If his sensibilities appear too delicate, neuroses talking themselves out, he produced, in his first solo album, what seems to me the best account in pop musis (along with Scritti Politti’s Songs to Remember) of a clinical depression. But Simon has had the wit to put his weaknesses to good use. For Simon’s many anti-fans, he is an abomination, a combination of wimp and whore. Simon’s first two solo albums are among the more memorable of the early 70’s. South Africa, or more specifically, Simon’s place there, is a question of political judgment. The main kick against the record, although the most eloquent disparagement of it has been the least articulate, has not done it justice: Graceland is Paul Simon in South Africa. Graceland, which was released to tremendous critical acclaim and has enjoyed great commercial and popular success has its detractors. Paul Simon’s Graceland is change of a kind, but it would appear the boy never did get gone.įirst, let’s be fair. Politics in a work of a literature is like a pistol-shot at a concert, something loud and vulgar, yet a thing to which it is impossible to refuse one’s attention.Įlvis Presley, sole originary proprietor of the Graceland of history, once interrupted his own performance of “Milkcow Blues Boogie:” “Hold it, boys…That don’t move me! Let’s get real real gone for a change” (and then he hit it). But it’s past time for O’Brien’s piece – the first he ever published – to openly shape discourse about pop life and politics. You can detect the essay’s effect in writing done over the last generation on bebop, Bob Dylan, Sam Cooke, and the Rolling Stones.
While “At Ease in Azania” got more play in South Africa than back in the USA, influential American music writers picked up on O’Brien’s insights. To read in a book form will be quite cool. And they all go bonkers about his analysis and knowledge of music. When Bongani Madondo – South Africa’s liveliest pop writer – heard we were thinking of reprinting it in "First of the Year: 2009", he testified in favor: I made 50 photocopies of O’Brien’s piece and distributed ‘em to this informal arts and politics journalism course/workshop I often run for young guns on the come in this field I toil in. O’Brien’s piece begins with Paul Simon’s "Graceland" but it rock and rolls back to the 60s before returning to the Motherland to show how pop music may “exist in its time justly.” It will be reprinted this fall in the next volume of "First of the Year". | Nationtime » At Ease in Azania By Charles O'BrienĬharles O’Brien’s “At Ease in Azania” was originally printed 20 years ago in an obscure (and now defunct) journal.
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