No. 293: Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits

Band: Simon and Garfunkel
Album: Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: Certainly one of the more literate acts from the '60s, S&G wrote songs so distinctly about that period. Their music was enjoyable on a couple of levels and certainly interesting. A greatest hits package from such a popular and influential group is certainly good. Also, look at that 'stache.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: Well, it's a greatest hits package for, essentially, a soft rock group. I like Art Garfunkel's voice as much as the next guy and I think Paul Simon is a smart dude, but this is the kind of stuff that belongs on Lite FM.
Best song: “Cecilia” and “Mrs. Robinson” remains my favorite songs by S&G.
Worst song: I don't love “America.”
Is it awesome?: Sure, but it's a greatest hits package. So...If it's not awesome, the band stinks.

By now, regular readers know my thoughts on greatest hits packages.

This particular package is interesting if only because it has four previously unreleased live tracks in addition to the standard 10 hits. This is less impressive to me; For the most part, S&G didn't do a whole lot of studio trickery. It's not like they're Pink Floyd or The Who.

No. 233: Bookends

Band: Simon and Garfunkel
Album: Bookends
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: Certainly, Simon and Garfunkel are of some import, so their songs are a huge part of the culture. The three famous tracks on "Bookends" are no different.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: The non-single tracks aren't great; They're simply well-written. The arrangement don't do even the singles justice and, quite frankly, not a lot of riks were being taken.
Best song: Both "Mrs. Robinson" and "A Hazy Shade Of Winter" are excellent.
Worst song: "Voices of Old People" is just that and it freaks me the fuck out. "Overs" isn't great, either.
Is it awesome?: I'm getting tired of these two, but this album has its charms.

"Bookends" is a Simon and Garfunkel album, so expecting them to start arranging crazy synths and such is probably foolish. Certainly, they started doing some things different around this time (1968) in their career, as the synth in "Save The Life Of My Child" shows, but, mostly, we're looking at lullabies and soft rock.

Of course, the big, giant, fancy track on "Bookends" is the one from "The Graduate," "Mrs. Robinson." The song was largely written for the movie and has become about as huge as a song can get. Certainly, the memory of Joe DiMaggio was revived to a new generation of people thanks to the song and Simon himself paid tribute to the fallen Yankee upon Dimaggio's death in 1999.

(Maybe my least favorite band ever, the Lemonheads -- the competition is between them and the Eagles -- covered the song for the second "Waynes World" movie in what has to be the worst band covering a great song ever.)

"America" is popular for its placement largely in the film "Almost Famous" -- no, I still haven't seen it -- and I still can't really see the import of ths song. So, I'll turn it over to Allmusic.com:

Simon was observing the trends of his generation -- the physical restlessness and spiritual bankruptcy that the wanderlust signified... By the time "America" reaches the second chorus, and again for the final chorus, the arrangement stokes up into something approximating a robust sea shanty -- with cymbal crashes and layered harmonies -- thus forming a second template for '70s singer/songwriters; this time one with less subtlety by Neil Diamond on songs like his "America" and some of Billy Joel's early, folky moments, like "Piano Man."

Fair enough.

My first exposure to "A Hazy Shade Of Winter" is from The Bangles, a band of my early youth that also did novelty favorite "Walk Like An Egyptian." In all honesty, I find the Bangles' version to be perferable, but, as is the case for most great songs, it's tough to play poorly. Simon and Garfunkel's version is a little harder than the Bangles' version, but I guess my familiarity is with the Bangles.

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Yes, this record isn't as soft-rock as the duo's earlier work. And it's certainly smart. But, for some reason, I just can't really get into them. Simon and Garfunkel symbolize something weird to me; They're excellence as defined by my parents' generation, not excellence we can agree on (like, say, the Beatles).

The great example of this is when Simon won the first Gershwin prize. As much as I try to be a cultural omnivore, I've still got punk rock/college radio in my heart, so when an authority (in this case, the U.S. government) tells me something -- especially something that has virtually no hard edge -- is great, my first instinct is to say "fuck off."

And that's always in the back of my head with Paul Simon (sorry, Art, I'll start caring about you when you have a real solo career).

No. 201: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

Band: Simon and Garfunkel
Album: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: I was actually pleasantly surprised by "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme." There's antiwar music, English folk songs and wonderful satire. It's clever and cool and is much more interesting as a sonic experiment than basically anything else the duo ever recorded.
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: Again, it's Simon and Garfunkel; They don't carry much weight to those of us raised on 80s hard rock. It's wussy music, on some level.
Best song: "Homeward Bound" is kind of a classic.
Worst song: I'm not really in love with "Cloudy."
Is it awesome?: It's certainly the best Simon & Garfunkel record.

I think I've made it clear that I'm not a big Simon & Garfunkel fan; I respect both Simon's writing and Garfunkel's voice, but there's something too vanilla for me to really love.

"Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" isn't as vanilla as their other records. Certainly, the blatant genre satire on "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" gives me a new feeling towards the duo. There's something more sardonic in them and I enjoy that.

The key to this sarcasm is "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)," a straight-ahead dig at Bob Dylan. The song namedrops 16 different people in Dylanesque fashion and uses the classic "Subterranean Homesick Blues" rhythm to create full-on satire worthy of Stephen Colbert.

The song is indicative of the record's full departure. Like a poor man's "Pet Sounds" or "Sgt. Pepper's," "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" uses a variety of different sounds and production techniques to back up Simon and Garfunkel's classic folk voice/guitar sound.

In short, it's the most interesting sounding of their records.

No. 51: Bridge Over Troubled Water

Band: Simon and Garfunkel
Album: Bridge Over Troubled Water
Why Rolling Stone gets it right: A touching bit of harmonies and lyrical songwriting, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is a glimpse into the struggling friendship between Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon. Simon is at the top of his songwriting game with autobiographical tracks like "The Boxer," "Cecilia" and "The Only Living Boy in New York."
Why Rolling Stone gets it wrong: As smart and as pretty as it is, rock and roll is not supposed to be the kind of think Johnny Mathis could sing and it wouldn't sound out of place in his repertoire. It's easy listening and not in the Fleetwood Mac way.
Best song: "Cecilia" is a wonderful song that merges the double meaning of love and writer's block.
Worst song: I'm not in love with "Keep the Customer Satisfied."
Is it awesome?: Yes, but it could also be called boring.

Paul Simon was recently honored by the Library of Congress for his contributions to American culture with the first Gershwin prize. If there's anyone out there who would deserve an award from the LOC, it's Simon. Unlike most rock and roll singers, Simon was constantly using his music to reference and expand rock and roll's vocabulary.

"Bridge Over Troubled Water" has that in spades. While many of the songs are written as messages from Simon to Garfunkel (the title track and "The Only Living Boy in New York" being the two most obvious), Simon writes characters and scenes into his songs that aren't normally found in rock and roll. The protagonists in "Baby Driver," "The Boxer" (in that case, Simon himself) and "The Only Living Boy In New York" are all vivid as a novel.

My personal favorite is the weaving of the religious and creative in "Cecilia." The song, written during a fit of supposed writer's block, was as much as call to a wandering lover as it is to Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, in order to cure Simon's writer's block. Simon, a Jewish person, used references to medieval Christianity in other songs and this is his best.

The flaw in any of Simon's music (including that which he recorded with Garfunkel) is that it is easy listening. Other than the shifting rhythms on some songs (again, "Cecilia" comes to mind), most of their stuff is straightforward balladry and soft rock. It's nothing too exciting and it's the kind of thing a crooner could (and did) cover.

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Also worth mentioning is the cover of "El Cóndor Pasa" (IF I Could). Simon used the melody from the Peruvian folk song, , but wrote entirely new lyrics to the song. It's one of the more popular versions of the song (certainly in Anglo America).