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

and even the best songs are a bit hampered by the vocal arrangements.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 10 February 2012 22:26 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://i946.photobucket.com/albums/ad303/menageabro/picardfacepalm.gif

I GET SLANDERED, LIIIIBELED, I HEAR WORDS I NEVER HEARD IN THE BIBLE

UPGRADE TO PRO TODAY!

UPGRADE YR OPINIONS TODAY!

it was picardfacepalm.gif ftr

What, clemenza, that book came out last year.

I ordered the trade paperback, so I guess that's what comes out in the summer. Dumb--the hardcover wasn't all that much more.

Heard the best version ever of "El Condor Pasa" tonight.

I GET SLANDERED, LIIIIBELED, I HEAR WORDS I NEVER HEARD IN THE BIBLE

― flopson, Saturday, February 11, 2012 1:32 AM (Yesterday)

Wow I might need to read the 1970 book

The thing about this record is that "The Only Living Boy In New York" is SUCH a "last song" that everything after that feels like a bonus track, and ALSO feels like a "last song." It makes the album simultaneously seem way too short and way too long, for me anyway.

Wasn't feeling well today and decided to watch "The Harmony Game" which turned out to be what the doctor ordered

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