Trey,

I completely agree with everything you wrote. For example after Paul Simon's Graceland dominated the pop charts upon it's release back in the mid 1980s Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a South American vocal group almost completely unknown outside of their own country, that was heavily featured on Simon's album went to worldwide fame. As a matter of fact I consider to Paul Simon to be the role model for how to incorporate many different culture's music into another culture's music with dignity, respect and, most importantly, to the mutual benefit of all parties cvoncerned, including the listeners.

And in the same vein, lets give an honorable mention to Ry Cooder.

For some strange reason there are a lot of folks who love to bash Paul Simon, I guess that comes with success.

This is not the 1st time PS has been accused of ripping off other artists. Remember that fiasco involving Los Lobos and the Graceland album?

I applaud artists like Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and Ry Cooder for helping to open our ears to the music of other cultures. As long as they don’t claim they solely created the music, now that would a bit slimy. I’d be more worried about who Coldplay is (cough, cough) paraphrasing for this year’s release. 

Me as well, I do applaud these artists. Remember, there exists a dirty side to the music biz.

I look forward to hearing the Los Lobos version of this song and how they finished it up and made it their own so we can see how their vision differed from paul Simon's!

Steve Berlin on that session:

" I mean he [Simon] quite literally — and in no way do I exaggerate when I say — he stole the songs from us…."

Not just one song, it seems, but "songs," plural?

He goes on...

"At the time, we were high on the musical food chain. Paul had just come off One Trick Pony and was kind of floundering. People forget, before Graceland, he was viewed as a colossal failure."

I may be the world's biggest Los Lobos fan and I have never thought of them as being all that "high on the foodchain."

More from Steve Berlin...

"It was ridiculous. I think David starts playing “The Myth of the Fingerprints,” or whatever he ended up calling it. That was one of our songs. That year, that was a song we started working on By Light of The Moon. So that was like an existing Lobos sketch of an idea that we had already started doing. I don’t think there were any recordings of it, but we had messed around with it. We knew we were gonna do it. It was gonna turn into a song."

What?

Was it a song, or not?

"We were definitely maybe gonna do something with that "sketch of an idea" at some point and turn it into that exact same song, but we never did, and Paul stole it."

;)

Last Steve Berlin bit...

"But it was very clear to us, at the moment, we’re thinking he’s doing one of our songs. It would be like if he did “Will the Wolf Survive?” Literally."

Literally? "How Will the Wolf Survive" is a sketch of an idea they've been meaning to someday turn into a song?

Maybe Los Lobos should finish the damn song and show us what Paul stole!

Delight to see you post again.

RG

What struck me about RB's review were the lyrics he quoted, to demonstrate P. Simon dealing with big religious themes.  But the quotes he picked were all of a trivial or slightly humorous/whimsical nature, which almost contradicted the reviewer's point.