It's waaay too long, and it's, well, sappy. Like a scented soap gift pack. And it's not the title of a song, either, but a line from Scarborough Fair/Canticle. Hard to say why they chose it, other than it being as sappy as the photograph, and while sap is embedded in S&G's DNA, it's by no means what they were selling on this album. This is where they - mostly - left Greenwich Village behind, and with Roy Halee's genius for startlingly original arrangements and crystalline sound, set out their stall as superlative musicians who just happened to be making pop music.
They didn't get hip to what impact a great cover can have until the next album. There are an infinite number of ways they could have gone for this one - my attempt [above top, just under heading - Ed.] uses a stretched and tinted Michael Ochs portrait. Rubber Soul had pioneered this kind of distortion, and it seems a more appropriate zeitgeit motif than a bunch of goddamn flowers. Canticle carries a liturgical sense, and I hope I've picked up the monkish vibe in the font. It is at least a suitably serious and reflective look, and Ochs' defining shot catches them separate and together, as they always were.
You likely have this already, but maybe you could give it another spin while staring blankly at the new look. Or not - I'm not your Mom.
My first attempt [left - Ed.]. Better/worse/the same, I have no idea. This would have been a groovy gatefold, with a die-cut frame. Click for bigly.
Other improved S&G albums here.
If you want a nice-sounding remaster, just ax.
ReplyDeleteI'm axin'
DeleteHere's yer linkage, EasilyConfused - loaddown is blister-packed wit' Bookends and Bridge customised for high performance here in th' IoF© lab. I am confident that the rest of youse freeloadin' bums gots th' the common decency to refrain from hittin' on EasilyConfused's link like it was a cheap broad at th' bar.
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/4yqWzfSb42n
Bridge is part of a Pop Masterpiece Trilogy? Bridge is Bilge and you know I'm Right
ReplyDeleteI played Bookends on constant repeat (one of the 4 albums I owned at the time). I returned home and Dad, who never had bought an LP in his life, , said "Listen to this son, it's fab! I'll get you a copy too if you like". I put my Afghan Coat back on an returned to my squat
Delete"Bridge is bilge" is Entry Level Rock Snob. Holding this opinion shows you are for Art, rather than Popularity, and that you can make shrewd critical distinctions that set you above the vulgar masses. It's applicable to Revolver/Pepper, too. It's fine to maintain this stance for a while because it's the start of a process of learning, but you should be aware that this learning involves not valuing your own opinions too much. It also involves getting over the hurdle of familiarity breeding indifference and then contempt. You are probably incapable of hearing BOTW for reasons that have nothing to do with the music.
DeleteVery true. Nobody gets over Pops offering to buy you an LP
Delete... so what was the album? Trout Mask Replica?
DeleteWhere you age into the music may affect your response to the Art, too. For me, BOTW was their last album, but I was 13 about to turn 14...for those of us w/o older siblings' record collections, it was the first S&G LP to spin on the stereo.
DeleteBookends had come out two and a half years earlier...a pop music eternity...when I was still (barely) 11 years old. To me, it's "the" S&G album, even the filler has been committed to memory. To a kid growing up in a jerkwater burg of waning orchards, it spoke of New York City, which was sort of the Emerald City as far as I was concerned.
For fun, here's the ska/reggae/blue beat version of "The Only Living Boy In New York:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjKXbBhFSG4
For me, it's "Bookends". However, I'll admit that it's an album I associate with a certain period in my life when acoustic and electric music came together for me. Previously, I'd seen them as somehow separate.
DeleteI recall back in 1967, my old foreman received on his birthday from his eldest son, a copy of Bookends. He was thrilled to bits. I always loved this album and now I'm 70 +. How terribly strange.
Delete*arthritic high five*
Delete@ draftervoi - The Tennors thing is way cool!
DeleteThis is my favorite cover of a Simon & Garfunkel tune, with such an irresistible groove.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9-yfeA2JZs&ab_channel=Revival
Hi Babs! Yeah, Aretha Franklin is one of those mines where I never stop finding gold. I've got the mono single version her version of "Bridge" on a flash drive in my car. Great stuff!
DeleteI like your first cover design more, well done!
ReplyDeleteYears of "folk mass", drippy types strumming earnestly, and squares-cubed liking S&G have given me an abiding need to avoid them (see Cat Stevens). Paul Simon is a great songwriter, and Art is, well, LUCKY. I hear their (asmittedly lovely) arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" and, bam! I'm back having a bummer recalling the school bores and their dreary "taste".
ReplyDeleteI forgot all about the Folk Mass! Teens selling their souls for an acoustic guitar sing along, and refined sugar products afterwards.
DeleteYebbut these albums ain't that. They're pop albums, I get the Folk Mass shudder from Peter, Paul & Mary. And I think it's a shame - a damn shame - a damn, damn shame - that memory associations can spoil enjoyment of music. For Mr. Grimsdale, it's the square kids liking the albums, for Lodestone Of Wrongness, it's his Dad's recommendation. It's like looking at a painting through someone else's prescription glasses. You're not seeing it/hearing it for what it is.
DeleteI love these albums unreservedly. They sound brand new to me, every time I play them, and I don't devalue any of them in comparison to the others. It's one work.
(Listen to the way the Bookends intro segues perfectly into Old Friends, and tell me that wasn't somebody's original intent.)
The albums are sublime.
DeleteThey also trigger memories of what I was doing, friends, fashions and the general zeitgeist of that point in time.
As for Art being "lucky".
DeleteHe had a vocal range of roughly G2 to E5, and wrote all the vocal arrangements.
To my ears his vocals are always emotive, with an iconic upper register, that Paul described as "white choirboy like".
While I agree that Paul was the creative force in Simon & Garfunkel, it was Art's voice, seamless harmonies and arrangements that brought most, if not all the material to life.
Good call for Artie, Babs.
DeleteThey were both lucky to have made those superb albums. I'm sure they would have both been successful without the other, but never 'that' successful.
DeleteArt & Paul at the Hollywood Bowl, August of '68.
ReplyDeleteThe audio is excellent.
https://mega.nz/file/pK9VXJ7b#S2UMoc_uam2Nog7H6mCgG60-qBkFLiGFlsZZ57KHukw
Babs: I'd love to hear this, but my 'puter won't tolerate flac...any chance you could post mp3? It'd be greatly appreciated!
DeleteTry this link:
Deletehttps://mega.nz/file/8fEjTKLC#1yOj9FzRk7thVoe42gY_HeQ8bSJoNDG2m6xC4L0g1t0
Also, here's a link to MediaHuman Audio Converter. This will convert high-quality lossless audio files like FLAC, ALAC, WAV APE to lossy files like MP3 AAC, OGG.
https://www.mediahuman.com/audio-converter/
Thanx mucho Babs! That link didn't work, but the converter did the trick. It'll come in handy for sure! BTW...S & G sound great. Although we never met, you're my best friend...
DeleteI've used the MediaHuman converter to stomp down environment-depleting flac files for years (and have shilled it out here). Also their other fine (free!) products.
DeleteMy worn-out ears aren't worthy of flac & my 'puter is running out of space for 50+ year-old stuff that (mostly) wasn't of the greatest audio quality to begin with, but I'm still thankful for the good music that i used to own or never was aware of at the time. Thanx Farq & Babs, et al...
DeleteWith all due respect to Babs, flac files are for audio perverts.
DeleteI prefer to think of them as sonically sensual...
DeletePerv!
Delete"sonically sensual?"....I'd comment, but it would probably deleted
DeleteGotta say...as I'm digitizing old records...I let 'em go on the Internet as flac files. For years, I saw people put in dire warnings with the files: "do not convert to MP3 under pain of death," USUALLY IN ALLCAPS. I don't care if you convert 'em to other formats. You can play 'em over a tin-can telephone and rerecord them to get the maximum analog experience, collapse
Deleteem into mono, reverse backwards to hear Satan, slice, dice, loop...no business of mine. I've had a couple of my tapes turned into gray-market releases; I disapprove, but there's no way to control what happens once something is released into the wilds of the Internet.
You are a good man. I avoid the problem of internet scavengers pirating my transformational edits by presenting them, mostly, @shitrate. I've always found @192 provides a perfectly satisfactory listening experience, and at far higher quality than when I first absorbed it into my neural network through a crappy transistor radio or a crappy mono "portable" record player. It changed my life back then, and audio fidelity didn't even create a blip on my event horizon. It still doesn't - I listen to a lot of music in the garden, played through a cheap bluetooth speaker. It still moves me in exactly the same way. For many years, I had a pretty good separates set-up, with *very* high-end speakers (which I found put out for the garbage men on a Paris street, along with bags of expensive mens' clothes and shoes - some poor slob getting the heave-ho), so I do know the difference. It didn't seem to affect how the music affected me, which is what matters, the emotional, instinctive response. I have every confidence that all this wonderful music is recorded within me (as "memory", that little understood phenom), and will be accessible in Heaven without any hardware involved, and every time will be like the first time.
DeleteWhich is not to say I criticise audio fidelity in itself, nor the people who value it; that would be nuts.
As previously mentioned, my main listening environment is a car (2003 Subaru running stock speakers with a $350.00 aftermarket CD player). I can't hear the difference between @192 or a Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab gold CD while I'm driving.
DeleteI find "flacsnobbery" pretentious..especially when some crap audience tape that sounds like it was recorded from under a pillow has a text file with "DO NOT CONVERT TO MP3 OR OTHER LOSSY FORMATS" in it. I mean...jeez....you can't control it once it's released out on the Internet, so why pretend anyone is going to listen to your ALLCAPS "command?"
Thanks Babs, listening to it now, excellent indeed.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.allmusic.com/album/voices-of-intelligent-dissent-mw0000953090
Any time Art!
DeleteYeah, plus foreshadowing: their backs are turned on each other. We would have said, "That's a clue, man...they put that there on purpose to tell us what was gonna happen!"
ReplyDeleteOh wow!
DeleteIf you take the cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water and block out Paul Simon's face, leaving the top of his head and hair below Art's face, you will see Art with a big bushy mustache. I can't look at that album cover any other way now.
ReplyDeleteIf you adopt my edit, you won't have to. Seriously, youse bums, I put in a lot of work (and supernatural skill) in bringing greatness to Bridge and Bookends, and I'm unconvinced any of you slobs even made the effort to listen to them. Because reasons.
DeleteHere's what Paul Simon hisself wrote me an a computer "email":
Dear Farq
Just a line to say that I am in awe of your versions of my two iconic albums. You have indeed "sprinkled some fairy dust" over them! I wish you'd been around when we was recording them, but what is done is done!
Humbly thine,
Paul [Simon - Ed.]
So if you ain't - which you ain't - loaddown th' records and lissen up! Yeesh!
I do appreciate your re-orders, but in this case I must say I prefer the originals, as they are etched in my feeble brain. Bookends over Bridge & many thanks to the Wrecking Crew for their contributions!
DeleteNot trying to replace the originals for anyone but myself, but if they serve as an occasional alternative, and something to think about (f'rinstance - two versions of Bookends that do not bookend the album? That sore thumb version of Bye Bye Love?) then my work here is done.
Deleteps--- But I do agree that Bye Bye Love should have been thrown over the bridge
DeleteAccording to popular rumour I don't think Paul Simon ever was ever humbly anything
DeleteThe two "Bookends" bookend side one, which can be viewed as a sort of suite of songs. Side two is merely a collection of tracks.
DeleteThat's how I see it.
To be frank, the whole album is a bit of a rag bag, but still a masterpiece.
The Alternative Bookends.
Deletehttps://workupload.com/file/cZZJcuStCxP
"Live and demos" - a common way to compile "alternative" albums.
DeleteVery unofficial!
DeleteLet's talk about Voices Of Old People. VOOP takes up just over two minutes of an already short run time (under half an hour). It's not a composition, it's not a performance, and the samples aren't in themselves particularly compelling. I doubt anyone would listen to it if it weren't part of a best-selling album, and the track isn't going to feature on anyone's playlists or greatest hits collections. I always skipped over it when listening to the vinyl. It doesn't really reward one listening, and doesn't reveal hidden depths on repeat playings. And yet, there it is. Is it telling us that, hey, old people are groovy? Does it make us sad-face? Field recordings like this can be incorporated to great effect (Frank Zappa) but here, presented as a track in itself (for which the canny duo claim authorship royalties), it comes over as pretentious and boring. It's why I mixed the voices into the instrumentals, where they add, rather than subtract.
DeleteAnd again I say - listen to the *perfect* segué (thematically and musically) from the Bookends intro into Old Friends. I find it impossible to believe this wasn't considered in sequencing the album, and someone decided it needed an early upbeat rock song.
(That "suite" of songs doesn't really work, does it? The ageing theme isn't present in Save The Life, nor America; any track from the second side could be substituted.)
First of all, Bookends was born out of desperation - the record company needed an album and S&G hadn't had proper recording sessions for a while. So, whilst there was just about enough in the can for an album, it was basically a collection of odd tracks they had to work with.
DeleteSomeone (who?) had the idea of side one as the Bookends suite - an exercise in straw clutching, perhaps, but there you go...
The way I see it is that the two Bookends tracks are birth and death. But the "volumes" in between aren't about ageing - together they're the story of life in general.
Save the Life of my Child - childhood, parents, family.
America - young love and falling in love.
Overs - growing old and falling out of love.
VOOP - filler that can safely be discarded.
Old Friends - basically realising that you're at the end of your life and waiting for the final bookend.
Contrived, yes, but it's amazing it worked out as well as it did.
That transition from Bookends Theme into Old Friends, though! Eh? Eh?
DeleteSteve? Eh? Eh Steve?
DeleteI think Santa is playing Silly Buggers! The Alternate Bookends downloads and shows 171 MBs, but when I open it, the folder is empty.
DeleteSorry, the comment about the Alternate Bookends download was mine. I hadn't noticed it had gone through as "anonymous".
DeleteWent to folder options and "un-hid" files. Bewildered as to why one would need to do this
DeleteI thought maybe Steve had uploaded an Alternate Sounds Of Silence instead.
Delete(This is a good joke).
Cat and Mouse, 1957-1964
ReplyDeleteFlirtatious FLAC File
https://mega.nz/file/MTkUFCYJ#amvymRAbbb5huzs5wTyojMbUGOExAgp27_Jz4yuQeEg
I miss Butch.
Delete