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The Charles C.W. Cooke Newsletter
Hi everyone,
Scott Immergut, he of the Blue Yeti microphone and benevolent kingship Ricochet.com, has kindly offered to let me tell everyone here about my new weekly newsletter. It’s free — hurrah — and I send it out every week, on Saturday mornings. It includes a round-up of everything I’ve done during the previous week, as well as the rotating music, television, restaurant, and tech sections from my old newsletter, Café Americano.
If you want a preview, you can read all of this week’s newsletter here. And here’s an excerpt of the music section, which is a representative sample of the non-political bits:
What I’m . . . Listening To
A chance joke at National Review about the word Parsley led to a subsequent joke about the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, which led in turn to a debate about the best Simon and Garfunkel song, which led to me playing on repeat the best Simon and Garfunkel song, which, science tells us, is without a doubt, The Only Living Boy in New York:
Naturally, this is just, like, my opinion, man. Indeed, one could get away with picking pretty much any track from the album that The Only Living Boy in New York is on and calling it the “best.” That record, which was their final offering, only has eleven tracks on it, and among them are:
- Bridge over Troubled Water
- Cecilia
- Keep the Customer Satisfied
- So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
- The Boxer
- Baby Driver
- Why Don’t You Write Me
- Song for the Asking
It’s an embarrassment of riches.
But, I think that The Only Living Boy in New York takes the cake because it sums up all that was great about the duo in a single song. It has the open sound and travel-story quality of an America; the ethereal backdrop of a The Boxer; the on/off harmonies of a Keep the Customer Satisfied or a Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall; and the impossibly beautiful melody of a Bridge Over Troubled Water or an April Come She Will.
A fun and instructive musical game to play is to think about which single song you would play an alien if you had just one chance to convey what your favorite band sounds like. I think The Only Living Boy in New York does that. And also, my Dad likes it, so I’m biased.
I also mentioned the Florida v. Alabama game, but we won’t dwell too long on that.
Charles
Published in General
Done. Thank you. Wish you would spend more time with us on Ricochet.
I love the elegant small caps in the sign-up sheet type. :-)
“Only Living Boy in New York.”
Thanks for the reminder. I recall hearing of new your venture on the last podcast, but was in the middle of a 1500 mile drive.
Thanks Blue Yeti!
Too bad Florida and Alabama couldn’t both lose….. I was rooting for a Bama loss along with the Swamp falling into a sink hole. :)
Thanks for pointing this out, Charles. I look forward to reading this.
I just subscribed, really enjoy your columns and comments in NR/NRO.
That’s the Bridge Over Troubled Water Album, not Parsley Sage…
But, agreed, their best and most consistent by far.
The cry goes round the nation, “More Charlie Cooke!”
You know, I’ve just about had it with your cultural appropriation. You people think you can come over here and tell us about our culture? Stick to off-color music-hall ditties and Liverpudlian buskers, pal. Or, as they say, stay in your lane.
Oh right you can’t, because then you’d be driving head-on into oncoming traffic.
Right. They come over here, giving us their opinions in our language. Like they invented it or something.
Also want tips on customizing golf carts and ARs. Will add it to my subscriptions..
Update. Done. That was easy. Noticed the home server info. Will have to cheek that out. I wired my house with Cat 5 when it was built. Even though I do everything with wireless systems now, the wired rooms give me options. Because we didn’t have smart TVs, the one place there is no wired jack is behind the TV.
Yes. That’s slightly unclearly written. I meant that the topic came up because of discussion of that record, which led me to The Only Living Boy in New York, which led me to that record.
I love your work, C.C.W.C. It’s good stuff.
The song references Art Garfunkel’s 1968-ish trip to Mexico to film Catch-22, does it not? I’ll have to check out the newsletter and find out for real.
My own favorite slow-tempo song about NYC is Springsteen’s “Meeting Across the River”. Dark, poignant, Sopranos-like.
If you haven’t heard it, check out Springsteen’s New York City Serenade. I think it’s one of Bruce’s best songs (and more jazzier and complex than his later stuff) and one of the best songs ever written about NYC. Because it really captures the complexity and the personality of the place (it takes 20 or seconds to get going –stick with it– it’s worth it):