‘i know the reason

i feel so blessed

my heart still splashes

inside my chest’

(from ‘she moves on’)

due to some recent health issues, i have been spending a lot of time on a treadmill lately. i have to get some daily cardio exercises in, and during these winter months, it is often infeasible to get that done outside. being on a treadmill is pretty boring, and instead of watching a tv like many do, i put on one of my more upbeat itunes playlists and listen to music. i have been building my playlists for a very long time, i have a lot of music in my library, and in order for a song to get selected for any of them, especially this one, it has to be pretty damn good.

in listening to this particular list, i start noticing some patterns. one in particular is realizing that some artists keep popping up more than others. the other is that many of the selections are what i refer to as ‘perfect songs’ – they are timeless and iconic. it was about a week ago that it came to my attention that my paul simon selections intersected both categories.

so i started going down a paul simon rabbithole. not a complete career review, but really just a revisit of what i consider to be his best one two punch – ‘graceland’ and ‘the rhythm of the saints’.

now, ‘graceland’ gets most of the attention, and maybe rightly so. it was innovative in so many ways, it revived his floundering career and personal life, and it introduced the world to the musicians of south africa. the recordings were made in 1985 during a time when there was supposed to be a cultural boycott of apartheid, and so the album was controversial at the time. but its tremendous commercial success and paul’s insistence on bringing many of the artists on a worldwide tour brought a lot of attention to the struggles in south africa. there are a couple of trailers below that provide an excellent background to all of this, if you care to dig further.

but being a contrarian by nature, i want to focus instead on what was his eventual follow up to that album, ‘the rhythm of the saints’, which was released four years later. while the first album utilized african musicians, ‘rhythm’ used many of the guitarists that he had found in johannesburg, but then also used vocalists and percussionists from eastern south america, especially brazil. like its predecessor, this album introduced some of these artists to a new and wider audience. names like milton nascimento and nana vasconcelos were huge stars in brazil, but this and david byrne’s brazilian albums from about the same time showcased just how good these artists were.

but it is simon’s ability to fuse all of these elements together and arrange them to his lyrics that makes the thing timeless and addicting. i mentioned ‘perfect songs’ before, but i could argue that this album nears perfection as a complete piece. there is a lot of river imagery here, both in the lyrics and the flow of the rhythms. there is a continual and bubbling slow moving pulse throughout, and each song seems to move gracefully to the next. it just takes you to another place, and i never tire of it. he hasn’t released anything like this since.

the album sold pretty well, but it never had any hits that got much airplay. but if i have a choice of deciding to listen to one of the two albums, i tend to put on the latter. so if you are not that familiar with it, take some time when you can relax with a cold one and play it from start to finish. i hope by the end that you may agree with me.

here is my favorite track: