It’s Friday, so here’s the video for “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon

A terrific song from an amazing album, sure, but you’ve also got to love the video. It’s a very simple concept, and it’s done very well.

Chevy Chase and Paul Simon have a real comic rapport here that you don’t get to see in a lot of videos, the former hamming it up while the latter plays the dejected straight man. It works, and it’s a lot of fun to watch. The difference of over a foot between their heights doesn’t hurt either; I’d be the first to make a Yogi and Boo Boo comparison, if those two characters hadn’t already been ruined forever by a movie starring a fellow member of the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players.”

This isn’t actually the song’s original video. Paul Simon wasn’t a fan of the first video, which featured a simple performance of the song during the monologue segment of one of his twelve appearances on Saturday Night Live. Producer Lorne Michaels himself was one of the brains behind this “replacement” version.

The song itself has endured as a favourite at sports events in the States. Not only that, but Al Gore adopted it as a theme for his 1992 campaign for the vice presidency, raising yet another uneasy suspicion that he might actually be a really cool guy.

Posted in It's Friday