Three Quick Thoughts About Music
1. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours should have been higher (much higher) on my list of 100 albums.
2. Do you know both versions of the song "Think Too Much" by Paul Simon? They both appear on Hearts and Bones, one of his most underrated records. I've been listening to them, and thinking about how terrific they are, and wondering if there's ever been a song recorded two ways (with variations in lyrics) that's quite as terrific.
3. I've been listening to The Kinks a lot lately. So I've put Andy Miller's book about them near the top of my to-read list. It includes this epigraph: "If I could live over again I'd change every single thing I've ever done." --Ray Davies, November 1967
2. Do you know both versions of the song "Think Too Much" by Paul Simon? They both appear on Hearts and Bones, one of his most underrated records. I've been listening to them, and thinking about how terrific they are, and wondering if there's ever been a song recorded two ways (with variations in lyrics) that's quite as terrific.
3. I've been listening to The Kinks a lot lately. So I've put Andy Miller's book about them near the top of my to-read list. It includes this epigraph: "If I could live over again I'd change every single thing I've ever done." --Ray Davies, November 1967
posted by JMW at 1:41 PM
6 Comments:
That Miller book is good. I've read it. A lot of those books in that 33 1/3 series are good.
The songs that come to mind are Neil Young's "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)" and "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)". Awesome.
I love those Paul Simon songs! Definitely an underappreciated gem. The "slow" one makes me sad every time...
Think Too Much (b) -- the first one, the one that opens with that seven-note marimba chorus -- is by far his most underrated song (and Hearts and Bones, of course, is his best song ever). I like the dual-song approach, too: lyrically and musically, it seems like two different ways of approaching the same personal-epistemological problem. Eventually, though, the typewriter clack on the second one drives me bonkers, though.
Those think too much songs -- both of them -- bring back a great deal of memories for me, since my late mother, who thought too much for anyone's own good, went through this phase, when the record first came out, of playing them over and over. Having heard them so much at such an early age, I can't tell you whether they encouraged me to think too much myself, or whether they functioned as some sort of warning. I suppose it goes without saying that I've thought far too much about them, and about their implications, and -- thought? felt? -- the nostalgia they now evoke. I haven't listened to them in many years now! But I can tell you from memory that the faster paced one has some truly exuberant moments, like when he's "going on thirteen, me and the girls from St. Augustine, up in the mezzanine, thinking about God."
Oh, and actually there are some really great songs on that album. "Train in the Distance" is a surefire tearjerker. And what about Rene and Georges Magritte and Their Dog After the War? "Carelessly losing their evening clothes, they danced by the light of the moon"
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