Some of you might have read about my experience at the Paul Simon concert from this past summer. It was definitely a high point of a life that has had many... and yet there is one thing missing.
I remember vividly purchasing my first Paul Simon CD... I bought Live Rhymin' in San Francisco. It was the first CD I bought to listen to on my first portable CD player and I did so because I had heard You Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard in a karaoke bar (Anyone remember the Shad-o Bar?). I wore out dozens of batteries on that CD - I am surprised I did not wear out the laser on the CD player.
There were some songs on that concert CD that were taken from his days as a member of Simon & Garfunkel which prompted me when back in Montreal to head to A&A Music on Ste. Catherine near Guy to buy the recently released anthology of all five of their albums. By the standard of a sixteen year old it cost a fortune but it was worth it because it probably shaped my love for and taste in music for a lifetime.
I was really and truly infatuated. When I opened an electronic BBS on my trusty XT I called it Homeward Bound BBS when others were naming theirs after concepts from Star Trek, HHGTTG, and other sci-fi subjects, my true love was Simon & Garfunkel.
I suppose that some would say that this infatuation has not abated. By the time I moved to Israel I knew by heart almost every single song - and I still do. I learned to sing by harmonizing along with those discs. When I am blazing angry there are only three or four songs that can soothe me... would you care to guess who wrote them? And of course there is the culmination in that I nearly did not get married in order to go to their concert in Toronto and to be fair ask me today and I admit I made the wrong choice.
I would rather be a hammer than a nail, el condor pasa. My life shows that I do not necessarily live by all the same principles as the peaceful lyrics of Paul's songs, but I will always live by the music.