We can't all be raised by whores in the backroom of a roadhouse. Yet for many, so called "roots" music has to at least sound like it sprang from a deep well of human misery to be deemed authentic. If you can't live the life, you can at least fake it by affecting a cigarette scratch death rattle of a voice and carefully constructing music that stumbles and swaggers like a mean drunk.Then there is the other option. To take your baby soft hands, your college-bred chops, your glee club voice and your jew-fro and play your tune with no attempt to disguise who you are or where you came from. This is the tact taken by Simon and Garfunkle on "Keep the Customer Satisfied" and you can't fault them for honesty, or for sounding totally awesome.
This song is basically an episode of the Dukes of Hazard, as narrated by guys who prefers the Paper Chase. Yet at the same time they sounds delighted to be slumming it with the good old boys. Like with George Harrison before them, they have a way of making studied arrangements played with all the grit of a midi sequencer sound vital and alive. One of the best things about this song is that it doesn't sound like the band has been around this pariculat block 100 times before, either in smokey bar rooms or top-flight nashville studios. Instead you're hearing the thrill of Simon and Garfunkel trying this particular suit on for the very first time. And when the spot on horn section kicks in, it's hard to tell who's more thrilled, us or them.
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Do you by any chance know who the personnel are in the horn section. It is a big, ballsy performance of a nice arrangement, and an important reason why the album was so successful.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia the credits on the album just says:
ReplyDeleteBryan Beck – flute, saxophones, horn section