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

the answer is probably "the only living boy in new york"

Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia Cecilia

^^^ this is also a possible contender

The Boxer.

I've only heard "The Boxer" and the title track, am I missing anything?

My parents owned a restaurant that had a jukebox in the bar the year this came out. People used to get so into it with the feet stomping and stuff that they had to anchor it to the ground to prevent the record skipping specifically on Cecilia.

you're breaking my heart! you're shaking my confidence! daily!

real talk, the car i drive is named Cecilia

:D

It's one of my favorite songs ever tbqh.

jubilaaaaation

she loves me again

I've only heard "The Boxer" and the title track, am I missing anything?

dude waht

i voted for the title track because it's ridiculous and also to piss people off

and because i like it

x-posts

yeah I sort of let that one slide but seriously

WHAT?

I've only heard "The Boxer" and the title track, am I missing anything?

okay are you kidding me here, how did you make it through life without hearing "Cecilia"

I'm with judith re: The Only Living Boy in New York

honestly my favorites on this album are all the lesser-known ones. Title track is too bombastic by the end, The Boxer's good but a bit heavy-handed, El Condor Pasa sort of too lazy... the real gold is Keep the Customer Satisfied (which I have always assumed is about selling weed), Baby Driver, Song for the Asking, So Long Frank Llyod Wright.

all that being said, the sound of this record is amazing and when I caught some "making of" doc recently there were lots of cool tidbits - the percussion in Cecilia is a tape loop of S&G and a bunch of their friends banging on furniture in a living room, the "so long Artie" buried in the mix at the end of So Long Frank Lloyd Wright, etc.

Aero is trolllling, you are trolling, right?
"Cecelia" and "Living Boy" should tie for first, would vote for "El Condor Pass". "The Boxer" is my least fave S&G song too much reverb and "lie die die"

"cecilia" is alright but for uptempo finger-snappin S&G i'd rather have "me & julio"

Oh man aero if you haven't heard "Living Boy", wow. Do you watch American films? Have you heard of a band called Everything But The Girl

No Garfunkel on Julio iirc

this album has been maybe the thing i have listened to most in the last two or three months. i had never heard it before, but my housemate said he had never realised paul simon was so kickass until i moved in and played him constantly. he watched some "making the album" type doc on bbc iplayer and was like "you should seriously watch this" and i watched it when i was off sick from work one day and both of spent about a month talking about how great it is.

i kindof actually hadn't realised how fantastically produced their albums were although i guess this is like the high water mark. its also like magnificently sequenced the songs i already knew seemed so much punchier in this context. particularly cecilia which was my favourite s&g song anyway but which is so fantastic when you hear it in context. the bit where they join in "MAKIN LOVE" is so fantastic, also its just this barrage of rhythm, like more earthy and percussive than you remember it being.

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.

cool
xpost

such a classic record. sleeper for me is "frank lloyd wright"... but every song here is great, even "baby driver".
i read that 1970 book (covering s&g, beatles, csny etc during that year) a few weeks ago. weirdest detail is that paul simon taught a pop songwriting class at NYU while he was recording this album! just for kicks.

Cecelia would totally fit on a Faust record

haha, would it?
another weird thing in that 1970 book was how the author seemed convinced that Simon was jealous of the attention Garfunkel got -- that Simon thought no one knew he was the songwriter/main genius behind the act. which seemed odd -- it's not like they ever pretended that Garfunkel wrote the songs with Simon, right?

No, no it wouldn't. At all. What a very silly thing to say.

I will rep for 'the Boxer' at any time, though.

cecilia does kindof remind me of parts of patchwork?

Faust never wrote a melody that sweet cmon now

Maybe I should listen to it again, as my main memory of the song is "at thix it'th Thuggs with Thethilia":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmhk7B1hdfY

love whatever that clinking-glasses sound is in the guitar breakdown of Cecilia

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

have always wondered what the story was behind the sampled dialogue in the middle of Fakin' It, anyone know the background on that...?

― locally sourced stabbage (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, January 12, 2012 6:59 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, I know that it's not sampled, and was in fact voiced in the studio by Beverley Martyn (later to marry John Martyn). She's saying 'Good morning, Mr. Leitch' because they wanted to come up with a 'character' for this 'shop scene' in the middle of the song, and Beverley Martyn suggested using Donovan's surname.

That lyric is just basically Paul Simon saying if he'd existed a century ago, he wouldn't be earning money writing songs, he'd be a tailor instead.

haha waht that is so random

love whatever that clinking-glasses sound is in the guitar breakdown of Cecilia

― The Silent Extreme (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, January 6, 2012 11:19 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Are you talking about the instrumental part? That's a heavily limited xylophone, played by Paul.

Only Boy in New York is the 'best', but my favourite is narrowly 'Song for the Asking'. That cello counterpoint! So beautiful. Especially given how it fades in from the audience applause at the end of Bye Bye Love.

I'm in two minds about the length of 'Song For The Asking'... some days I wish it was longer, but on others I think the length of it is just perfect.

wow what a great song "keep the customer satisfied" is!

yeah it is, love that final orchestra hit

baby driver rightfully marginalized as the james taylor cover it is

its also like magnificently sequenced the songs i already knew seemed so much punchier in this context.

this is so true! i finally get "the boxer."

everywhere i go
i get slandered
LIIIIIIIIIIBELED
i hear words i never heard in the bible

but the best part of breaking up
is when you're making up with me

the 75 minute doc i was burbling about upthread starts on BBC4 UK in about 25 minutes and will then be available to watch for about a week afterwards.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0171r6x

I just want to throw this on here:

http://lightbulbhead.tumblr.com/post/16178795155/b-b-s-g

aw the BBC doc is UK only...

top two are abt right

i don't think i ended up voting, but it would have been "only living boy," though "keep the customer satisfied" was a delightful discovery i might never have made if not for this thread! i was seriously wrong about simon & garfunkel.

i know! how embarrassing. im saving bookends. dont anyone try to poll this without me or ill find out where you live

listening to this LP back to back with solo simon stuff just reminds me how much he needed to cut artie out.

sorry artie.

not that there isn't really good stuff on this LP, but that overall it feels kind of watery, and even the best songs are a bit hampered by the vocal arrangements.

So Long FLW is the best wreckognize

I don't know David Browne's writing at all, but I'm really looking forward to this:

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/crosby-stills-nash-young-enchant-london-audience-in-1970-20110601/1000x306/main.jpg

I ordered it the minute I saw it, not realizing it wouldn't be out for months.

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