The Pied Piper

You may have heard, on an oldies station, a song by one Crispian St. Peters that goes "I'm the Pied Piper/ Follow me," with a lot of piccolo in it. This is not that song.

It is another song, performed by a girl group called The Cupcakes, that also refers to the Grimm fairy-tale about the motley-dressed (or "pied") flute player whom, when he was not paid for removing the rats from Hamlin with his hypnotic flute-playing, came back and removed the children. This is why you have to "pay the piper" (yes, this is where the expression comes from).

In any case, our song here-- co-written by Richie Cordell (who sang "Dori Anne")-- credits Paul Simon on the 45 label. Not Jerry Landis or True Taylor, but Paul himself, under his own name. The year? 1965.

There is something wish-fulfilling about a musician writing a song about a guy who, just with his music, attracts all the girls. From Orpheus and his rabid groupies, the Bacchae, through Franz Liszt, to the girls a-swoon with Beatlemaina, music has attracted romantic attention. And for just as long, musicians have been hoping for some of that magical, musical aphrodisiac to work for them.

Here, the girls sing about it from their viewpoint. "He's up and down my block whistling his song/ I've got to follow him as he goes along." She is not alone: "There he goes, and right behind/ The girls all follow him in line... I'm only Number 5 and I fall right in line/ Pied Piper."

So, there's the effect. "I get this feeling that I just can't explain... Funny, how he's got a hold over me."

It's a pretty serious case. Even when he's not around, his impact is felt. "I get my homework and it's gotta get done/ It's almost 10:00 and I ain't begun." And when he actually shows up? "He's underneath my windowsill!/ Will I love him? Yes, I will!"

What's the cause, though? "He's the cutest boy I ever did see." Which never seems to hurt.

But mostly, "Here he comes again he's whistlin' that tune/ I get excited and I run out of my room." Yes, mostly it's the music.

The speaker admits, "I guess it's silly cause he'll never be mine," but still, "I don't feel bad." At some level, she knows it's a schoolgirl crush and is simply reveling in the glee of it all, like any good fan.

For once, the songwriter assays a woman's point of view-- what does he see through her eyes? Why, doting affection for an adorable musician, of course! A cute face and a pretty tune, that's what women want! How lucky for him that that's exactly what he's got.

But the tune is harmless. Adorable, in fact... and it should have been a hit. Shame that it was never rediscovered by, say, Berry Gordy or Phil Spector. How many girls could have identified with having a crush on the cute neighborhood musician? Probably more than a few.

For the guys, what an appropriate role model. Some off-beat clothes and a funky tune? Not to hard to come by. And hey, it worked for the Pied Piper.

Musical Note:
The Cupcakes were, in fact, The Cookies. But they also recorded as The Cinderellas, The Palisades, The Honey Bees, The Stepping Stones... and sometimes weren't credited at all.

Next Song: Cuba Si, Nixon No

Little Doll Face

[Note: according to some liner notes I saw after this was posted, the song's writer is "unknown."]

There is a Saturday Night Live routine called "Shy Ronny." Andy Samberg plays this character, who is voluble enough to freestyle rap... except when in the presence of Rihanna. Then, he is struck dumb by the power of her beauty, so she thinks he is just dumb.

This scenario, of being made speechless by the presence of an overwhelming radiance, has been part of human experience for a long time. Here, Simon-as-Landis explores the phenomenon from Shy Ronny's standpoint.

The speaker is despondent, as the girl with the "Darling little doll face"-- we know that she has "freckles," and "lashes" that "flutter," but no more of her appearance-- won't even "look at" him. Of course, this is because she doesn't "even know" him.

Of course, he doesn't know her, either. To her, he's a non-entity. To him, she's not much more... just a pretty face that may as well be on a doll.

Some might say this is sexist objectification, and in a way it is. He does see her as an object, a toy at that. But it's simply a reflection of the fact that he does not know her yet as a person... still, he wants to. He does not wish to only see her this way, but for now, her visage is all he has. Well, that and a high opinion of her personality-- "You're lots of sugar, and some spice."

Yes, this nursery-rhyme reference is in keeping with the "doll" metaphor. In fact, it sounds like there is a toy piano on the track.

Mostly, we know that he is not going to get to know her. His objectification of her has made her, in his mind, unapproachable: "Whenever you walk near me/ I'm hypnotized completely... If you'd speak, I'm sure I'd stutter."

He is entirely convinced that he is deserving of her lack-of-notice, and that she is way out of his league. "You're Little Miss Paradise," he tells her, and you can't get more unobtainable than Eden or Heaven. He is sure that she was "born in this world to entice," but be out of reach, like some sort of mythical siren.

"How can I ever tell you/ How much I love you," he moans. He can't, but that is fine because he doesn't love her. He loves her face, and the idea of her, but he doesn't know her well enough to love her.

Until the speaker is able to see her not as a doll, but as a person, she will remain nothing more than an ideal and an idea.

Jim Henson, of Muppet fame, once said, "The only thing between me and my goals is me." This guy needs to start seeing himself as good enough, and her as approachable... and human. Not a doll or angel or statue on a pedestal.

Next Song: Let Me Steal Your Heart Away

Teenage Blue

Sometimes poets know things before scientists can prove them. We now have a copious body of evidence that shows that the adolescent mind is quite undeveloped, and swimming with hormones. We have sociology and psychology backing this up with reams of observations about adolescent behavior patterns, plus news stories with tragic endings for anecdotal evidence.

But the songwriters were asking "Why must I be a teenager in love?" long before that.

Simon, on this track, puts it thus: "There's nothing bluer than teenage blue." Teen emotions are intensified, and without experience-- or a fully-formed frontal lobe-- to mitigate them them, they soar and dive like kites in a storm.

"There is no love like teenage love/ there's nothing truer than teenage true," our speaker begins, in the grand tradition of starting a discourse with a grand pronouncement (as does this blogpost. Hey, if it ain't broke...)

Naturally, this is, then, personalized to "you"-- the woman he is addressing. Since he has already used the word "blue," we know this is not a happy conversation: "My love for you was teenage love," he says, as we notice the sad past tense.

What happened? "We quarreled and said we were through." After one fight? Clearly, we are dealing with relationship amateurs. "And now I'm feeling teenage blue." Which, as was stated, is the worst kind of blue.

What was the issue? We don't know. All we have is the line "there's nothing truer than teenage true." So maybe he is just saying that he will still hold their love dear even though they parted. Or maybe he is saying, "Well, I was true..."

In any case, even this adolescent has the self-awareness to make the following set of observations: "Maybe if I were older/ I wouldn't feel so sad," which is probably the case, given the above-mentioned research. But, "You know you are my first love/ And it hurts real bad." It is a given that the first time having any experience is heightened by unfamiliarity, so this is also probably the case.

Further so is the notion that "I will love you through all the years." This first impression of passion will likely be intense enough to keep the memory of the feeling intact for a lifetime. Said more simply, can anyone forget their first love?

The mind, like the body, strives after balance and homeostasis. 'I am sad because the girl is gone,' it thinks, 'but if she comes back, the sadness will stop.' "OK, mouth, do your thing and make the pain stop," the brain instructs. So the voice sings: "Say you still love me, I beg of you/ Don't leave me feeling teenage blue."

That may work. But he's going to have to woo her back with something more about what he has to offer if she does, rather than what she has to offer him-- a return to the status quo... which generated the rift to begin with. As a certain president might put it: Ask not how your girlfriend can stop you from being sad, but how you can keep her happy.

Simon has, by this point, been working through images of loneliness, heartache, and heartbreak for a number of songs. Here, he really nails it. The song balances poetry and straightforwardness, with its one clever way of turning a phrase. The simple melody and affecting delivery allow the purity of the sadness to be palpable.

This is one of his best early works, and it's a shame it's not even on YouTube. The only place I found it was, of all places, a celebrity website called "Who's Dated Who?" A site dedicated to chronicling past romances, as it turns out, is not a bad resting place for such a long to land.

Next Song: Educated Fool

Looking at You

"Just one look/ That's all it took," sang newly minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Linda Ronstadt. Love at first sight has long been a favorite topic of songwriters, but here all that happens is two people looking at each other.

Oh, and noticing that the other one was looking back.

The line "I was looking at you when were you looking at me" is the first and third of every chorus. They repeat so often, it took several listens to realize that in the last chorus, the clauses reverse: "You were looking at me when I was looking at you" [emphasis mine]. In other words, "Oh, so you were looking at me as much, and in the same way, as I was looking at you."

Perhaps a more accurate word would be "scoping," or even "ogling," in the sense of "evaluating positively." Or, the pre-teen speaker rates her: "I was looking at you while you were looking at me/ Baby, you're OK!"

Cupid's arrow is swift, indeed: "It took just one glance... I didn't stand a chance," he admits, and "I took one look at you/ My heart took flight/ I saw those eyes of blue/ All I did was... sigh."

There are no missing words at that ellipsis, just a dramatic... pause. It is also to be noted that most song subjects are blue-eyed, if only because more rhymes with "blue." In "Brown-Eyed Girl" and "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," those phrases do not end on, and so force the songwriter to rhyme, the word "brown."

We also find out the precise time frame for this tennis game of glances happening: "My heart began to pound/ When class did start/ When class was through, I knew/ I had lost my heart." So, an hour or so, when they were supposed to be listening to the math teacher.

On the next chorus, we have the question, "Did you catch my eye?" when we know for absolute certain that she did, because that is the entire message of the song. It could be rhetorical... or just amateurish. A better phrasing might be, "You sure caught my eye." Or even, "Oh, did you catch my eye" inflected to mean, "Did you ever!"

This time, the story has a happy ending-- the interest seems mutual: "The bell rang, you got up/ And walked out of the door/ Then you glanced back at me/ Now I know for sure."

Simon deserves praise for not writing "walked right out the door," which would have been obvious and lazy, but would have sent the entirely wrong message-- that she was upset at having been ogled, and stalked off, nose skyward. But he would have to learn that "glanced back" is too hard to sing.

During class, he was trying to catch her looking at him without her catching him trying to-- a near impossible game of cat-and-mouse. But then she glances back and him and he feels reassured. And of course, extremely happy that his interest is returned, and by such an "OK" person at that.

He saw her "looking at [him]" when he was "looking at [her]", and bang-- without a word exchanged-- they are in a relationship. "Now I know you're mine," he smiles, confidently.

Yes, folks, it's just that easy.

Whole textbooks have been written about the communicative nature of sight. Seeing is powerful, which is why animals have such incredible vision and why people have spy-scopes. Being seen is weak, which is why animals have camouflage and people have tinted windows.

Except when, of course, when being seen is powerful, which is why birds have stunning plumage and we have stages and TV cameras.

The fact that she is willing to let her see him look back at him lets him know that the attraction is mutual. If he plays his cards right when he actually speaks with her, and he pays off his positive first impression, his confidence may prove out.

It would be interesting to use this song as a catalyst for class discussion about the way seeing and being seen are communicative by themselves, even without words: How do you present yourself; what do you want people to think when they see you? How does it feel when people look at you positively, or negatively? What do you see, in the mirror? Are you careful in how you look at other people? How do you feel when you catch someone looking at you, like in the song?

And how are all of these questions answered differently by teenage boys and girls?

These are all things we know intuitively, yet saying them openly might really help kids, well, watch how they are looking!

Next Song: Lighthouse Point

Surrender, Please Surrender

Another Everly Brothers pastiche.

In this one, a young man pleads with a young woman: "Come on, give your love to me." The assumption is that she has "love," and can give it to whomever she chooses. He has love, too, and he wants to give it to her, but that goes without saying.

"Surrender, please surrender," he cajoles. In this metaphor, she has-- or is-- a fortress he is trying to invade, land he is attempting to conquer. He knows he will keep advancing until he wins her over, but it would be so much easier if she would just... give up already!

At least he is willing to make a commitment: "Always and forever/ So true, the way a love should be."

So that's the chorus, and the set-up. In the first verse, he tries his first tactic. He says he has been "waiting all [his] life/ To find a girlie just like you." So, he explains that she meets his criteria, and he's certainly earned her consideration, not having gone after other women until his ideal one-- she!-- has come along. (And he hopes that she will overlook his condescendingly calling her a "girlie.")

"Now that I found you, Love/ I'll play the game/ And try to make you love me, too." Once again, we have a metaphor of competition. There is a "game," and if he plays it well enough, he'll win the prize. She's just a puzzle he has to solve, that's all... a code he must crack, a challenge he must overcome.

Telling her up front about this does not seem to work, for some reason.

Onto the second tactic. Or, maybe, his first play in the "game." Rather than simply state he has earned her by waiting for her, passively, he tries to actively earn her... by offering her something in exchange for her "love"-- namely, "fun." He enumerates: "We'll laugh and stay out late/ Drinkin' at a soda shop/ Dancin' at a record hop." Surely, this is a fair trade, one she cannot refuse!

And, yet, she seems to. Curse her intransigence! What more can he do...? He comes up empty.

Onto tactic three: Conceding defeat. "I'm beggin' down on my knees," he weeps. "Come on, give your love to me."

Despite the seemingly dramatic emotions herein, the song's arrangement is up-tempo-- cute and flirty, not desperate or lugubrious. Perhaps the speaker is presenting these options to her as if to say, "Yeah, I could try all these shopworn methods, run through the motions. Or we could just cut to the chase."

One pictures Romeo, sighing beneath Juliet's balcony, acting as if he must shower her with poetry to win her... when they both know they are already in love.

It's the only way to reconcile the sprightly arrangement with the clumsiness of the woo pitched in the lyrics. Either that, or the speaker is just really not good at this, and is going to lose the game he thinks he's playing, before he even starts.

Next Song: Looking at You

Ask Me Why

This is a waltz-time love song. Musically, it's along the lines of 'Sixteen Candles"... or  "Earth Angel," one of the songs that inspired Simon to take up songwriting altogether.

The song repeats the opening words "Ask me why" over and over to start lines, in a rhetorical device (a.k.a. "speechwriter's trick") called "anaphora." One famous example of this is from Winston Churchill: "We shall fight on the beaches... we shall fight in the fields... we shall fight in the hills..."

It's really a tender, touching song of young love, never falling into schmaltziness-- until the very end, when we get a "big finish."

"Ask me why I go sleep/ Counting the days I spent with you/ Instead of counting sheep," it starts. The other things the speaker does is "pray" they will be together forever, "thrill" to her touch, and "hold" her "so tight."

Other effects she has on him are that he is "filled with a heavenly bliss/ Each time we kiss," and that he feels that, when he's not with her, "it seems like time is standing still/ Each minute's like a year."

Yes, this is puppy love at its purest and most sincere. He tells her "it's so hard to say goodnight," which implies that he does, in fact, do so at the end of their dates.

Oh, and why does he feel the way that he does? " 'Cause I love you!" Yes, not "Because," but, pointedly, " 'cause." So, they are likely still in high school.

Is this a love sonnet worthy of William Shakespeare or Elizabeth Barrett Browning ? No. Is it every bit as heartfelt? Yes.

Or, perhaps more accurately: Yeah.


Next song: I'm Lonely

(Pretty Baby) Don't Say Goodbye

This song is usually titled simply "Don't Say Goodbye," but in rare cases "(Pretty Baby) Don't Say Goodbye."

This is a rollicking number that, with different instrumentation, could work well as a country tune.

The speaker is either doggedly optimistic or massively deluded. He makes many protestations of love to his beloved-- and all we learn about her is that he finds her "pretty"-- but it seems she does not return his affections.

He begs her not to leave, pleading, "You'll make me cry if you say goodbye/ Don't leave me, honey, 'til the day I die/ Pretty baby, don't say goodbye," and "Don't let your love pass us by."

He assures her that his affections are deep: "I'm in love with you" and even "I'm so in love with you." In fact, he would even marry her, if she would only return his ardor: "Please, pretty baby, won't you love me true?/ I'm gonna hold you tight till you say 'I do'."

However, it seems his affections are doomed to lie unrequited. It's not just that she's interested in someone else, but more that she's interested in anyone else: "I love to call you on the telephone/ But when I call, I see you're not alone."

I recently watched the classic Italian film The Bicycle Thief. In it, a "wise woman" counsels a man in a similar predicament: "Go plow another field."  Our speaker would be well to follow this timeless advice.

Next Song: True or False

Hey Schoolgirl

Puppy love used to have a soundtrack.

This is an innocent little flirtation about a young "crush" that, in a situation that seems rare in Simon's later work, is mutual.

The boy makes the first move, and daringly whispers-- during class!-- that he'd like to meet up with this young lady after "after school."

She agrees, but is demure. Her school day is over an entire hour and a half later. If they are in the same classroom, they must be in the same school and even the same grade... how is her school day so much different? Does she have after-school activities? Detention? (Heaven forbid.)

She then puts him off three times more. "Maybe when we're older, then we can date" seems like a very big put-off. Her excuse about homework taking her "hours" would only mean he'd have to wait hours, not years until they are "older."

And then the vague "Someday we'll go steady" seems a timeframe of months, perhaps years again.

But each put-off is equalled by a come-on: "Let's wait" means later, yes, but not never-- as does "So don't you fret/ Ooh, not yet."

At this point, our poor young fellow might be forgiven if he feels "played" or "strung along," what with such mixed messages.

But then, just as suddenly, the girl changes her mind, and with a sense of purpose commits herself: "I'm gonna skip my homework, gonna cut my class/ Bug out of here real fast."

Our young Romeo could not be happier, with the situation or with himself: "Now we're going steady... You're mine/ I knew it all the time." Sure he did.

Still, what was it about him that won her over? His brazenness in approaching her during class? His confidence in suggesting a date before he even knew her name? His doo-wop influenced pick-up line: "hoo-babaloo-chi-bop"? The fact that once he made his overture, he hung back, letting her come to him?

We'll never know for sure. But this extremely early song does remain one of the few songs in Simon's portfolio about a successful relationship. Is such a thing possible only when the participants are as uncomplicatedly innocent-- or as obliviously confident-- as children?


IMPACT:
This is the one song from the Tom and Jerry, pre-S&G, days that the duo still performs.

They were still in high school when, with this song, they found their first taste of success. It was their first professional recording, cut in 1957. It sold 100,000 copies and cracked the Top 50 (#49, but still).

It even took them to the performance show of their time-- long before American Idol, MTV, Star Search or even Soul Train-- called American Bandstand. New artists took turns playing their hits, teens danced, and Dick Clark hosted the proceedings. (The TV show central to the plot of Hairspray is based on this show.)

When he introduced them, Clark asked them where they were from. Garfunkel admitted to being from New York, but Simon falsely drawled that he was from Macon, Georgia. This fib was, perhaps, in an attempt at authenticity... or at not wanting to be out-authentic-ed by the act that they were to follow: Jerry Lee Lewis, performing "Great Balls of Fire."


Next Song: I Wish You Could Be Here