond the rock canon to years before and genres despised were baby boomers themselves. (The stereotyped baby boom culture wasn’t made by baby boomers themselves, just consumed by them. Not baby boomers: Dylan, Lennon, Jagger. Baby boomers: Madonna, Michael Jackson, Sonic Youth.) And presumably a lot of the people buying Basie and Armstrong box sets these days were born in the baby boom. So size of the demographic and its supposed self-centeredness aren’t in themselves enough to tell what’s going on. There was something about the circumstances and the ’60s hero story that was compelling, too, and probably remains so.
As for context. There’s my own peculiar listening. I managed to hear Disco Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes in ’75 but not Gloria Gaynor or Donna Summer. And I didn’t hear this track, which only made it to number 18 in the U.S. I think I saw the Heartbreakers sometime around then, though maybe that was a year later. Saw Television a year earlier. I was reading Hawthorne and Faulkner and Roger Williams and Nietzsche and thinking about Superwords. I think I was trying to convince myself that Kiss were better than they actually were.
I thought it was the French who played the major role in giving critical respect to old Hollywood movies.
This is where dates and generational labels start to mean nothing, if you could be a Boomer born as late as 1964 (are you sure about that?) that would mean I’m one and all the punks were.
wikipedia sez 1946-64 is indeed the most commonly agreed period for the boom itself — ie the period where there was a bulge in babies being born… however “boomers” *is* now more generally used these days as a cultural catch-all for the earlier part of the actual population boom
(which is possibly one reason koganbot sed it wasn’t a very clear term)
it was the combination of a new generation of film writing (american as well as french) with college film clubs — where you could actually see the films in question — that brought about the shift: the writing on its own would have made little difference i suspect (the power of the new wave as a critical force rose on the back of a very potent and canny film-club movement in france, agitated for by andre bazin among others)
this isn’t even that much of an off-topic red herring — i would certainly argue very strongly that the generational shift in taste, including an effacement* of all pop “before elvis” (more or less), is linked to a shift in recording technology — the vanishing of the machinery to play 78s; the vanishing (or anyway massive reduction) of a context for sheet-music to be plugged to dance-bands; both these meant that the music that arrived via such technologies had no way to continue to play a role in people’s lives
*there hasn’t been any such moment of effacement since — and this is because digital technology was explicitly geared towards the transfer of material record on earlier formats, this resale strategy was a central element in its sales pitch
obviously you don’t need “record clubs” to listen to records together — but the rise of a large-scale student-directed press devoted to discussing singles and LPs, to sharing the news and the discussion, coincides with innovation in the print industry which mean that good-looking nicely printed full-colour magazines — as opposed to crabbed little fanzines, or specialist journals like downbeat, or trade news sheets like billboard — were suddenly widely available and widely affordable, on a qualititively different scale… which is where crawdaddy and rolling stone and creem came in (the uk equivs were a little late starting): anyway, the point is that a combo of a new medium of transmission AND a new medium of discussion was a bit of an unstoppable force
(also of course teens had more disposable income and were being consciously targeted as a distinct market blah blah)
“wikipedia sez 1946-64 is indeed the most commonly agreed period for the boom itself…”
But only recently, I’d wager – if memory serves, there was a time when the “boom” finished up around 1958; I say that because I recall a swag of TV docos etc that surfaced around the time of “The Big Chill” which all seemed more aimed at my old siblings. I was born in 1960 and remember thinking that I’d just missed being part of this so-called boom…I suspect that it’s only after the rise and definitions of Generations X and Y that the boom period was sort of lengthened to take up the slack, as it were.
I could be wrong, of course.
13th Gen has Gen X starting in ’61 and going to ’75, for what it’s worth.
well since the original definition is nothing to do with the habits of difft generations when grown up and everything to do with a measurable statistical fact in the population — which is what the wiki article is about, a population boom — i think what’s more likely is that (since there isn’t a way for the population figures to have changed retro-actively) the cultural appropriation was always just sloppy about the end-point
also: there was a post-war pop’n boom in the us and a post-war pop’n boom in the uk, but did their ends coincide?
Now there, Mark, is the rub! The post-war experience in Britain and America is different because the experiences of the war were totally different, and naturally the experiences of the consequences of the war were different – America, where no bombs fell, experiencing a sharp rise in prosperity while a shattered Britain, and Europe in general, picked up the pieces and began to rebuild. It was a long process – rationing didn’t end in Britain until 1954, the year that I was born. Britain did have the welfare state in this period, and that alone would have made a big difference (growing up on welfare orange juice – yum! When was that withdrawn?). A new generation grew up with a guaranteed school meal made to nutritional standards – they may not have been the kind of nutritional standards we’d approve of today but it was universal, and the first time a whole generation of children had eaten properly.
Where do things change? To some extent it’s all lines in the sand but there are times when you can point to significant points in history that changed everything. 1945 was one obvious such point – not only the end of the war but also the year of Hiroshima, Nagasaki (already alluded to recently) and yes, Dresden. The seismic shift in the nature of the charts around 1962/63 surely didn’t happen in isolation; it was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (the Cold War affected Britain much less than it did America until this point); the Kennedy assassination; Vietnam; but also the Chatterley trial and – most significant of all perhaps – the contraceptive pill. If you were sixteen in 1963 you were born in – 1947. Hmmm…
And then comes the mid 70s. The oil crisis which began in 1973 was really beginning to bite by 1975 and the properity that had hitherto been taken for granted now began to fall apart. 1975 is also the year of Jaws, which began a new era of mainstream Hollywood film production. I’d venture to suggest that the average age of the buyer of singles had come down too, and if you were just entering your teens in 1975 you would have been born in – 1962/63!
By the way, my favourite Baby Boom film, which is perhaps more liminal and illustrative of the transition rather than full-blown Babybooming, is Peter Bogdanovitch’s The Last Picture Show. The soundtrack to that features names from the very early days of Popular – Jo Stafford, Eddie Fisher, Tony Bennett…
The Flamingos version is a thing of wonder, Arts is adequate.
I thought I didn’t know this but – having now YouTubed – of course I do. It’s nagging at me, though. This has been sampled, hasn’t it? Stupid question, given the all-embracing reach of sampling, but if anyone can place it, I’d be grateful.
Also YT-ed the Flamingos take on it, which has a dreamy poise that Art doesn’t quite manage. I like Art’s version all the same.
I’d pick Diner as my favourite Boomer 50s nostalgia movie, it does remember the pre-rock n’ roll era as the characters in the movie talk about Sinatra and Johnny Mathis as well as Little Richard – probably because they’re slightly older than the kids in American Graffiti.
Also it has the greatest movie record geek ever in Daniel Stern’s character who can name the b-side of all his singles and tells his wife what record was playing the first time he ever saw her as a retort to her question “What’s the big deal? They’re just records”
TOTP depicted Art ducking in and out of London taxis as a backdrop to this excellent piece. Garfunkel tackles an old standard and does it well. I was delighted when it hit the top (as Paul Gambichinni assured us it would) as by then I could bore for England (Private Frazer: “And Scotland!”) with regards Paul and Art thanks to my brother false feeding me everything from “Wednesday Morning 3AM” right up to when they parted company following “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, an album which is undoubtedly one of pop/rock’s masterpieces. Paul Simon was by this time well into his own solo career and had already released “Still Crazy After All These Years”, yet another remarkable body of work. In the meantime, in nipped Artie to achieve what Paul never did and score a solo UK number one. He was to return to the top later, Garfunkel, with that bloody (spoiler) bunny song, which on reflection made me feel far less guilty for having written “Boxing Day Bobby” back in 1974.
Paul Simon also returns to number one later, but not on his own…
A very groovy coincidence:
I post at a “Buffy” web site called The Cross and Stake, where we are re-viewing all 144 episodes in chronological order (a project not totally unlike what’s happening here with singles). This very day, we’re discussing – you guessed it – “I Only Have Eyes For You.” Rest assured I pointed out your site and this entry to my fellow “Buffy” lovers.
I love this phrase: “this big fuzzy oven glove of sound.” That’s perfect. And I’m happy to see you feel the same about the Flamingos’ version.
Grenadine (Mark Robinson, Jen Toomey, some other guy) did a gorgeous version on their Goya LP…can this song be botched?
I’ve only heard this record a couple of times in my life, including the time when McAlmont & Butler chose it on Ken Bruce’s show… but the bunny won’t let me tell you what they said then.
I quite like it, but even now the one bit I don’t totally grasp is how it managed to do so well. That’s in no way a criticism, but it intrigues me that it could do so well when other versions had failed (commercially) and Art wasn’t a consistently popular singles act.
I would like to participate in your depth discussion … formidable.
There are two things that prevent me: Do not speak English (I am Italian) and use a translator; my musical culture is very limited … I read with admiration your depth arguments.
That said, please evaluate the cycle of performances in honor of Paul Simon at BAM
He revisited the Capeman to overcome the old failure, it was autocelebrate with African repertoire, and revisits the quiet railway stations, urban rhythms, and immigrant dreams of his greatest American tunes collaborates “with an extraordinary range of artists that are OLU DARA, GRIZZLY BEAR, JOSH GROBAN, AMOS LEE, THE ROCHES, GILLIAN WELCH… ” No trace of ART GARFUNKEL. Paul knows that many people have loved and love the harmonization of Simon & Garfunkel, but has decided to “cancel” that because, I tink,to deny the contribution made to its success by the great voice of Art Garfunkel.
I not understand how a brilliant man and sensitive can act with great firmness, ignoring the demands of fans and the cultural importance of those songs, that sound.
. With reneweds versions of classic songs S & G. Americantune begins this evening. You go to the theatre? I would be happy to read your commentary.
He seems an interesting topic though appears complicated. Bread for your teeth!
Bread for your teeth!
Greatest sentence EVER posted in Popular Comments!
Oh, don’t take the piss Punctum – it’s no doubt a literal translation of an Italian phrase that means something like “food for thought”. It takes guts to post on a website in a foreign language, so don’t send her up!
Anne – welcome aboard, and please comment on other entries on this site.
Just realised I haven’t given my verdict on this record yet, so here it is – soporific. Sorry.
I don’t do piss taking or sending up here, Erithian – it’s a great sentence whatever its genesis.
Also my first language is Italian so I know perfectly well what she meant.
OK, fair enough, I take that back.
Oh yes, I have courage. But not it seems a particularly courageous requesting an opinion about Paul Simon at BAM (not that you gave me).
There will be perhaps a little snobbish? (If you know what it means). However thanks to the attention that have dedicated and for the welcome
This has been sampled, hasn’t it? Stupid question, given the all-embracing reach of sampling, but if anyone can place it, I’d be grateful.
the sampling i know of is the song that goes “another mc loses life tonight…” on the fugrees’ ‘score’.
er, fugees
I was wrong.
I much prefer Dick Powell’s original chatty version in Dames. Later versions tend to either omit the first pair of couplets:
My love must be a kind of blind love
I can’t see anyone but you
And dear, I wonder if you find love
An optical illusion, too?
altogether, or worse, as here and with the Flamingos, use the first couplet but not the second, and weirdly just vamp for a few bars to make up the difference. (See Powell do the biz. here.)
If you leave out the optical illusion line then the song’s main conceit and especially its final lines:
Maybe millions of people go by
But they all disappear from view
And I only have eyes for you
come across just as hyperbole. Keep the optical illusion line *in* and have someone to sing *to* and who can react – Ruby Keeler nods her assent to Powell’s question and lays her head on his shoulder – and the rest of the song becomes not a lover’s hyperbole but a sophisticated dramatization of aspects of a provocative thesis: that love is a shared/joint optical illusion. The underlying objecctive reality might be just neediness, territoriality, mate-selection etc. but the lovers are constituted as lovers by sharing a perpective from which there’s something more than that going on, something quasi-magical that makes everything else drop away. (In fact the movie makes funs with a slightly different visual notion – we see from Powell’s POV lots of women in advertisements morph into his lover’s face…and there are cool tricks with masks that Michel Gondry stole for his ‘brilliant video for ‘let forever be’.)
I hate to be a prig about my basic point, but this is absolutely a case in which a fascinating song lost a lot of its meaning (and literally at least a couple of lines) by being wrenched out of its dramatic context and turned into a you-can-sing-it-anywhere standard. Also, if you flatten the song out to hyperbole, the placement of the ‘only’s far away from the ‘you’s they must modify just grates as ungrammatical I find. If you keep the illusions question-couplet and subsequent assent in place, however, then the ‘I only’s make additional sense as the special mutually constituting subjects of the joint illusion.
Dick Powell’s version of the song was played by android Gigolo Joe in the Spielberg-Kubrick movie A.I. (2001) – a pretty interesting flick about what sorts of shared illusions love involves and whether robots we can always unplug/turn off can nonetheless partcipate in those affective/subjective shared realities. Spielberg-Kubrick chose the right version of the song for their project. The less interesting song that standards-merchants all sing wouldn’t have worked nearly as well.
There are better quality bits of some of Powell and Keeler’s inner dream/optical illusion world spliced into this amazing omnibus Busby Berkeley vid. (set to a great Magnetic Fields song). We come out of the Dames dream world in the most stunning way possible at around 2:20, but do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing! Busby Berkeley was a great genius to whom everyone should be exposed. Gondry has made his whole career out of stealing (in the best possible way) his in-camera tricks! In general,just as the great tin-pan alley songs make almost all subsequent popular song-writing look bone-headed, literally lacking in both wit and chops, Berkeley’s visual language for his musical numbers puts all subsequent film musicals in the shade, even the great ones of the ’50s (which are, of course, much better as overall films).
I LOVE GOD HE IS MY SAVIOR I AM ONLY 9 MY NAME IS SHANTEL I LOVE THE LORD VERY MUCH AND I HOPE EVERY ONE ELSE DOES TO THANKYOU ALL BY GOD BLESS YOU
SHNATEL
GARCIA