impostor? no way.
we can’t be faulted for the circumstances, such as the timings of our birth, which lead us to or keep us from learning about any particular album. you play the hand you’re dealt, not the one you wish you were dealt.
i’m 38, but am only now discovering Simon’s early stuff - and i’m only doing that because that Spoon is doing Simon’s “Peace Like A River” on their current tour. and, now that i think of it, i first heard Spoon’s cover on NPR’s live show archive, which i found thanks to a link you dropped here, a few months back. the circle is complete.
Spoon’s cover of that (fantastic) song got me to check out Simon’s (fantastic) first album. and since then, i’ve been digging through the rest of his stuff. he’s really quite amazing, at times. that first album astounds me, but i’m not actually surprised it took me 36 years to find it. the ubiquity of his hits on oldies stations, and the fact that he isn’t a macho rocker, tainted him a bit. he was too popular, and with the wrong people for me to want to look at anything else of his. unlike the way Zep, or the Stones, or Sabbath, remain popular, adolescent guys don’t pay much attention to top-40 artists of the past (the Beatles are a special case). until i was prompted to look, he remained just a lightweight folky-pop singer who wrote a bunch of catchy top-40 songs - i had no reason to think there was anything else to him.
oh, and then there was Graceland, which to me seems like it came from a different person entirely.
I love Paul Simon but I have a confession to make. As much as I would like to listen to “Kodachrome,” because I do truly love it, and would argue that it’s one of the top 25 songs evar, I can never listen to it without feeling like an imposter. 
1 Comment