Simon & Garfunkel-The Sound Of Silence

[jamestkirk]

At the forefront of the folkies that kept the music going when most of the NYC/Greenwich/Cambridge folkies had either given up or gone electric.

Such fine talents....share your favorites and memories....listening to Sounds Of Silence in the dark was like no other trip imagined.

I would like to share a rare treat...a soundboard recording from a
1966 live Baltimore concert. Really very rare to find a soundboard-like recording from such early Simon & Garfunkel.

http://gratefulbreed.blogspot.com/2011/ ... imore.html





Simon and Garfunkel - Live in Baltimore 1966
Shriver Auditorium
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
10/21/1966
SBD (?), FLAC


01. A Hazy Shade Of Winter
02. Cloudy
03. Teenage Moron
04. Benedictus
05. Blessed
06. A Poem On The Underground Wall
07. I Am A Rock
08. Anji
09. The Sound Of Silence
10. Sparrow
11. For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her
12. A Church Is Burning



[8D]






This bit of info about Sounds of Silence....

On June 15, 1965, immediately after the recording session of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," Wilson took the original acoustically instrumented track of Simon & Garfunkel's 1964 version, The Sounds Of Silence, and overdubbed the recording with electric guitar (played by Al Gorgoni), electric bass (Bob Bushnell), and drums (Bobby Gregg), and released it as a single without consulting Simon or Garfunkel. The lack of consultation with Simon and Garfunkel on Wilson's re-mix was because, although still contracted to Columbia Records at the time, the musical duo at that time was no longer a "working entity".[3][8][9] Roy Halee was the recording engineer, who in spirit with the success of The Byrds and their success formula in folk rock, introduced an echo chamber effect into the song.[3] Al Gorgoni later would reflect that this echo effect worked well on the finished recording, but would dislike the electric guitar work they technically superimposed on the original acoustic piece.


The Sound(s) Of Silence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvsX03LOMhI





Originally released on their first LP...Wednesday Morning 3 AM
in 1964.

Here it is...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jqn9SKY ... re=related

[jamestkirk]

On the Sounds of Silence going electric!


...Simon learned that it had entered the charts minutes before he went on stage to perform at a club in Copenhagen, and in the later fall of 1965 he returned to the U.S. By the end of 1965 and the first few weeks of 1966, the song reached number one on the U.S. charts. Simon and Garfunkel then reunited as a musical act, and included the song as the title track of their next album, Sounds of Silence, hastily recorded in December 1965 and released in January 1966 to capitalize on their success. The song propelled them to stardom and, together with two other top-five (in the U.S.) hits in the summer of 1966, "I Am a Rock" and "Homeward Bound," ensured the duo's fame. In 1999, BMI named "The Sound of Silence" as the 18th-most performed song of the 20th century.[11] In 2004, it was ranked #156 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, one of the duo's three songs on the list.

On the duo's 1968 album Bookends, the track "Save the Life of My Child" features a distorted sample of Art Garfunkel's "Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you" line from the original recording of "The Sound Of Silence")....


Paul Simon began working on the song sometime after the Kennedy assassination. He had made progress on the music but had yet to get down the lyrics. On 19 February 1964, the lyrics coalesced, as Simon recalled: "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'."[5]

....Simon showed the new composition to Garfunkel the same day, and shortly afterward, the duo began to perform it at folk clubs in New York. In the liner notes of their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., Garfunkel claims, "'The Sound of Silence' is a major work. We were looking for a song on a larger scale, but this is more than either of us expected." -wiki






Here is a wonderful acoustic version...live ....back in the day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZGWQauQOAQ

Eight million plus views...so yeah...relevant today still.

[silentseason]

Great post, thanks. A very fine find.
S/G are such a harmonic joy to listen to.
Scarborough Fair is one of my all time favorites.
April Come She Will another song that soars.
Silent Night is like a postcard from '66, still relevant today.
Pleasure Machine & Desultory Phillipic are S/G at their cynical best.
El Condor Pasa still gives me chills to hear.
Too many songs to list, but another great example of a group/duo who didn't last together too long but their output is timeless.

I still love watching the Graduate almost as much to hear their music as the actual movie.