Friday, November 22, 2013

Rockin' Funnies: You Can Call Me Al (1986)

For years, I've wondered why Paul Simon let his friend, actor-comic Chevy Chase (ex-Saturday Night Live, most recently on Community), lip-sync for him in the video for the first single from his Grammy winning 1986 CD, "Graceland". Well, it turns out Chase knows a little something about music, too.

If you have digital cable, and you've tuned to Music Choice's 70's channel, invariably you'll find a track for Steely Dan. Among the trivial nuggets shown as the songs play (i.e. "Deacon Blues") is the fact that Steely Dan's co-leaders, Donald Fagen & Walter Becker, once played in a band that had Chase as the drummer! That's why Chevy looks like he'd be right at home playing the bongos that are sitting in front of him during "You Can Call Me Al". The closest that Chase ever got to revisiting his musical career, aside from this video, would be when he starred in "Three Amigos" with Steve Martin & Martin Short.

Anyway, now that we've established that Simon was not doing a ventriloquist act with Chase, here's "You Can Call Me Al", from Simon's VEVO channel:

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