Monday, December 06, 2010

"Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts/Of unpublished rhyme."

The Song: "Hazy Shade of Winter," Simon & Garfunkel. Words & music by Paul Simon. Track 11 of Bookends, 1968.
How/when acquired: Purchased cassette, c. 1987
Listen/watch here.

Today brought the first big storm of the season, interfering with my plans to go to a book fundraising event in Boston. The first big snow of the year, people always get a little crazy; we're not used to it yet, the plow guys need some warming up.

So I'm home, and should be working. Instead I feel restless and bored. I'd been looking forward to playing with friends tonight. If I lived in Portland or even in Brunswick, I could have made it to the party; according to radar, the snow line was just south of Gardiner. Yes, the point is obvious.

This is a great song off the second side of Bookends, which is a collection of good songs rather than a coherent album side. The Bangles made a fascinating cover of it in 1987 for the soundtrack of Less than Zero (evil book, stupid movie). I am not ashamed of liking The Bangles, who, as it turns out, still get together to play a gig once in a while.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I liked the Bangles version better.

I haven't read the book, but I hope it was better than the awful movie. It was hard to watch as worse and worse things kept happening to characters I didn't like or care about.

At least there was a good song from it. . . Joe

Ellen Clair Lamb said...

My pal Duane Swierczynski, an excellent writer who's about 10 years younger than I am, said on Twitter last night that he liked the book. I cannot be objective about it. I went to school with too many people like the book's characters, and was working catering temp jobs while they snorted coke in public restrooms. I had no interest in reading anything that made them sympathetic.