this is a poll to decide which is the best track on bridge over troubled water by simon and garfunkel

Okay, on re-listening to the S&G version, I can see that the rhythm tracks are actually really interestingly done, but I still think the melody line is boring drivel for the most part.

youre boring drivel for the most part

i kindof actually hadn't realised how fantastically produced their albums were although i guess this is like the high water mark.

I think this almost always gets overlooked. seems like a lot of attention has been historically focused on Simon's lyrics and the prettiness/fragility of their harmonies and not, say, the Bob Moog-programmed synth bass on "Save the Life of My Child"

my housemate declared this the best produced album of all time

best: only living boy in new york
worst: there are no bad songs
sleeper: keep the customer happy

went and listened to Cecelia, I've heard that chorus before but never the whole track

when I was in high school the vibe I got from Simon & Garfunkel was deeply "this is the kind of music people you hate really ride hard for" so I avoided the shit out of it

then after high school finding out whether s&g were actually ok didn't seem like a big priority

what kind of people were really into s&g when you went to high school???

professor's kids

ok i had to open itunes and put this on

love just how big and yet delicate these songs are

professor's kids

:(

when I was in high school the vibe I got from Simon & Garfunkel was deeply "this is the kind of music people you hate really ride hard for" so I avoided the shit out of it

I get why people like them even if I can't really go there myself. Like Shakey mentions, 'Save The Life Of My Child' is a good example of them going for weird and not making it, but 'Cecelia' is the one mp3 by them on my hard drive & it's because of the drums & the gated flute break.

the bit on the boxer where it goes "cut him til he cried out" and on the "cut him" there's this perfect shift where he strums real heavy on the guitar and their voices get real emphatic and the whole dynamic sets itself around this sharp fulcrum

there are so many fantastic small details here

that Simon thought no one knew he was the songwriter/main genius behind the act. which seemed odd

I wouldn't be surprised if this was specifically in relation to the title track - which Simon doesn't sing on - and was there biggest hit.

which was their

argh

hmm wait Simon does sing on BOTW he just doesn't sing the lead, right?

Ówen a lotta my weirdo class rage has to do with my biological dad being a professor and my stepdad being a really smart psychopath from a really poor Indiana town with a chip on his shoulder about the intellectual class so the professor-kids of my town were objects of really profound envy to me, and there were tons of them (five colleges in my town) & they were all in my peer group & they all had money & they were all gonna go to Yale or Columbia or NYU & it looked from the outside like their lives kinda fuckin' ruled and they all loved Simon & Garfunkel a lot, mind you I didn't like run around raging against these ppl they were my peer group I just harbored "secret" (i.e. probably not secret) grudges against them

thanks for the free therapy y'all it's actually quite helpful

tell me about your mother

also its so balanced, the way somthing like cecilia cuts into the creaminess of that frank lloyd wright song, or how even the huge echo-voices on the only living boy in new york aren't like EPIC but gaseous and diaphanous. the hugeness of that snare crack but at the same time its just this rudimentary whack, a guy with his arms raised over its head.

gotta go with the boxer for inspiring this story of plagiarism in a queens english class...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt_TOuUOEWY

Dude invented the phrase "bridge over troubled water." Made the damn thin up, and now it's as permanent as Shakespeare.

I don't think of myself as liking this album all that much, but I'm finding it hard to pick one song because I like so many.

I remember my mother asking my brother if "Keep the Customer Satisfied" was about selling drugs and he insisted it wasn't. Then when she was out of the room he turned to me and said: it probably is. And I was shocked he would lie to her like that. (I was in elementary school and he would probably have been in high school at the time.) My mom played the heck out of that album.

youre boring drivel for the most part

;_;

I've never owned it, so I just know (and like) all the hits. Definitely "Cecilia."

If you haven't heard, worth a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pey29CLID3I

Listening now, this album is kind of amazing, mostly for the inner songs. Also, it's funny to listen now and make all these musical connections I would have been in no position to make when I was much younger. (I don't think I've ever consciously realized "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright" had a bossa feel to it, but it may be a really long time since I've heard it.)

Dude invented the phrase "bridge over troubled water." Made the damn thin up, and now it's as permanent as Shakespeare.

have never heard someone use this phrase outside of paul simon talk

voted el condor pasa but it could be a bunch of these. i prefer any version on live rhymin which i guess is challops? i love that thing.

"Only Living Boy in New York" but it hurts to split it up like this

his image/metaphors are his best trick as a lyricist. "everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance/ everybody thinks its true" like how the metaphor relies one that specificity of the image.

No sweat Aero I just got both parents and step-parents as professors and it didn't get me anything but an intimate knowledge of insect taxonomy. Plus I'm feeling the American culture war a little more sensitively with Election 2012 in my Paul Simon-loving face

I only thought you were trolling cause if I launched into a "L Cohen sucks dog dick" argument then later confessed I'd only heard "Bird on a Wire" you'd probably say nuts to me too

had no idea El Condor Pasa was already a pre-exisitng tune until that BBC doc a few weeks back. the story of how they made that rhythm track on Cecilia was amazing too.

What documentary was that piscesx, would like to hear that story myself

this is such an outstanding album for all the reasons outlined above. the sound of it, the textures, are extraordinary. Simon's songwriting is really inventive here too, the title track and "New York" and "Frank Lloyd Wright" all have clever, unexpected swerves.

i guess "Keep the Customer Satisfied" is "about" dealing weed but really he just uses it as another extended metaphor for the touring musician. it's ridiculously joyous in the context of the dreamy introspective stuff, either way.

This is between Cecelia and Only Boy for me, but really it's a very good record all round. It's the one record my parents had on vinyl, then bought on cassette when it came out, bought it on cd when that came out, and I think they have it as mp3's too.

The title song stood for that Sunday afternoon feeling of my parents getting out the sherry and playing this album. Not cool when you're a 14 year old, but it stuck with me and I now am grateful for them playing it so often I think.

xp The Harmony Game; it's also on the 40th anniversary edition of the CD+DVD package, no throwaway thing either it was 70 minutes long. it was amazing; told you all about how 'anti' the sponsors were of their 1969 TV film 'songs of america'. the 'Bell' telephone company had a big row with them. i literally had no idea they were so political, and had never heard of the 'songs of america' tv show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfu517mGEK4

Thanks!

had no idea El Condor Pasa was already a pre-exisitng tune until that BBC doc a few weeks back. the story of how they made that rhythm track on Cecilia was amazing too.

I only knew this from living near some Peruvian buskers who played it. (I just lucked out and found video of the actual same buskers, below.) So the song is actually an early version of what Simon did decades later, writing pop songs in obscure genres.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yvit9dvKIE

Probably 'Only Living Boy', that's a transcendent piece of music.

I've thinking about 'Keep the Customer' quite a lot lately, mainly to try and work out whether it's 'heard' or 'read' (in the Bible), and how perceptive heard would be, in describing the experience of a former? churchgoer.

Some good thoughts here about the meaning of the lyric

http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/7342/

Vietnam vet? Black salesman?

I always assumed travelling salesman from the bible belt myself.

This was my favourite record between the ages of 6 and 10. It was the only LP my parents played that wasn't Jim Reeves. I remember loving the jauntiness in Keep the Customer Satisfied, and thinking that Only Living Boy was a bit weird and I didn't like it too much. Now listening to it, outside the title track (overplayed) there's not much I'd like to skip. Oh, apart from the Everly Brothers cover, that song's pretty lumpen imo.

Just watched the doc talked about upthread. It's def. worth checking out. I lolled at Paul Simon calling Cecelia "pretty hooky" like he was surprised by it or something.

voted "Only Living Boy", & yeah it's the production: I read or heard that those aaahs in the "chorus" were S&G singing at the top of their lungs, shouting really, voices breaking, but that they'd mixed it to sound like they were just singing backing vocals: so that's what gives those aaahs such intensity. Maybe that's a common trick in production, I dunno, not a gamer: but it's thoroughly moving.

it took me a while to come around to S&G (& to PS also) b/c it was square music to me, but then I grew up & cast aside childish ways

I don't know... I like most of the songs on this album, but to me "The Boxer" is classic and timeless and perfect in a way "Cecillia" or "Only Boy" just don't approach. Its interesting that everyone seems to have a lot of real serious S&G opinions and knowledge to drop.

It has to be 'The Only Living Boy In New York', without a second thought or any doubt. Absolutely wonderful harmonies, and such a beautiful tune. Possibly my favourite Simon & Garfunkel song overall as well.

i was really hoping horseshoe was gonna show up on this at some point.

It was the only LP my parents played that wasn't Jim Reeves.

Tell a lie, it was Jim Reeves and Charley Pride in my house, wall to wall. I had to scrape by with S&G and Buddy Holly's Greatest Hits.

I keep forgetting that "The Boxer" is the lie-luhlie song

"Cecilia" is probably my favorite S&G song though, I just adore the percussion to bits

these guys are fucking amazing tho, I don't listen to them nearly enough

when Cleveland Jr started singing his personalized love song to his g/f Cecilia on the latest Cleveland Show, I was hoping he was about to launch into a flamenco version of the S&G tune.

alas, it didn't happen

yeah amazing innit.

El condor pasa is from 1910 or so and is inspired by Andean (Peruvian) music. I don't know if it became even more popular in latin grounds after Paul Simon's version but it is quite surely the second most overplayed Andean-style song after 'Huamaqueño' (aka carnavalito)'. There's too many versions of the later in youtube (even a King Africa one which I find hilarious and that predates reggaeton)... I kind of hate the ones I've found so I'll post a random live version because it captures better how I often hear the song anyways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDUL3w7zFD4

Funny thing about those two songs is that they're the ones that define Andean music for pretty much all the world and 'Huamahuaqueña' is actually from Argentina, not Peru and I believe most people think 'el condor pasa' is originally by Paul Simon.

this is the only version of "el condor pasa" that truly matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAeV2PTIofA

btw these are the guys who played with simon & garfunkel (as 'los incas' at the time) for their rendition of "el condor pasa". they renamed themselves URUBAMBA and made an album produced by PS at the early 70s.

http://i.imgur.com/PcTRl.jpg

super cool groovy andean music, anyone knows this particular record?

i feel like even as a kid i knew "El Condor Pasa" was a trad arr tune

a robbie basho el condor pasa wld be such an obviously splendid fit it must surely exist already, on another plane if not this one

I groaned when I was at the Valley of the Moon, just outside La Paz, Bolivia in the midst of the Andes, & a guy on a pan flute showed up & played "El Condor Pasa". like, we're tourists, but pretty hardcore ones given where we're at: surely you can appease us with something that we haven't heard before?

How did I miss this poll? Would've voted for Customer, which is fucking raucous, on the assumption that TOLBINY would win anyway.

I don't know where to post this unusual detail in a Wikipedia article so I am posting it here:

Halee grew up on Long Island, New York. His father, also named Roy Halee, provided the singing voice for Mighty Mouse in late 1940s Terrytoons cartoons, as well as the voices of Heckle and Jeckle from 1951 through 1961.

And a link to an interesting interview with Roy: http://www.mixonline.com/mag/audio_roy_halee/

The revive inspired my choice at last night's Devon Record Club. http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/simon-and-garfunkel-bridge-over-troubled-water-round-29-nicks-choice/

Some relatives put this on today and it reminded me how much I disliked the original album sequence.

The first time I heard it, I was generally a fan of Paul Simon's solo work and Bookends, but I didn't like this album. I couldn't get into it and returned it to the library. Then about two, maybe three years later, I checked out the Old Friends box set from 1997, and for whatever reason, I mistook disc three as presenting the album as-is with some bonuses surrounding it, similar to what the Peel Slowly and See box set did with the Velvet Underground albums. (The one exception was "Bye Bye Love" - they included a live recording that had nothing to do with the album, so I figured they just dropped the album's version to avoid redundancy.) Something about that sequence completely worked. It was a night and day difference to me and the effect was immediate, it made me a fan.

It wasn't until later that I realized the album had a different sequence - in fact, Old Friends programmed everything chronologically by recording date, meaning there was no artistic thought put into it, just cold logic, but it worked well enough to me that I programmed the album that way in iTunes and elsewhere:

1. The Boxer
2. Baby Driver
3. Why Don't You Write Me
4. Keep the Customer Satisfied
5. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
6. Bye Bye Love (not on Old Friends, but it can only go here due to the cross-fade)
7. Song for the Asking
8. Cecilia
9. El Condor Pasa (If I Could)
10. Bridge Over Troubled Water
11. The Only Living Boy in New York

Listening to the album as it was released, I can see why I didn't like it. The slight numbers feel more inconsequential when they're scattered between the heavier songs. Grouped together, they feel more sturdy as a small run of really tuneful and catchy numbers. The title cut always felt overwrought to me and following it with "El Condor Pasa" made the whole thing feel pretentious from the get-go. With a long build-up to those tracks (with the title cut as the climax), it feels much more organic to me. Even the title cut doesn't feel so over-the-top - like it makes sense for it to rise up to that level when it's placed as the penultimate track.

And both "The Boxer" and "The Only Living Boy in New York" feel like the perfect opening and closing track, especially the latter - it just feels like a logical conclusion. Listening to the album as it was released, it just sounds weird and tacked-on to have "Why Don't You Write Me" follow "The Only Living Boy in New York," and "Why Don't You Write Me" feels even more slight as a result, like a nothing track.

The only thing that might be off for some (but not me) is "Song for the Asking" in the number 7 slot. I can *see* how it's designed to be a closing track, but it doesn't do the job as well. It feels too light and wistful - if they wanted this album to be a major statement, it doesn't feel like the a great way of ending it at all. (Segueing it with a perfunctory "Bye Bye Love" doesn't help.) It does just fine to me slotted before "Cecilia."

All good points. If "Song for the Asking" didn't have the live segue, it could go first as a brief intro, like "Bookends Theme".

I'm wondering if there's a work part that doesn't have the segue? Usually they exist - like they mix down the two songs separately, then bounce them down to another tape to create the crossfade. (It would be too much of a pain, maybe even impossible, to create that crossfade in mixdowns created straight from the multitrack of two different songs.) The Old Friends box set would've been the ideal place to include it but they didn't - it fades in on the applause at the end of "Bye Bye Love."

the only living boy was like the biggest revelation.it has this liquid bassline that kind of dances around as the whole thing floats on perfectly modulated reverb, a choir in a wind tunnel this tender paean to friendship the simple chords on the acoustic guitar glistening, something majestic and glacial, a song about brothers.

― judith, Friday, January 6, 2012 4:56 PM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

love this. and the idea of the wind tunnel -- I can never decide if those voices are in closed or open space, moving or still, but that image works.

of all the amazing moments on this album though, on revisit nothing gets me like the addition of "up in my bedroom" on "Cecilia," just beaming, superfluous beauty

that wind tunnel choir very sgt pepper's to me, lucy in the sky