Saturday, November 28, 2009

Number 364 - Simon & Garfunkel


Number 364

Simon & Garfunkel

"Homeward Bound"

(1966)
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................Genre: Folk Rock...............
Spider-cow [?]
Homeward bound, yes I am. But why do I get the feeling I don't know where home is anymore? Although, I do know where I want it to be. Personally, I cannot wait for this decade to be over. Besides the music, the decade has been a dismall period, only saved by a fortunate event that happened in the latter stages of 2009. This has encouraged me to look forward to a new start, a new beggining for the next decade. A most exciting time indeed.
So, that leaves us with the Greatest 100 songs of this decade: "2000 to 2009" and as one commentator [aptly] quoted, saying "(This list) Must have been put together by some 14 yr old girl", I find it hard to diasagree. Here is the "Top Ten, good luck, oh and if you were born before 1990 ... commiserations. #1: Beyonce "Crazy In Love" [USA, 2003], #2: MGMT "Time To Pretend" [ USA, 2008] #3: The Srokes "Hard To Explain" [USA, 2001], #4: MIA "Paper Planes" [USA, 2007] #5: OutKast "Hey Ya!" [USA, 2003], #6: The Rapture "House Of Jealous Lovers" [USA, 2002], #7: Klaxons "Golden Skans" [ENG, 2007] #8: Blur "Out Of Time" [ENG, 2003], #9: Arcade Fire "Rebellion (Lies)" [CAN, 2004] #10: Arctic Monkeys "A Certain Romance" [ENG, 2006].
If you can stomach the rest of the other 90 songs of the '00's here you go >NME 100 tracks of '00's<. Not one song from this "Greatest 100 Songs of The Decade" made it to "Definitive 1000 Songs of All Time", in short, a sad indictment of this decades music [or lack of].
Larry was here
Simon & Garfunkel's first masterpiece, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was also the first album on which the duo, in tandem with engineer Roy Halee, exerted total control from beginning to end, right down to the mixing, and it is an achievement akin to the Beatles' Revolver or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests. After the frantic rush to put together an LP in just three weeks that characterized the Sounds of Silence album early in 1966, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme came together over a longer gestation period of about three months, an uncommonly extended period of recording in those days, but it gave the duo a chance to develop and shape the songs the way they wanted them. The album opens with one of the last vestiges of Paul Simon's stay in England, "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" -- the latter was the duo's adaptation of a centuries-old English folk song in an arrangement that Simon had learned from Martin Carthy. The two transformed the song into a daunting achievement in the studio, however, incorporating myriad vocal overdubs and utilizing a harpsichord, among other instruments, to embellish it, and also wove into its structure Simon's "The Side of a Hill," a gentle antiwar song that he had previously recorded on The Paul Simon Songbook in England. The sonic results were startling on their face, a record that was every bit as challenging in its way as "Good Vibrations," but the subliminal effect was even more profound, mixing a hauntingly beautiful antique melody, and a song about love in a peaceful, domestic setting, with a message about war and death; Simon & Garfunkel were never as political as, say, Peter, Paul & Mary or Joan Baez, but on this record they did bring the Vietnam war home.
Repeat after me ... OooOoo
Two of the most beautiful songs ever written about the simple joys of living, the languid "Cloudy" and bouncy "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," were no less seductive, and the album also included "Homeward Bound," their Top Five hit follow-up to "The Sound of Silence," which had actually been recorded at the sessions for that LP. No Simon & Garfunkel song elicits more difference of opinion than "The Dangling Conversation," making its LP debut here -- one camp regards it as hopelessly pretentious and precious in its literary name-dropping and rich string orchestra accompaniment, while another holds it as a finely articulate account of a couple grown distant and disconnected through their intellectual pretentions; emotionally, it is definitely the precursor to the more highly regarded "Overs" off the next album, and it resonated well on college campuses at the time, evoking images of graduate school couples drifting apart, but for all the beauty of the singing and the arrangement, it also seemed far removed from the experience of teenagers or any listeners not living a life surrounded by literature ("couplets out of rhyme" indeed!), and understandably only made the Top 30 on AM radio.
All those years ago
Overall, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was the duo's album about youthful exuberance and alienation, and it proved perennially popular among older, more thoughtful high-school students and legions of college audiences across generations. {The August 2001 reissue offers not only the best sound ever heard on this album in any incarnation, but also a few bonuses -- a slightly extended mastering of "Cloudy" that gives the listener a high-harmony surprise in its fade; and, as actual bonus tracks, Simon's solo demos of "Patterns" and "A Poem on the Underground Wall." Raw and personal, they're startling in their intimacy and their directness, and offer a more intimate view of Paul Simon, the artist, than ever seen.} ~ [Bruce Eder, All Music Guide]
Homeward Bound: the song
This way puss
"Homeward Bound" is a 1966 song by Simon and Garfunkel, produced by Bob Johnston and recorded on December 14, 1965. Paul Simon is said to have written the song at the former Ditton railway station in the town of Widnes, in the north-west of England, while stranded overnight waiting for a train. The song describes his longing to return home, both to his then girlfriend, Kathy Chitty in Brentwood, Essex, England, and to return to the United States. The song debuted on Billboard Hot 100 Chart on February 12, 1966, peaking at #5. It remained on the charts for 12 weeks. A live version of the song takes the place of the studio version on the compilation Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. The song is one of Simon's signature tunes along with The Sounds of Silence, Mrs. Robinson, and Bridge Over Troubled Water and is played frequently at his concerts. In 1976, Simon and former Beatle George Harrison played this song and Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" on an episode of Saturday Night Live that Simon hosted and on which Harrison was the musical guest.
Several artists have covered this song, including The Beau Brummels, Cher, Glen Campbell, Janie Fricke, Jack Jones, Jack's Mannequin, William Joseph and Petula Clark. ~ [Source:Wikipedia]
Roll Call ...
For the Beatles see #489, #587, #894, #947
For the Beach Boys see #368, #517, #560, #576, #641, #714
For more Simon & Garfunkel see #964
For Paul Simon see #468, #742
For Art Garfunkel see #682
For George Harrison see #806
For Cher see #889, MM Vol 1 #088
For Glen Campbell see #884
C'mon RS, whaddaya say?
Toward the end of '66, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was released. Two cuts from it, "The Dangling Conversation" and "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," are included in this collection, plus the new live versions of three other cuts. Listening to Parsley today is almost as staggering an experience as it was nearly six years ago. One glorious melody follows another, each brilliantly arranged and impeccably sung. "The Dangling Conversation," for all its literary self-consciousness ("You read your Emily Dickinson and I my Robert Frost/And we note our place with book markers that measure what we've lost"), expresses better than any song before or since the pervasive angst of the affluent collegiate. Parsley also contained "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," Simon's most relaxed, least "poetic" song up to that time. ("Slow down, you move too fast./You got to make the morning last./Just kickin' down the cobble stones,/Lookin' for fun and feelin' groovy.") As a whole, Parsley was a kaleidoscope of moods and ideas communicated with unprecedented tenderness and intimacy. ~ [Source: RS 1972]
Rolling Stone magazine deemed their '364th Song of all Time' was "Highway 61 Revisited" by Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan has appeared in The Definitive 1000 of All Time @ #491, #841, #929
Other songs with reference to the Simon & Garfunkel ~ #380, #467, #493, #556, #563, #660
Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs ranked this song at Number (Utter rubbish!) and the Album ranked at 201 [Oh we liked the album tho .. kaff]
This song has a Definitive 1000 rating of 80.3 out of 108

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