When I was about 16, my uncle gave me a CD of Paul Simon's "Graceland" (so, you now know about when I was 16...). Of course, this was in the days before portable CD players or iPods, so my first task was to copy it onto a cassette tape so that I could actually listen to it in my car or walkman. What happened next?
Well, there are probably only 3 or 4 rock/blues albums from my pre-college years that define who I am in terms of my musical tastes and Graceland is one of them. If there was one album that changed me, this was it. Had there ever been an album that combined rock, blues, and folk with these strange, seductive African rhythms and melodies before? Probably. Had a kid from Cleveland, Ohio ever heard it before? Aaaah....No. This was way off in left field.
I went off to Turkey as an exchange student and Graceland went with me. "You can Call me Al" is one of the 5 greatest videos every made, but before I ever saw it, before I was ever "soft in the middle", I was "Al".
How? Well, imagine yourself at 16 years old and in Turkey. This was 1988 and the U.S. was not too far removed from bombing Libya, having Marines barracks blown up in Lebanon, or from the Iran hostage situation. Names were being called out to match kids with host families and they were calling for someone named, "Alan Gregory". This not being me and there being 100 other kids waiting to find out who their host families were, I paid no attention to this call for someone clearly not me.
99 kids had their names called and I was left waiting. I walked up to a coordinator and asked about the situation and was roundly chastised for not raising my hand when my name was called. "You never called my name", I said. "Of course we did. You are Allen Gregory, " came the reply.
You can Call me Al.
"A man walks down the street
it's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the third world
maybe it's his first time around.
He doesn't speak the language
he hold no currency; he is a foreign man..."
You can Call me Al.
I spent, now, 2/3 of my life in this situation, learning it as I went along.
This, by the way, cracks me up:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=BJwsLFDhoqM&feature=related
As compared to the original:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=HOiVaE-pKqM