Friday June 03, 2016
Paul Simon's ‘Cool Papa Bell’
Paul Simon is singing about baseball players again.
I‘ve been listening to this song since early May. How could I not? It’s one of my guys singing about one of my guys:
The chorus gets in your head (“Well well well/And Cool Papa Bell”), but I particularly like the lyrics in the middle verse, where Simon does a little dive into the word “Motherfucker,” which he calls an ugly word, then adds:
Ugly got a case to make
It's not like every rodent gets a birthday cake
No, it's “You‘re a chipmunk, how cute is that?
But you, you motherfucker, are a filthy rat.”
I’ve made that argument to Patricia before. It's all in the tail. And I guess the Plague.
The rest of the album is mixed but not bad for 75. Here's a little more on the title character.
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