#maybe i'll draw em for that art contest thing

[dollarbin]

Dollar Bin #21:

Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon

When I was little my mother loved to brag about how ugly I'd been as a baby.

"He looked just like a frog," she'd tell her friends while I stood about, often with my finger deep in a nostril. There was always love in her eyes when she said it, but looking back on the photos, I'd say she was putting a positive spin on things. Frogs are, after all, fairly cute.

And so, when my own children were about to be launched into existence I felt fairly excited. Would they look like aged dwarves/me or cosmic goddesses/my wife? Sadly, they all were angelic and beatific, and wound up smart and kind as well, which makes them fairly boring to write about.

So, forget about them. Let's talk instead about one of the ugliest record covers in my entire collection. There's plenty of grossness to report on...

If you want sheer trashiness, cast a terrified eye upon Neil Young's American Stars and Bars. It's ugly on a number of fronts: first, we've got a directly vertical, up from a glass floor, vantage point of Young's plastered and pressed face; work in the barmaid's ridiculous unmentionables and take note that my own 99 cent version is ripped to shreds, and you've got a contender for the ugliest record of all time.

But the vinyl inside is pristine and the album features two of the best songs of all time back to back (Like a Hurricane and Will to Love, of course), so who cares: ugly is awesome in the Dollar Bin.

And then there's Fairport Convention's Live at L.A. Troubadour which is famously horrifying to gaze upon. The art department at Island Records either hated the band, or themselves, or the whole planet. As dedicated Dollar Binners can tell you, my own coveted copy is also slightly melted so its ugliness knows no bounds.

And no ugly cover contest is complete without mentioning Dylan, the infamous Screw You Bob! record of outtakes Columbia put out when Bob jumped ship in 73 for Asylum Records. The only thing uglier than the portrait on the cover is Dylan's cover of Big Yellow Taxi.

(But don't buy the hype that Dylan is terrible; in spite of Columbia's best efforts to end the Bobster's career, the album contains a few great tracks; but that discussion will have to wait for Dollar Bin #642, or maybe #643. That's right: I've got the next 64 years of this nonsense already planned out...).

I could go on and on (we haven't even touched on the giant weird stylus phallus on the cover of The Bunch...). My personal Dollar Bin is chock full of unsightly greatness.

But, without further adieu, let me submit for your very personal consideration what is arguably the greatest ugly record of all time: Paul Simon's There Goes Rhymin' Simon.

Behold the horrifying cover art concept: every track on the album gets its own infantile piece of pop art horror somewhere on the gatefold. Mingled in are an archival photo of teenybopper Simon with a full head of hair and another photo of daddy Simon with a full head of combed over hair.

The Dollar Bin teems with copies of this record; everyone, and their weird uncle, bought a copy of Rhymin' Simon in 73 because the music within it is awesome, but they, or their grandkids who inherited the collection, just couldn't bear to look at the insidious cover and therefore eventually pawned it off on dollar bins the world over. If you don't own a copy, get a life and go get it. Put it on your turntable but don't look at the cover; like Medusa's visage, it may turn you to stone. And I like you just the way you are: unstoney.

Indeed, I'd argue that There Goes Rhymin Simon is proof positive that most people in these troubled times are more focused on how their record collection looks on the shelf than how it sounds. You know 'em: they've got Steely Dan albums enshrined in plastic and they can't wait to show you their minty copy of The Wall. Yuck. Lend me a ruler and I'll draw you some bricks, if you really want to see some, but I won't force you to listen to Roger Waters drone on and on about his own hideous meaning of life.

I was deep in a dollar bin recently, knees aching on the floor, when two college kids came in, asking for directions to the Yes records. They very clearly did not own a record player; rather they wanted Yes to grace their dorm room walls. Indeed, that's probably the sole reason anyone on earth has ever had for owning a Yes record. I've never owned one, and I never will. I declare Hell No to Yes.

Only a masochist would mount Rhymin' Simon on their wall. Who, you ask, do we have to blame for undercutting the fourth masterpiece of Simon's career (The first three are Bookends, Bridge Over Troubled Water and Paul Simon) with such shoddy pop art? The answer is none other than Milton Glaser, the guy who foisted the following on us all:

Imagine the greatest, most recognized thing in your entire life taking you six seconds to create and being something a fourth grader could come up with. I heart NY to, but I mean Neil Young when I say so; why isn't anyone offering me a solo show at the Pompidou Center?

Glaser could have designed a plain brown paper bag to hold Simon's record, then slipped a fresh cow pie in alongside it and thereby have done Simon an immeasurably better turn in the art department.

Before you accuse me of just being ignorant about modern art let me offer the defense that I actually took a course in modern art at Cambridge for a term which led to religious experiences in front of Rothkos and Chagalls. Furthermore, Glaser has made some wonderful art in his career. Consider Dylan's psychedelic hairdo:

I'm guessing that Simon finished Rhymin' and then ordered Glaser to give him the Dylan treatment on his cover. But Glaser took one look at Simon's hair and said, "Paul we're going with ugly rather than comb over with this one," then turned out Rhymin's abomination. Simon learned his lesson: every one of his album covers since then has either featured tasteful art or a photo of Paul with a hat or hairpiece carefully in place.

It's tempting to think of Rhymin' as Simon's own version of Chrome Dreams, Neil Young's abandoned (but recently released) 70's album of masterful individual songs. Almost every track on Chrome Dreams comes from a separate recording session and every song stands on its own, seemingly unrelated to its neighboring tracks. Like the eclectic stops on Odysseus's journey home, both Rhymin' and Chrome Dreams can be experienced as a series of only vaguely related adventures. There's plenty of terror from Polyphemus cave to be witnessed on each record, just like there's a lot of lust to be had in Circe's bed.

Glaser's juvenile and segregated artistic approach on Rhymin' only strengthens this sense. What does a cheap, jaundiced Mardi Gras mask possibly have in common with equally cheap, inverted dollhouse chairs? And what's with the terrifying heart-pupiled eye? Can't we ask Odysseus to ram a spike into it or something?

But on close listen, Rhymin' finds cohesion, its greatness unfolding around us as we sail narrow straights between the Scylla of 70's pop schmaltz the Charybdis of cultural appropriation.

Let's start on the Scylla side, shall we? Simon can sound saccharine on occasion. Songs like Why Don't You Write Me and The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine sound like byproducts of a men's retreat with Stephen Stills and Paul Anka. Everyone ate whipped cream out of tubs, compared biceps and combed their chest hair with care.

The album opens in these Scylla infested waters with Kodachrome, an almost too perfect pop number which, if taken a step further, would sound like a Chicago song. But Simon adds kick to the mix, enunciates the word "crap" with aplomb, and chides his ego whilst among the ladies. And so the whole thing rolls nicely: when this number comes up on FM radio, you'll hum along.

Other moments when he dodges the six heads of schmaltz include Quincy Jones' feathered pillow arrangement on Something So Right and the overall daddyrific vibes of Saint Judy's Comet. But both of these songs are masterpieces lyrically and melodically; we lean into the schmaltz because everything about the songs is indeed so very right.

I'm pretty convinced Dylan listened to Something So Right with great care before wrestling, over and over again, with You're a Big Girl Now a year later. Simon famously told Dylan in the mid sixties that he liked the rough sketch of a song Dylan had just cut in the studio. Paul encouraged Bob to take his time and build the track up into something great. Dylan responded by saying that the single rough take would be the only take; he had bigger fish to fry. The story is cute, but not altogether accurate; after all there's about 4000 studio takes of Like a Rolling Stone. And by 74 Bob gave Simon's perfectionist approach an even more earnest try. Thank god he did.

Listen for the organ to come soaring in, landing on the fence of Dylan's soundscape like a precious bird of flight. Am I wrong to think that this glorious track is a fitting cousin to Something So Right?

Okay, that covers the schmaltz. But the awkward whirlpool of cultural appropriation has also been a hazard in Simon's career and he narrowly dodges a few Charybdis sized abysses on Rhymin'. Three years after going full karaoke on El Condor Pasa he swims his way through two slightly cringy, I Wanna Be Black, soul numbers on Rhymin': Tenderness and Loves Me Like a Rock. Both come with the full support of The Dixie Hummingbirds. I'm even whiter than Simon so I can't comment with any authority on the ethics of Simon taking the lead while these great Black artists support him.

But I can tell you that I love both songs, especially Tenderness, and that Simon did a lot more than any other white artists of his generation to promote and give credit to the artists of color he worshiped and leaned on. He took the Peruvian band responsible for El Condor Pasa, Urubamba, as well as the Jessy Dixon Singers, on tour with him after this record, and both groups are featured with prominent respect on his subsequent live album (Live Rhymin' is another Dollar Bin classic and another significant entry in the ugly cover contest).

And we all know how Simon earnestly introduced American audiences to Brazilian and African artists in the 80's. Simon's career may be built on a good deal of appropriation, but it seems to me that he always tries to do it with respect. After all, he treats Aretha Franklin's version of Bridge over Troubled Water as the song's authoritative take.

But I'm not sure that even all those qualifiers can rectify the soft reggae vibes of the Rhymin' track Was A Sunny Day. If it's okay with you, let's give Simon a pass there, as the song does feature the vinyl debut of The Roches.

Alongside these skillful schmaltz and appropriation dodges Rhymin' also features a few straight up Paul Simon classics. Take Me to the Mardi Gras, One Man's Ceiling, Learn How to Fall and America Tune: these are beautiful songs from start to finish, each of them simple and incredibly complex all at once. Simon has the uncanny ability to turn easy listening into high art and there's a dark turn to be found in each song if you lean in. Listen to the Reverend Claude Jeter sing the glowing, devout bridge on Mardi Gras; worry about who's doing what behind Simon's building in Ceiling; count the impossible number of balanced harmonizing parts in Fall; and, most of all, take a moment to appreciate the towering greatness of American Tune.

As a teenager I saw Simon twice on the Rhythm of the Saints tour. Everything was dense, earnest and slick. But when Simon came out alone, in midst of the First Gulf War, and sang American Tune I got my first real taste of true patriotism: Simon loves his country enough to criticize it through earnest, complex and open-ended metaphor. I'd say he did the same thing on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 as well:

I don't care how little hair he has, and I don't care what his albums look like. Paul Simon is a Dollar Bin genius, an old friend who's still standing with us as we watch the Statue of Liberty sail away to sea. I sure hope we can come together and reel it back in.

Happy November everyone.

[fainthedcherry]

7.3.24 there was a deadline for a DTIYS my IRL friend, kobra_the_artist , hosted back around February!! I had like...3 days to finish the sketch I started back in February. It's...A pain being late to EVERYTHING with a deadline, but at least deadlines help me push finish a drawing, I otherwise would let rot in my WIP folder for almost a year (hell, some sketches are like 3 years old that are rotting in there now, that I'm self-aware about, yet still keep forgetting. ._." )

I don'ttt have too much to say on this one? Since it was a DTIYS, I recommend checking out the insta post simply, I'm not about to take my friend's artwork and cross-post it to somewhere else, I feel, that'd be scummy to do. :T SO LINK TO THE OG CONTEST POST! HUZZAH! plusssss, I think I yapped enough on my own insta post. :v

I just rlly wanted to draw Kobra, as I love her sona's design. I adore demon-anything, can u blame me LMAO. I need excuses to draw ppl's OCs willingly and gladly more. It's so hard to motivate myself to draw something at all for people anymore AUUUUGH

Somehow I won 1st place??? Don't ask em HOW, as I found other people's entries much better than mine ngl, butttt I'll never understand, that my art is actually enjoyed by some people anyway, ngl. Even years later, I still sometimes feel, like I don't deserve to call myself an artist LMFAO

I also added a little funne below, we both wanted to draw for fun, once we were in a call just rambling and stuff. On the right, has been drawn by Kobra!! (You can open the green, first link above, to her insta itself! She doesn't have Tumblr. No one in my friend group does, but I love Tumblr tbh. :"))

You should try ceramic pans. They are the best flavour. /lh

ANOTHER POST THERE IS! WHERE ART IS! I might post character concept-refs next. I'm running out of "good-looking things" to post, that won't make me look like a total amateur from the 2010s DA era. I've only uploaded these in my scraps on DA back then, so maybe you'll get weekly posts, as I draw concept refs basically weekly, to keep my chara-base up to date for comms and art exchange!

I wanna do a DTIYS myself some day!! But maybe in 4 years, where I dream of having paid off all my art-debt finally I've been working so hard to pay off on lately...

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I have too much stuff going on to be messing around with the Mythaura demo but... girlfriends