Simon & Garfunkel - Sounds of Silence (Remastered) [RePoPo]

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Simon & Garfunkel - Sounds of Silence (Rematered) (1964)

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Release Notes

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Simon & Garfunkel - Sounds Of Silence



01.- The Sound Of Silence [03:09]

02.- Leaves that Are Green [02:24]

03.- Blessed [03:17]

04.- Kathy's Song [03:21]

05.- Somewhere They Can't Find Me [02:38]

06.- Angie [02:18]

07.- Richard Cory [02:59]

08.- A Most Peculiar Man [02:33]

09.- April Come She Will [01:52]

10.- We've Got a Groovy Thing Goin' [02:00]

11.- I Am a Rock [02:59]

12.- Blues Run the Game [02:55]

13.- Barbriallen (Demo) [04:06] **

14.- Rose of Aberdeen (Demo) [02:02] **

15.- Roving Gambler (Demo) [03:03] **



** = BONUS TRACKS, exclusive to this release





Originally Released on 1966. This remastered version, which includes three

bonus tracks was Released on August 21st, 2001.



Ripped with EAC, creating a .cue/.wav audio file, preserving the CD structure,

gaps and volume levels as in the original CD.





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Album Review by Bruce Eder



Simon & Garfunkel's second album was a radical departure from their first, owing

to its being recorded in the wake of "The Sound of Silence," with its overdubbed

electric instrument backing, topping the charts. Paul Simon arrived with a large

song-bag, enhanced by his stay in England over the previous year and his

exposure to English folk music, and the duo rushed into the studio to come up

with ten more songs that would fit into the folk-rock context of the single. The

result was this, their most hurried and uncharacteristic album -- Simon and Art

Garfunkel had to sound like something they weren't, surrounded on many cuts by

amplified folk-rock-style guitar, electric piano, and even horns. Much of the

material came from The Paul Simon Songbook, an album that Simon had recorded for

British CBS during his stay in England, some parts of it more radically altered

than others. The record was a rushed job overall, and apart from the title

track, the most important songs here were also, oddly enough, among the least

enduring, "I Am a Rock" and "Richard Cory" -- the former for establishing the

duo (and Simon as a songwriter) as confessional pop-poets, sensitive and

alienated post-adolescents that endeared them to millions of college students

going through what later came to be called an "identity crisis"; and the latter

for endearing them to thousands of high-school English teachers with its

adaptation of Edward Arlington Robinson's poem.



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AllMusicGuide Track-by-track Review

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THE SOUND OF SILENCE



Paul Simon was a Brill Building demo singer as a teenager and, like the Beatles,

was heavily under the spell of the famous harmonies of the Everly Brothers.

Simon and his high school buddy, the classically trained musician Art Garfunkel,

even formed a teenage duo, Tom and Jerry, that was modeled after the Everlys.

But like a lot of other ambitious songwriters in the '60s, Simon soon fell sway

to the remarkable abilities of Bob Dylan. And again, like the Beatles, Simon

sought to merge his Brill-trained classic rock & roll and pop tendencies to the

newly wide-open lyrical scope of Dylan. And Dylan himself met the popsters

halfway, famously going electric soon after seeing the Fab Four and watching the

Byrds score even bigger hits than he did with electrified versions of his songs.

It was a heady era for pop music; soon anything and everything was fair game for

subject matter and rock & roll songwriters were starting to be taken seriously

as artists.



While we all would agree that this was mostly a good thing, the charts soon

became littered with overly ambitious and ill-informed protest songs and

self-consciously "literate" clunkers that fell short of the mark. While "Sound

of Silence" is ultimately saved from being among the latter, Simon does seem to

be reaching like a college freshman English major with "hey, look at me!" lines

like, "the words of the prophets were written on the subway walls," and "but my

words, like silent raindrops fell." Simon seems to desire the same prophetic

voice of authority that Dylan confidently exhibited in songs like "A Hard Rain's

A-Gonna Fall." But as a great song should, "Sound of Silence" starts with the

microcosmic world of a relationship and the inability for two to communicate,

and in the larger context of the tumultuous '60s takes on a greater

significance. The lyric, while a bit sophomoric at times, showed the promise of

a writer with talent that would develop over time. And certainly the narrator as

the lone voice of reason and understanding and the alienated cry in the urban

wilderness are themes that Simon would later refine with more subtlety and

greater depth on songs like "The Boxer."



The original recording was from the pair's debut, Wednesday, 3 AM (1964), an

album they recorded for Columbia after they first felt the influence of the

burgeoning folk revival movement. The two were aware of what they had, Garfunkel

noting in the album's liner notes that the song "...is a major work. We were

looking for a song on a larger scale, but this was more than either of us

expected." They recorded it with just the voices and a lone acoustic guitar,

and, after little interest was shown in the record, disbanded while Garfunkel

attended Columbia University and Simon went off to live in London, where he

recorded and released a solo record and toured European coffeehouses and pubs.

Meanwhile, the song started to find a modest amount of radio play. Columbia

Records, experiencing success with Dylan's electric-acoustic forays, employed

Dylan's producer, Tom Wilson, to give "Sound of Silence" a similarly electrified

treatment -- employing the same band from the Dylan sessions -- never bothering

to consult Simon and/or Garfunkel. According to Patrick Humphries' biography of

Simon, The Boy in the Bubble (1988), the singer/songwriter was on tour in

Denmark when he happened upon a copy of Billboard and saw that the song was

charting. Humphries notes that Columbia mailed Simon a copy of the electrified

version and that Simon was "horrified when he first heard it. In fact, if you

listen to that original version, you can hear the rhythm section slow down at

one point so that Paul and Artie's voices can catch up." But it went to number

one in 1966. The duo agreed that it was time to regroup. They quickly went into

the studio with a few more songs, some from Simon's solo record, to record a

full album ( Sounds of Silence, 1966) to capitalize. As Simon recounted --

quoted on the Simon & Garfunkel website ( /http://www. medialab. chalmers.

se/guitar/index. tml#S&G): "I had just come back from England, and Art was still

living at home, he was still at college and we were sitting in my car...smoking,

and "Sound of Silence" came on and they said: 'Number one record, "Sound of

Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel,' we were just sitting there at night, we hadn't

anything to do, and Artie turned to me and he said: 'those guys must be having

so much fun!'."



The duo harmonizes sweetly on the incredibly haunting melody, over a driving,

minor-key acoustic guitar rhythm, also indebted to the Everly Brothers, singing

images of urban apathy and desensitization. Even the acoustic original starts

with the soft, dark introduction and grows more intense and harder, with the

wispy voices gaining an edge and wavering with emotion while Simon abandons the

fingerpicking style and goes for the Everlys' strum. In an interview in Playboy,

Simon recounted the germination of the song: "The main thing about playing the

guitar, though, was that I was able to sit by myself and play and dream. And I

was always happy doing that. I used to go off in the bathroom, because the

bathroom had tiles, so it was a slight echo chamber. I'd turn on the faucet so

that water would run -- I like that sound, it's very soothing to me -- and I'd

play. In the dark. 'Hello darkness, my old friend/I've come to talk with you

again'. I've always believed that you need a truthful first line to kick you off

into a song. You have to say something emotionally true before you can let your

imagination wander."



The electrified version is the one most are familiar with, from the hit single

and its crucial and influential role on the soundtrack to the 1967 film The

Graduate. The added musicians don't pound as hard as they often do on those

Dylan records, instead opting for a more jangling West Coast folk-rock

treatment. The soundtrack makes great use of the song's plaintive opening

arpeggios and first line. The song gives voice to the film's frustrated, Holden

Caulfield-esque hero, Benjamin Braddock.



LEAVES THAT ARE GREEN



A sprightly folk-pop tempo and feel highlight this song, which is one of the

earliest tunes in the Simon & Garfunkel canon that shows the duo embracing the

then-current folk-rock style. Buttressed by some inventive percussion and

harpsichord, the shiny quality of the melody is highlighted throughout this fine

pop confection. Lyrically, it's a sad, almost melancholy song of lost love that

utilized the changing seasons to convey the feelings at the disintegration of a

romance. This is indeed something that Paul Simon would utilize again in the

very near future.



BLESSED



Written by Paul Simon while he was in the Soho district of London in early 1965,

"Blessed"'s inspiration came to him when he went into a church during a downpour

and was impressed by the sermon about the meek inheriting the earth. Simon

realized that the meek didn't have anything, so, therefore, what would they

inherit? It's a powerful document, and musically it shows him to be quite

capable of writing in the rock style of the day. A droning, waltz-time tempo is

a great example of what was soon to be called raga rock in the hands of the

Byrds in early 1966.



SOMEWHERE THEY CAN'T FIND ME



Utilizing the opening guitar lick to "Anji," which would appear later in the

Sounds of Silence album, "Somewhere They Can't Find Me" finds Paul Simon

stretching his songwriting chops to great degrees. Almost jazz-based in nature,

this minor pop masterpiece was one of the standouts on the album. A complex

little take on isolation and loneliness, the sense of escapism is paramount

here. Paul Simon was soon to be known for his psychological meditations on the

subjects mentioned above, and this is one of the first examples of this style.

Some excellent string and horn arrangements highlight the recording; this was

one of the duo's most ambitious to date.



RICHARD CORY



Written by Paul Simon in early 1965, "Richard Cory" is based on a poem written

in the 19th century; the original poem (by Edwin Arlington Robinson) concluded:

"And "Richard Cory," one calm summer night/Went home and put a bullet through

his head." A classic, dark murder ballad, it is loaded with all of the drama and

suspense of a mid-'60s art film. Buttressed by a simple but engaging minor-key

folk melody, this song was not only one of the most popular album cuts on the

Sounds of Silence album but was also covered masterfully by Denny Lane during

his stint in Paul McCartney & Wings. It eventually appeared on the Wings Over

America live album.



A MOST PECULIAR MAN



Written in mid-1964, this song was written by Paul Simon and inspired by a

newspaper story about a man who committed suicide. This incident may also have

inspired Sounds of Silence's other suicide song, "Richard Cory." A different

solo version on the song appeared on the Songbook album, a Simon solo demos

album. A strong Broadway feel is juxtaposed by the folk-based melody, and the

lyrics are in a literate, narrative tone, which would soon become a Paul Simon

trademark.



APRIL COME SHE WILL



Utilizing the changing seasons as a metaphor for the capriciousness of a girl,

"April Come She Will" was used very effectively in the film The Graduate and its

soundtrack. Written in England in 1964 following a brief affair that Paul Simon

had during his stay there, the lyrics were inspired by a nursery rhyme that the

girl in question recited. The sense of yearning in this song would later be

beautifully echoed in one of the Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme masterpieces,

"For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her." Like that song, it is very brief, yet the

shortness of the song adds to the effectiveness and economy of both the lyric

and melody.



I AM A ROCK



Continuing the alienated-young-man theme that seemed to preoccupy Paul Simon in

his early songwriting career, "I Am a Rock" also follows the successful

acoustic-electric, pop-folk formula that Simon & Garfunkel happened upon almost

accidentally with their 1964 breakthrough hit single "Sound of Silence." The

latter song was originally recorded with only acoustic guitar accompanying the

duo's pristine harmonies. It was turned into an electrified pop recording

without the pair's knowledge by producer Tom Wilson -- who was having success

with similar arrangements for Bob Dylan -- on order of Columbia Records. When

"Sound of Silence" resulted in a number one record, Simon & Garfunkel recorded a

number of other songs with electric bass, guitar, organ, and drums to round out

the album Sound of Silence (1966), capitalizing on the success of the title

track. Like "I Am a Rock" from the album, the sound was usually closer to the

jangly West Coast folk sound of the Byrds and the Mamas and the Papas than to

Dylan's often raucous and hard-driving blues treatments. Simon & Garfunkel's

sweet harmonies always take off a bit of edge, even when turning it up a notch

with harder, Louvin Brothers-via- the Everly Brothers singing. "I Am a Rock" was

also a hit for the duo.



As with "Sound of Silence," "I Am a Rock" starts softly, with a lilting, triplet

folk-guitar lick and Simon's gentle, almost whispered voice setting the scene:

"A winter's day/In a deep and dark December," the band kicking in for, "I am

alone/Gazing from my window to the streets below/On a freshly fallen silent

shroud of snow/I am a rock/I am an island." His lyrics tread the same

introspective teenage/young adult ground as Brian Wilson's 1963 classic "In My

Room," though Simon has not quite yet developed the subtlety demonstrated by

Wilson and his co-writer, Gary Usher. But Simon does strive for greater depth:

"I've built walls/A fortress deep and mighty/That none may penetrate/I have no

need of friendship/Friendship causes pain." His lyrics sound a bit labored and

self-conscious as h