Pop & Miscellaneous

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge over Troubled Water (1970)

2009-10-13T21:26:02Z

Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge over Troubled Water (1970)


A1 	Bridge Over Troubled Water 	4:54
A2 	El Condor Pasa (If I Could) 	3:07
A3 	Cecilia 	2:56
A4 	Keep The Customer Satisfied 	2:35
A5 	So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright 	3:38
B1 	The Boxer 	5:13
B2 	Baby Driver 	3:19
B3 	The Only Living Boy In New York 	3:58
B4 	Why Don't You Write Me 	2:48
B5 	Bye Bye Love 	2:50
B6 	Song For The Asking 	1:46

Bass – Joe Osborn
Drums – Hal Blaine
Guitar – Fred Carter, Jr., Paul Simon
Keyboards – Larry Knechtel
Strings – Ernie Freeman, Jimmy Haskell
Vocals – Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon

Bridge Over Troubled Water was one of the biggest-selling albums of its decade, and it hasn't fallen too far down on the list in years since. Apart from the gospel-flavored title track, which took some evolution to get to what it finally became, however, much of Bridge Over Troubled Water also constitutes a stepping back from the music that Simon & Garfunkel had made on Bookends -- this was mostly because the creative partnership that had formed the body and the motivation for the duo's four prior albums literally consumed itself in the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water. The overall effect was perhaps the most delicately textured album to close out the 1960s from any major rock act. Bridge Over Troubled Water, at its most ambitious and bold, on its title track, was a quietly reassuring album; at other times, it was personal yet soothing; and at other times, it was just plain fun. The public in 1970 -- a very unsettled time politically, socially, and culturally -- embraced it; and whatever mood they captured, the songs matched the standard of craftsmanship that had been established on the duo's two prior albums. Between the record's overall quality and its four hits, the album held the number one position for two and a half months and spent years on the charts, racking up sales in excess of five million copies. The irony was that for all of the record's and the music's appeal, the duo's partnership ended in the course of creating and completing the album. ---Bruce Eder, AllMusic Review

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back

Simon & Garfunkel - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966)

2011-07-31T18:27:37Z

Simon & Garfunkel - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966)


01. Scarborough Fair/Canticle – 3:07			play
02. Patterns – 2:40		
03. Cloudy – 2:10
04. Homeward Bound – 2:26
05. The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine – 2:40
06. The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) – 1:39
07. The Dangling Conversation – 2:36
08. Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall – 2:08		play
09. A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission) – 2:09
10. For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her – 2:01
11. A Poem On The Underground Wall – 1:52
12. 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night – 1:57

Personnel:
Paul Simon - guitar, vocals
Art Garfunkel – vocals+
Joe South - guitar
Carol Kaye - bass guitar on Scarborough Fair/Canticle and Homeward Bound
Eugene Wright (bassist)
Joe Morello (drummer)

Simon & Garfunkel's first masterpiece, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was also the first album on which the duo, in tandem with engineer Roy Halee, exerted total control from beginning to end, right down to the mixing, and it is an achievement akin to the Beatles' Revolver or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests. After the frantic rush to put together an LP in just three weeks that characterized the Sounds of Silence album early in 1966, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme came together over a longer gestation period of about three months, an uncommonly extended period of recording in those days, but it gave the duo a chance to develop and shape the songs the way they wanted them. The album opens with one of the last vestiges of Paul Simon's stay in England, "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" -- the latter was the duo's adaptation of a centuries-old English folk song in an arrangement that Simon had learned from Martin Carthy. The two transformed the song into a daunting achievement in the studio, however, incorporating myriad vocal overdubs and utilizing a harpsichord, among other instruments, to embellish it, and also wove into its structure Simon's "The Side of a Hill," a gentle antiwar song that he had previously recorded on The Paul Simon Songbook in England. The sonic results were startling on their face, a record that was every bit as challenging in its way as "Good Vibrations," but the subliminal effect was even more profound, mixing a hauntingly beautiful antique melody, and a song about love in a peaceful, domestic setting, with a message about war and death; Simon & Garfunkel were never as political as, say, Peter, Paul & Mary or Joan Baez, but on this record they did bring the Vietnam war home.

The rest of the album was less imposing but just as beguiling -- audiences could revel in the play of Simon's mind (and Simon & Garfunkel's arranging skills) and his sense of wonder (and frustration) on "Patterns," and appreciate the sneering rock & roll-based social commentary "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine." Two of the most beautiful songs ever written about the simple joys of living, the languid "Cloudy" and bouncy "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," were no less seductive, and the album also included "Homeward Bound," their Top Five hit follow-up to "The Sound of Silence," which had actually been recorded at the sessions for that LP. No Simon & Garfunkel song elicits more difference of opinion than "The Dangling Conversation," making its LP debut here -- one camp regards it as hopelessly pretentious and precious in its literary name-dropping and rich string orchestra accompaniment, while another holds it as a finely articulate account of a couple grown distant and disconnected through their intellectual pretensions; emotionally, it is definitely the precursor to the more highly regarded "Overs" off the next album, and it resonated well on college campuses at the time, evoking images of graduate school couples drifting apart, but for all the beauty of the singing and the arrangement, it also seemed far removed from the experience of teenagers or any listeners not living a life surrounded by literature ("couplets out of rhyme" indeed!), and understandably only made the Top 30 on AM radio. "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" was a romantic idyll that presented Art Garfunkel at his most vulnerable sounding, anticipating such solo releases of his as "All I Know," while "Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall" was Simon at his most reflectively philosophical, dealing with age and its changes much as "Patterns" dealt with the struggle to change, with a dissonant note (literally) at the end that anticipated the style of the duo's next album.

"A Simple Desultory Philippic," which also started life in England more than a year earlier, was the team's Dylanesque fuzz tone-laden jape at folk-rock, and a statement of who they weren't, and remains, alongside Peter, Paul & Mary's "I Dig Rock & Roll Music," one of the best satires of its kind. And the last of Simon's English-period songs, "A Poem on the Underground Wall," seemed to sum up the tightrope walk that the duo did at almost every turn on this record at this point in their career -- built around a beautiful melody and gorgeous hooks, it was, nonetheless, a study in personal privation and desperation, the "sound of silence" heard from the inside out, a voice crying out. Brilliantly arranged in a sound that was as much rock as film music, but with the requisite acoustic guitars, and displaying a dazzling command and range of language, it could have ended the album. Instead, the duo offered "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night," a conceptual work that was a grim and ironic (and prophetic) comment on the state of the United States in 1966. In retrospect, it dated the album somewhat, but that final track, among the darkest album-closers of the 1960s, also proved that Simon & Garfunkel weren't afraid to get downbeat as well as serious for a purpose. Overall, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was the duo's album about youthful exuberance and alienation, and it proved perennially popular among older, more thoughtful high-school students and legions of college audiences across generations. [The August 2001 reissue offers not only the best sound ever heard on this album in any incarnation, but also a few bonuses -- a slightly extended mastering of "Cloudy" that gives the listener a high-harmony surprise in its fade; and, as actual bonus tracks, Simon's solo demos of "Patterns" and "A Poem on the Underground Wall." Raw and personal, they're startling in their intimacy and their directness, and offer a more intimate view of Paul Simon, the artist, than ever seen.]

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds Of Silence 1966

2009-10-13T21:27:23Z

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds Of Silence 1966


1. The Sounds Of Silence  	03:06 
2. Leaves That Are Green 	02:22 
3. Blessed 	03:16 
4. Kathys Song 	03:19
5. Somewhere They Cant Find Me 	02:37 
6. Anji 	02:16 
7. Homeward Bound (Live Version) 	02:45
8. Richard Cory 	02:57
9. A Most Peculiar Man 	02:31 
10. April Come She Will 	01:51
11. Weve Got A Groovey Thing Goin 	01:58 
12. I Am A Rock

download: easy-share mediafire

back

Simon & Garfunkel - Tokyo Dome 2009

2010-02-01T23:48:48Z

Simon & Garfunkel - Tokyo Dome 2009


01 -intro- 
02 Old Friend - Bookends 
03 A Hazy Shade Of Winter 
04 I Am A Rock 
05 America 
06 Kathy's Song 
07 Hey Schoolgirl 
08 Be Bop A Lula 
09 Scarborough Fair 
10 Homeward Bound 
11 Mrs. Robinson w/ Not Fade Away 
12 Slip Slidin' Away 
13 El Condor Pasa 
14 Bright Eyes (Art solo) 
15 A Heart In New York (Art solo) 
16 Perfect Moment (Art solo) 
17 Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (Art solo) 
18 The Boy In The Bubble (Paul solo) 
19 Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes (Paul solo) 
20 Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul solo) 
21 Only Living Boy In New York 
22 My Little Town 
23 Bridge Over Troubled Water 
24 -encore 1- 
25 The Sound Of Silence 
26 The Boxer 
27 -encore 2- 
28 Leaves That Are Green 
29 Cecilia 
30 -band introduction- 
31 Cecilia (reprise) 
32 -outro-

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL 
"OLD FRIENDS" Japan Tour 

July 10, 2009 
Tokyo Dome 
Tokyo, Japan

download (mp3 @VBR kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back

Simon & Garfunkel ‎– Live From New York City (1967/2002)

2017-01-30T17:59:28Z

Simon & Garfunkel ‎– Live From New York City (1967/2002)


1 	He Was My Brother 	3:21
2 	Leaves That Are Green 	2:57
3 	Sparrow 	3:06
4 	Homeward Bound 	2:40
5 	You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies 	2:07
6 	A Most Peculiar Man 	3:00
7 	The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) 	1:50
8 	The Dangling Conversation 	3:02
9 	Richard Cory 	3:24
10 	A Hazy Shade Of Winter 	2:38
11 	Benedictus	2:55
12 	Blessed 	3:46
13 	A Poem On The Underground Wall 	4:46
14 	Anji	2:28
15 	I Am A Rock 	2:58
16 	The Sound Of Silence 	3:25
17 	For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her 	2:40
18 	A Church Is Burning 	3:43
19 	Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. 	3:36

Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon – guitar, vocals

Philharmonic Hall, NYC, January 22, 1967

Recorded on January 22, 1967, at Lincoln Center in New York, four of these 19 songs were on the 1997 Old Friends box set, but the rest were unissued until the 2002 appearance of this release. The duo performs acoustically, without accompanists (as was usually the case in their concerts), on a fine-sounding and well-delivered set that doesn't contain any revelations, but is nonetheless an excellent document of their live work as they reached their prime. Certainly a Simon & Garfunkel fan could have hardly wished for a better song selection, as it features all the major hits and most of the best album tracks that the pair had recorded prior to 1967: "The Sound of Silence," "I Am a Rock," "Homeward Bound," "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," "Richard Cory," "A Hazy Shade of Winter," "The Dangling Conversation," "Anji," and "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her." Some of the more offbeat moments, however, lie in less-celebrated songs like "Leaves That Are Green," "Benedictus," and "He Was My Brother." Only two of the cuts, though, would qualify as relatively seldom-heard tunes: "A Church Is Burning," which Paul Simon put on his 1965 U.K.-only solo album but was not recorded for release by Simon & Garfunkel, and the uncommonly tough-minded "You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies," which would be a 1967 non-LP B-side (of "Fakin' It"). Numerous live Simon & Garfunkel bootlegs had circulated before this release, so the pair's concert sound will not come as a shock to hardcore fans, but it's great to have a classy, above-board document of their live presence. --- Richie Unterberger, AllMusic Review

download (mp3 @192 kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru ge.tt

back

Simon & Garfunkel ‎– Old Friends (2004)

2018-09-30T10:48:34Z

Simon & Garfunkel ‎– Old Friends (2004)

Disc: 1
  1. Bleecker Street
  2. The Sound of Silence
  3. The Sun Is Burning
  4. Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M
  5. He Was My Brother
  6. Sparrow
  7. Peggy-O
  8. Benedictus
  9. Somewhere They Can't Find Me
  10. We've Got a Groovy Thing Going On
  11. Leaves That Are Green
  12. Richard Cory
  13. I Am a Rock
  14. The Sound of Silence
  15. Homeward Bound
  16. Blues Run the Game
  17. Kathy's Song
  18. April Come She Will
  19. Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall

Disc: 2
  1. Patterns
  2. Cloudy
  3. The Dangling Conversation
  4. Scarborough Fair / Canticle
  5. The 59th Street Bridge Song
  6. For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her
  7. O'clock News / Silent Night
  8. A Hazy Shade of Winter
  9. At the Zoo
  10. A Poem on the Underground Wall
  11. Red Rubber Ball
  12. Blessed
  13. Anji
  14. A Church Is Burning
  15. Fakin' It
  16. Save the Life of My Child
  17. Program Open: America
  18. You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies
  19. Punky's Dilemma
  20. Comfort and Joy
  21. Star Carol

Disc: 3
  1. Mrs. Robinson
  2. Old Friend / Bookends
  3. Overs
  4. A Most Peculiar Man
  5. Bye Bye Love
  6. The Boxer
  7. Baby Driver
  8. Why Don't You Write Me
  9. Feuilles-O
  10. Keep the Customer Satisfied
  11. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
  12. Song for the Asking
  13. Cecilia
  14. El Condor Pasa (If I Could)
  15. Bridge Over Troubled Water
  16. The Only Living Boy in New York
  17. Hey Schoolgirl / Black Slacks
  18. That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine
  19. My Little Town

Warren Bernhardt 	Piano
Art Garfunkel 	Vocals
Jamey Haddad 	Percussion
Jim Keltner 	Drums
Jorge Milchberg 	Arranger, Guitar
Pino Palladino 	Bass, Guitar (Bass)
Larry Saltzman 	Guitar
Rob Schwimmer 	Keyboards, Theremin
Paul Simon 	Guitar, Vocals
Mark Stewart 	Cello, Guitar

This three-disc collection features 15 previously unreleased tracks including live material, demos, and studio outtakes previously unreleased, alongside a substantial number of the duo's hits. Early demos point up Paul Simon's excellent acoustic guitar fingerpicking and emerging songwriting. "The Sound of Silence" is featured in its original undubbed form and the later overdubbed band version that became the hit. The duo's strongest work is all here, and the addition of several B-sides makes this a helpful collection to have around. --Rob O'Connor, Editorial Reviews

During their brief but remarkable career, Simon and Garfunkel recorded a mere five albums (not counting "The Graduate" soundtrack), and now there are at least as many repackagings of their work. Rather than waste time deciding where each collection overlaps, and which of your favorite tracks are or are not included, your best bet may be to pick up "Old Friends," a handsomely designed three-disc set.

All the major hits are here - "Sound of Silence," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Mrs. Robinson," "At the Zoo," "Scarborough Fair," "Cecilia," "I Am A Rock," "Hazy Shade of Winter," "El Condor Pasa," and "The Dangling Conversation," among others - as well as comparatively obscure gems like "Fakin' It" and "The Only Living Boy in New York."

What gives "Old Friends" the edge over other collections is the unreleased live version of "Red Rubber Ball," the Paul Simon composition previously available only in a version by The Cyrcle, and the inclusion of the rarely anthologized "Keep the Customer Satisfied" and Simon's rewrite of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem "Richard Cory."

The remastered sound is superb, and there's a booklet with an essay and rare photos. In one rather Orwellian move, the cover photo has been airbrushed to remove a cigarette from Simon's left hand, but the Surgeon General isn't mentioned in the credits. ---Brian W. Fairbanks, amazon.ca

download (mp3 @192 kbs):

yandex mediafire ulozto gett

back

Simon & Garfunkel – Bookends (1968)

2011-02-21T19:48:02Z

Simon & Garfunkel – Bookends (1968)


1. Bookends Theme 
2. Save The Life Of My Child  
3. America                      play
4. Overs
5. Voices Of Old People 
6. Old Friends 
7. Bookends Theme 
8. Fakin’ It 
9. Punky’s Dilemma  
10. Mrs. Robinson               play
11. A Hazy Shade Of Winter 
12. At The Zoo 
13. You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies 
14. Old Friends 

Personnel:
* Paul Simon - Vocals, Guitar, Producer
* Art Garfunkel - Vocals, Producer
* Hal Blaine - Drums, Percussion
* Joe Osborn - Bass
* Larry Knechtel - Piano, Keyboards

Simon & Garfunkel quietly slipped Bookends, their fourth album, into the bins with a whisper in March 1968. They are equal collaborators with producer/engineer Roy Halee in a multivalently layered song cycle observing the confusion of those seeking an elusive American Dream, wistfully reflecting on innocence lost forever to the cold winds of change. Bookends opens with an acoustic guitar stating a theme, slowly and plaintively. It erupts into the musical dissonance that introduces "Save the Life of My Child." Its uneasy rock & roll frames highly metaphorical and ironic lyrics and a nursery rhyme bridge. "America" is a folk song with a lilting soprano saxophone in its refrain as a small pipe organ paints acoustic guitars, framed by the ghostly traces of classic American Songbook pop structures. Two people travel the landscape by bus searching for the track's subject, eventually discovering that everyone else on the freeway is too. Its sophisticated harmonic invention is toppled by its message; "America" becomes an ellipsis, a cipher, an unanswerable question. "Overs," a study about the end of a relationship, contains Halee's ingenious use of sound: lighting a cigarette and inhaling and exhaling its smoke underscore the story told by the melody and lyrics. In a two-minute field recording of the voices of old people collected from nursing homes by Garfunkel, disembodied voices reveal entire lifetimes in a few seconds. "Old Friends" carries the message deeper. Simon's image of two old men sitting on a park bench sharing memories and their fears of the changes surrounding them is indelible. A horn section threatens to interrupt their reverie, reflecting the chaos they perceive, but is warded off as the gentle melody returns and fades into the album's opening theme. In "Fakin' It," Simon reveals the falsity inherent in modern life -- it's better to appear to have it together than reflect the struggle of not being able to: "This feeling of fakin' it/I still haven't shaken it/I know I'm fakin' it/I'm not really makin' it." The album's final three tracks, "Mrs. Robinson" (the iconic theme song from the film The Graduate), "A Hazy Shade of Winter," and the album's concluding track, "At the Zoo," offer a tremblingly bleak vision of the future rooted in the lives of everyday people who "fake it," living an illusory dream publicly while trembling with confusion and fear in private (no matter one's generation), subverting the Madison Avenue notion of the "generation gap" simply and honestly. Bookends' problematic, disillusioned themes, sometimes disguised in wry humor, striking arrangements, and augmented orchestral instrumentation, portray the sounds of people in an American life that they no longer understand, or understands them. Simon & Garfunkel never overstate; instead they observe, almost journalistically, enormous life and cultural questions in the process of them being asked. In just over 29 minutes, Bookends is stunning in its vision of a bewildered America in search of itself. ---Thom Jurek, AllMusic Review

download (mp3 @320 kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back

Simon and Garfunkel - 16 Grandes Éxitos En Versión Original (1998)

2012-11-30T17:36:21Z

Simon and Garfunkel - 16 Grandes Éxitos En Versión Original (1998)


1	The Sounds of Silence	 	3:07
2	Homeward Bound	 	2:29
3	I Am a Rock	 	2:54
4	At the Zoo	 	2:21
5	Scarborough Fair / Canticle	 	3:10
6	Mrs. Robinson	 	3:57
7	The Boxer	 	5:11
8	Baby Driver	 	3:19
9	Benedictus	 	2:40
10	Go Tell If on the Mountain	 	2:07
11	Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream	 	2:11
12	Sparrow	 	2:49
13	Peggy O	 	2:27
14	Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.	 	2:14
15	So Long Frank Lloyd Wrigh	 	3:44
16	Bleeker Street	 	2:46

    Paul Simon – acoustic guitar, vocals
    Art Garfunkel – vocals

download (mp3 @ kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back

Simon And Garfunkel - The Concert In Central Park (1982)

2011-02-25T19:41:02Z

Simon And Garfunkel - The Concert In Central Park (1982)


1-"Mrs. Robinson" – 3:52 
2-"Homeward Bound" – 4:22 
3-"America" – 4:47 
4-"Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" – 3:22 
5-"Scarborough Fair" (traditional, arr. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel) – 3:52    play
6-"April Come She Will" – 2:37 
7-"Wake Up Little Susie" (Felice and Boudleaux Bryant) – 2:19 
8-"Still Crazy After All These Years" – 4:04 
9-"American Tune" – 4:33 
10-"Late in the Evening" – 4:09 
11-"Slip Slidin' Away" – 4:54 
12-"A Heart in New York" (Benny Gallagher, Graham Lyle) – 2:49 
13-"Kodachrome/Maybellene" (Chuck Berry, Russ Fratto, Alan Freed) – 5:51 
14-"Bridge Over Troubled Water" – 4:48 
15-"Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" – 4:23 
16-"The Boxer" – 6:02                                                         play
17-"Old Friends" – 2:57 
18-"The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" – 2:01 
19-"The Sounds of Silence" – 4:13 

Line Up:
Paul Simon – guitars, vocals, triangle 
Art Garfunkel – vocals 
David Brown – guitars 
Pete Carr – guitars 
Anthony Jackson – bass guitar 
Richard Tee – keyboards, piano 
Steve Gadd – drums, percussion 
Grady Tate – drums, percussion 
Rob Mounsey – synthesizer 
John Gatchell – trumpet 
John Eckert – trumpet 
Dave Tofani – saxophones 
Gerry Niewood – saxophones

You can almost hear Simon & Garfunkel begin to like each other again on this now-legendary set. On September 19, 1981, the duo reunited for just the second time since their initial breakup and revealed a camaraderie that had apparently vanished years earlier. Not only do they reprise their shared hits, they also work in a few of Paul Simon's solo gems and a couple of telling covers--one from the Everly Brothers and one from Chuck Berry. The band includes the best session men around. By the time they get to the sincerity of "Old Friends" and the joy of "The 59th Street Bridge Song," you sense a relationship fully repaired. After this success, they even planned a studio record together--one that eventually became Simon's overlooked Hearts and Bones--few were surprised when it did not come to pass. --Marc Greilsamer

The Concert in Central Park is a live album by Simon & Garfunkel. On September 19, 1981 the folk-rock duo reunited for a free concert on the Great Lawn of New York's Central Park, attended by more than 500,000 people. They released a live album from the concert the following March (Warner Brothers LP 2BSK 3654; CD 3654). It was arranged by Paul Simon and Dave Grusin, and produced by Simon, Art Garfunkel, Phil Ramone and Roy Halee. In his Rolling Stone review of the album, Stephen Holden wrote: “Even though a decade of solo projects had separated them, their musical relationship seemed essentially unchanged. Garfunkel's pristine, quivering folk-pop tenor filtered Simon's wry, angst-ridden musings into a romantic soft focus, and the duo's close harmonies transformed dark compositions of doubt into warm exchanges of feeling.”

download (mp3 @VBR kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back

The Essential Simon and Garfunkel (2007)

2010-08-21T20:09:14Z

The Essential Simon and Garfunkel (2007)

CD1
01. The Sound Of Silence
02. Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (live)
03. Bye Bye Love
04. Bleecker Street
05. I Am A Rock
06. A Most Peculiar Man (live)
07. Richard Cory
08. Kathy’s Song (live)
09. Scarborough Fair/Canticle
10. Homeward Bound
11. Sparrow (live)
12. Leaves That Are Green (live)
13. He Was My Brother
14. The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)
15. The Dangling Conversation
16. A Poem On The Underground Wall (live)
17. Blessed (live)
18. Cloudy
19. Blues Run The Game
20. A Hazy Shade Of Winter

CD2
01. Mrs. Robinson
02. Bridge Over Troubled Water
03. At The Zoo
04. Fakin’ It
05. Old Friends
06. Bookends Theme
07. Punky’s Dilemma
08. Overs (live)
09. A Church Is Burning (live)
10. America — 3:36
11. El Condor Pasa (If I Could)
12. Cecilia
13. Keep The Customer Satisfied
14. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
15. The Boxer
16. Baby Driver
17. The Only Living Boy In New York
18. Song For The Asking
19. For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her (live)
20. My Little Town

The most successful folk-rock duo of the 1960s, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel crafted a series of memorable hit albums and singles featuring their choirboy harmonies, ringing acoustic and electric guitars, and Simon's acute, finely wrought songwriting. The pair always inhabited the more polished end of the folk-rock spectrum and was sometimes criticized for a certain collegiate sterility. Many also feel that Simon, as both a singer and songwriter, didn't truly blossom until he began his own hugely successful solo career in the 1970s. But the best of S&G's work can stand among Simon's best material, and the duo did progress musically over the course of their five albums, moving from basic folk-rock productions into Latin rhythms and gospel-influenced arrangements that foreshadowed Simon's eclecticism on his solo albums.

Simon & Garfunkel's recording history actually predated their first mid-'60s hit by almost a decade. Childhood friends while growing up together in Forest Hills, NY, they began making records in 1957, performing (and often writing their own material) in something of a juvenile Everly Brothers style. Calling themselves Tom & Jerry, their first single, "Hey Schoolgirl," actually made the Top 50, but a series of follow-ups went nowhere. The duo split up, and Simon continued to struggle to make it in the music business as a songwriter and occasional performer, sometimes using the names of Jerry Landis or Tico & the Triumphs.

By the early '60s, both Simon and Garfunkel were coming under the influence of folk music. When they reteamed, it was as a folk duo, though Simon's pop roots would serve the act well in their material's synthesis of folk and pop influences. Signing to Columbia, they recorded an initially unsuccessful acoustic debut (as Simon & Garfunkel, not Tom & Jerry) in 1964, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM They again went their separate ways, Simon moving to England, where he played the folk circuit and recorded an obscure solo album.

The Simon & Garfunkel story might have ended there, except for a brainstorm of their producer, Tom Wilson (who also produced several of Bob Dylan's early albums). Folk-rock was taking off in 1965, and Wilson, who had helped Dylan electrify his sound, took the strongest track from S&G's debut, "The Sound of Silence," and embellished it with electric guitars, bass, and drums. It got to number one in early 1966, giving the duo the impetus to reunite and make a serious go at a recording career, Simon returning from the U.K. to the U.S. In 1966 and 1967, they were regular visitors to the pop charts with some of the best folk-rock of the era, including "Homeward Bound," "I Am a Rock," and "A Hazy Shade of Winter."

Simon & Garfunkel's early albums were erratic, but they steadily improved as Simon sharpened his songwriting, and as the duo became more comfortable and adventurous in the studio. Their execution was so clean and tasteful that it cost them some hipness points during the psychedelic era, which was a bit silly. They were far from the raunchiest thing going, but managed to pull off the nifty feat of appealing to varying segments of the pop and rock audience -- and various age groups, not just limited to adolescents -- without compromising their music. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (late 1966) was their first really consistent album; Bookends (1968), which actually blended previously released singles with some new material, reflected their growing maturity. One of its songs, "Mrs. Robinson," became one of the biggest singles of the late '60s after it was prominently featured in one of the best films of the period, The Graduate (which also had other Simon & Garfunkel songs on the soundtrack).

It was unsurprising, in retrospect, that the duo's partnership began to weaken in the late '60s. They had known each other most of their lives, and been performing together for over a decade. Simon began to feel constrained by the limits of working with the same collaborator; Garfunkel, who wrote virtually none of the material, felt overshadowed by the songwriting talents of Simon, though Garfunkel's high tenor was crucial to their appeal. They started to record some of their contributions separately in the studio, and barely played live at all in 1969, as Garfunkel began to pursue an acting career.

Their final studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was an enormous hit, topping the charts for ten weeks, and containing four hit singles (the title track, "The Boxer," "Cecilia," and "El Condor Pasa"). It was certainly their most musically ambitious, with "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "The Boxer" employing thundering drums and tasteful orchestration, and "Cecilia" marking one of Simon's first forays into South American rhythms. It also caught the confused, reflective tenor of the times better than almost any other popular release of 1970.

That would be their last album of new material. Although they didn't necessarily intend to break up at the time, the break from recording eventually became permanent; as Simon began a solo career that brought him as much success as the S&G outings, and Garfunkel pursued simultaneous acting and recording careers. They did reunite in 1975 for a Top Ten single, "My Little Town," and periodically performed together since without ever coming close to generating albums of new material. A 1981 concert in New York's Central Park attracted half a million fans, and was commemorated with a live album; they also toured in the early '80s, but a planned studio album was canceled due to artistic differences. ---Richie Unterberger, itunes.apple.com

Simon & Garfunkel, czyli Paul Simon i Art Garfunkel, to amerykański duet, który tworzył w latach 60. i 70. Ich muzyka określana jako folk-rock zdobyła dużą popularność, co przekładało się na wyniki sprzedaży longplayów. Utwory takie jak "Mrs Robinson", "I Am a Rock," czy "A Hazy Shade of Winter" na stałe wpisały się w historię światowej muzyki rozrywkowej.

Ich albumy były bardzo oryginalne, a najsłynniejsze to "Sounds of Silence", "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme", "The Graduate". W roku 1970 ukazało się ostatnie wydawnictwo duetu zatytułowane "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Niestety wspólna działalność Simona & Garfunkela nie doczekała się kolejnych płyt.

download (mp3 @128 kbs):

yandex 4shared mega mediafire uloz.to cloudmailru gett

back