Paul Simon: Down with the Homies
"Bet you didn't know that Paul Simon made a video for his 1972 hit 'Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard' - in 1988! Bet you didn't know it featured Simon in a New York schoolyard shooting hoops with a bunch of street kids, just because he's so freakin' down! Bet you didn't know the video began with a freestyle rap intro from Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane! Or that it had a cameo from Mickey Mantle, who lip-syncs the chorus and looks as confused as you are!"
While playing "The Coast" with his band during a rehearsal one day in 2002, Paul Simon tried a new arrangement which he had recently written and looked forward to trying. "Fourteen years I've played this song," he announced, "and I finally figured out the guitar part!"
As a child, Paul Simon smiled so rarely that his parents nicknamed him Cardozo (after the famously solemn Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo). Simon's grim demeanor did not change much as he matured.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel have put decades of animosity behind them ´” OK, off to the side for a couple of minutes ´” and reunited to open the festivities with a particularly dour version of 'The Sound of Silence.' Simon looks old and sad as he mumbles through his vocals. Garfunkel looks happy to have the work. They slog through the entire song without looking at each other once. Nice to see two old buddies letting bygones be bygones.
Art Garfunkel (whose name, someone here once remarked, sounds like a piece of Amish farm equipment) was not noted for his hipster image. "He makes Paul Simon," Guardian music critic Ian Gittins once declared, "look like LL Cool J."
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