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I’ve always felt sorry for Art Gar­funkel because its always felt like he’s got­ten a raw deal from the music world. While Paul Simon has basked in the lime­light for decades, poor Art could prob­a­bly walk down the street and go com­pletely unno­ticed by the major­ity of Amer­i­cans. On fur­ther exam­i­na­tion though you see that he’s lived the typ­i­cal rock star life, with both ups and downs.

He teams up with his friend from child­hood, Paul Simon, and made their first record that went nowhere. So he and Simon broke up, Simon moved to the U.K., and while he was over­seas some sta­tions started play­ing a song, “The Sounds of Silence”, off of their first album, but instead of the way that they’d writ­ten it their pro­ducer took Bob Dylan’s band and over­dubbed it with elec­tric gui­tars. “The Sounds of Silence” went to #1.

So to cap­i­tal­ize on their suc­cess Simon came back to the U.S. and they toured and made a lot of money but it all came crash­ing down when Garfunkel’s solo efforts (Simon also was doing solo mate­r­ial) didn’t chart as high as Simon’s and he started to drop out of the spot­light. That was fol­lowed by more albums that failed to hardly chart and he dropped into fits of depres­sion. Even after team­ing back up with Simon he was mixed out of an album that was sup­posed to be jointly released by the two of them (Simon’s Hearts and Bones) and before long he was scrap­ing for what seemed like Simon’s table scraps.

The worst part about his whole musi­cal career? He never wrote any of the songs he and Paul Simon sang together; he was just a singer, a good one, but not a song­writer. It wasn’t until 2003 that he released his first album of songs that he wrote (Every­thing Waits to Be Noticed).

He’s tried act­ing, poetry and he’s gone through the sui­cides of sev­eral peo­ple close to him. Prob­a­bly in spite of all of what’s hap­pened to him we ought to call him a semi-failed Renais­sance man, albeit a semi-failed Renais­sance man whose made a truck­loads of money.

So Art, after all these years I salute you. You’ve never given up. Keep on truckin’.

When I was 19 I got to see one of my favorite bands of all time, Uncle Tupelo, play at a club in Dal­las called Trees. I was a DJ at the Bay­lor Uni­ver­sity sta­tion and had heard that they were going to be in Dal­las open­ing for Dri­vin’ n’ Cryin’, which I didn’t really like, but gladly paid the $20 to see that night. My friend Kath­leen and I drove the 90 miles north­ward to go to the show and I was blown away. Jay Far­rar broke more stings on his gui­tar than I could believe and Jeff Tweedy was cool in a doughy kind of way on bass. They ripped through track after track and ended their set after about 30 min­utes. It was amazing.

After that Kat and I left. Like I said, I didn’t like Dri­vin’ n’ Cryin’, so I didn’t stay, but I fol­lowed the band I went to see for the next sev­eral years. I didn’t see them live any­more, but I got all of their albums and watched their pro­gres­sion from country-rock (start­ing with “No Depres­sion”) to a mix­ture of blue­grass and country-folk (“Ano­dyne”). I didn’t know about all of the inter­nal tur­moil that was going on within the band at the time, I just thought they were great. And it hit me hard when I heard that they’d bro­ken up. Great bands break up every other day, but this one hit me rather hard. I really liked them and now I had to stop being lazy and find some­thing new to lis­ten to.

Of course, I didn’t have to wait long. Far­rar went out and formed Son Volt and Tweedy formed Wilco.

And if I’d been look­ing for a band to like after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, Wilco was real love.

Their first album “A.M.” is fan­tas­tic. It con­tin­ued an already estab­lished sound that Tweedy and begun with Uncle Tupelo and car­ried it a step fur­ther, in more of a Rolling Stones direc­tion. If CDs could wear out I would have worn out “A.M.” by now. It is still one of my favorite com­fort albums to lis­ten to.

Their sec­ond album is less than per­fect though. “Being There” has great moments, but inter­spersed through it are tracks that I could have done with­out (‘Outta Mind, Outta Sight’, ‘King­pin’, ‘Hotel Ari­zona’) and that made me not love it as much as I wanted to. Not say­ing it isn’t good, it is, but I didn’t have that total uncon­di­tional love that I’d felt with “A.M.”.

After that a year or so went by and they came out with “Sum­mer­teeth”. And I thought, “Hmm…that’s a stu­pid album title.”

And my love for them stopped there. It was like peo­ple who like kids from TV shows in the 70’s. Peter Billings­ley never aged beyond A Christ­mas Story. Mark Hamill never aged past Star Wars. Cryo­geni­cally frozen, my love for Wilco stayed. And that was 1999.

Fast for­ward to a week and a half ago.

My friend Jimi has an extra ticket to their show at the Pal­la­dium, his wife doesn’t like the exper­i­men­tal gui­tar work of cur­rent Wilco gui­tarist Nels Cline, and they can’t get a babysit­ter, so a free ticket is mine for the tak­ing if I want it. And I do. So we go.

And the show was great. They played for about 2 hours plus and, strangely, didn’t play much off of the 2 albums that I love so much. Mostly from “Sum­mer­teeth”, “A Ghost is Born” and “Yan­kee Hotel Fox­trot”. So now I’m catch­ing up on my edu­ca­tion by lis­ten­ing to their other albums.

And I have one thing for Mr. Tweedy. Please, Jeff, no more goofy album titles. I’d rather we didn’t break up again for such a long period of time. Thank you.

I first heard the Bea­t­les way back when I was a Boy Scout. Our scout­mas­ter had brought some tapes on the cam­pout and he played them in the car as went back and forth to the camp­site and I have to admit that at the time I thought they were just…okay. But, much like This is Spinal Tap, with repeated hear­ings they got bet­ter and more inter­est­ing. I don’t remem­ber now what those first tapes were, prob­a­bly “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “The White Album”, but I don’t know. Maybe it was those, maybe not. Since then though I think that “Revolver” is prob­a­bly their best, and as with most every­thing, every­one has their own opin­ion about the band.

Every­one who’s any­one, on first hear­ing, just knows that John is the bet­ter song­writer.¹ He was much cooler than Paul since Paul had gone on to be in that lame band Wings. Then Paul did “Ebony and Ivory”, which imme­di­ately dis­qual­i­fied him in the cool cat­e­gory. Paul was the pretty one that all of the girls loved while John was the rebel and res­i­dent weirdo. Who would have thought to have a bag in for peace? John. Would Paul have thought about hav­ing a bag in for peace? No of course not, because Paul was the good one.

So time passes and I see the film Imag­ine, star­ring the rebel him­self, and you come away with only one thought: Man, John was a jerk. And not just a small-time jerk. His jerkios­ity could have caused an eclipse. Or sank the Titanic. Or crushed the Third Reich. At one point there is a fan hang­ing around out­side of John’s home, so John goes out to the gate and talks to the guy. He is less than friendly and actu­ally insults the man sev­eral times.

John was a tool. But that shouldn’t dis­count his abil­ity to write cool songs. “The Bal­lad of John and Yoko”? Genius.

And now when I lis­ten to the Bea­t­les albums² I hear the songs that Paul sang and how their much more…singable…than John’s songs. “Eleanor Rigby”, “For No One”, “Let it Be”, Paul is the win­ner on my score­card. John’s got some great ones to his credit, and Paul did sing “Back in the USSR”, which I think is ter­ri­ble and knocks Paul down a few notches, but the same album has “Hap­pi­ness is a Warm Gun” and “Everybody’s Got Some­thing to Hide Except for Me and My Mon­key”, which are awe­some. But they don’t make John the win­ner. John wrote some very strange songs, which I’m sure some peo­ple like, but for me, the wal­rus is Paul.

1. And every­body was cooler than Ringo. [↩]
2. And I own and have heard all of them. Least favorite? “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine” [↩]

A long time ago, in a coun­try far far away (Eng­land), a man named Robert James Smith started a lit­tle musi­cal group called The Cure. They started out small with no one know­ing who they were or what they were doing. In the 1980’s they started wear­ing makeup and dress­ing in black, mir­ror­ing their goth-influenced music that they were mak­ing at the time. They started get­ting famous, releas­ing their break­through album from 1987, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. Songs like “Just Like Heaven” and “Why Can’t I Be You?” pro­pelled them into the Amer­i­can Top 40. After that they just got more suc­cess­ful until it all crescen­doed with Wish, and you could say they’ve had a steady decline, much like R.E.M., ever since.

For the whole time the band never really changed, appearance-wise — makeup, black cloth­ing, teased hair. Smith, who’s approach­ing 50, still pretty much has the same look that he acquired in the early 1980’s.

Why does he still look like this?

David Bowie had his glam phase and he out­grew it. Michael Stipe of pre­vi­ously men­tioned R.E.M. even wore makeup for awhile but then he gave it up. What gives, Robert?

Well, maybe he’s a bet­ter look­ing man WITH makeup. Not that he’s a good look­ing guy to begin with, but yikes, if the makeup improves your look, then con­tinue on, sir. If not, grow up. You just look silly now.