Download Instrumental    My friend Charlene, a woman of dubious reputation, is the proud owner of an adorable stone owl which sits prominently on her fireplace mantel.  She’s elected to name him Al…”you know, from the song”.  It’s the perfect name for this critter and inspired me to pull that Paul Simon tune out of the storage bin.

“You Can Call Me Al” resides in my archives because we’ve never tried to perform it.  It’s simply too difficult, at least for me.  Oh sure, the song is fun and irreverent and has a great happy beat, but the lyrics… oh, man, the lyrics.  The words are so intricately woven into the music it’s almost impossible to figure out how to get ’em all in.  And they don’t make much sense, especially the third verse.  It’s vaguely about a man in the midst of a mid-life crisis who somehow ends up in a foreign country with some roly-poly little bat-faced girl in an alley somewhere.  I’m sure the meaning is clear as a bell to Paul Simon but he’s never bothered to explain them to us.  If I were you, I’d make up my own words.

I used a synthesized flute for the crazy melody line just so it would punch through.  There’s a penny whistle solo that I didn’t get quite right but it’ll work onstage if your audience is very forgiving.  The rest of the instrumentation was easy:  drums, bass, guitar and a little brass make up the whole arrangement.  It’s just those pesky lyrics that will give you a problem.  If you’ve got the vocal chops for this one, the sequence is on the Pop/Rock list.

Yes, Charlene, there is an “Al” – thanks for your reminder.  Oh, and take a look below at the hilarious video with Chevy Chase lip-syncing the lyrics.  Notice how many times Paul twiddles his thumbs.  It’s worth viewing one more time if you haven’t seen it in awhile.