Posts Tagged ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’

DVD Review: “Paul Simon and Friends: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song”

Paul Simon And Friends: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song (2009, Shout Factory)
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I’d somehow blocked this out before sitting down to watch Paul Simon and Friends, but I think my earliest musical memory relates to Simon — specifically, of picking up There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, seeing the Warner Bros. logo on the album, putting it on the turntable expecting to hear some Bugs Bunny music, and being really pissed off when I got something completely different.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this experience is what kept me from caring about Paul Simon’s music until I was in my 20s. I mean, sure, I had my Columbia Record House copy of Graceland just like everyone else, but before the mid ’90s, my interest in his work began and ended with “You Can Call Me Al,” which is now an almost physically painful admission — Capeman aside, I don’t think he’s ever released anything I couldn’t cherrypick at least two wonderful songs from, and even though I’m fairly confident that his best (or at least most approachable) music is behind him, he’s written some of my all-time favorites.

Which isn’t to say I’m not aware of his many flaws, one of them being his nigh-total lack of stage presence. Having seen him live, I can tell you that if you’ve watched a Paul Simon concert video and thought to yourself, “his shows can’t possibly be this boring in person,” you were wrong, because they totally, totally are — which is most of why I wasn’t expecting much going into Paul Simon and Friends, and part of why it ended up being such a wonderfully pleasant surprise. (more…)

CD Review: Simon & Garfunkel, “Live 1969″

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel gave the world something that has never been fully recognized, I think. Now, I enjoy folk music and several of its most recognizable proponents, but I cannot deny the inherent sanctimony of a lot of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan’s most famous tunes. Sure, these were protest songs, and the subjective “us versus them” attitude was an obvious tack, but over time, some of these songs lost luster. Some lost it because of modern cynicism: “Yes, you’re outraged over this Tower of Babel. Where were you when it was being built? Is singing about it all you can do now?” Others lost it because of an overbearing quaintness, hymns to Ralph Waldo Emerson that smacked of being so out of touch, they might as well be alien transmissions.

So when Simon & Garfunkel burst on the scene, they freed up the voice and acoustic guitar from the tyranny of the right-minded (or the left, thinking politically). Their songs could be political, but they could also be nonsensical, traditional, and deep in their hearts they were always pop stars like their heroes the Everly Brothers; when they approached thorny material, Paul Simon did so as a writer, Art Garfunkel as a choir singer. When the duo was matched with a crack staff of Columbia’s studio musicians, the mass psychosis that plagued Dylan’s efforts in going electric didn’t affect the pair. Their saving grace was not simplicity but subtlety.

This all comes through on Live 1969, a collection of recordings from a tour concurrent with their finishing Bridge Over Troubled Water that year. They were on the verge of an acrimonious breakup that would result in years of sniping, famously documented in a “reunion” on the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Fortunately, that subsurface nastiness is nowhere to be found here. Instead, the focus is hard set on the songs of two voices and often one guitar. You couldn’t get more traditional folk than that. And when they are backed up by other musicians, it’s never superfluous. The clearest example is when Garfunkel takes the stage, backed only by piano, to perform “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Just as poignant is “The Sound of Silence,” the song originally intended for the stark folk treatment, then later filled in with studio musicians to produce the rock tune we recognize today. In it’s rawest, live incarnation, nothing is lost because it was always there from the start. When Simon palm-mutes the strings and thumps out a beat while moving toward the end section, it becomes as epic as anything they’ve ever done. (more…)