Simon & Garfunkel, an American singer-songwriter duo, has released five studio albums, fifteen compilation albums, four live albums, one extended play, twenty-six singles, one soundtrack, and four box sets since 1964. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel first formed a duo in 1957 as Tom & Jerry, before separating and later reforming as Simon & Garfunkel.[1]
Simon And Garfunkel Sound Of Silence Album Rar
Simon & Garfunkel's third album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, was released on October 10, 1966, and produced five singles. It peaked at number four in the US and number thirteen in the UK, and received a three-time multi-platinum certification by RIAA. The single "Mrs. Robinson" was included in the duo's first and only soundtrack, The Graduate, and was later included on their fourth studio album Bookends, which was released on April 3, 1968. It peaked at number one in both the US and UK, therefore becoming their first number one album, and received two-times multi-platinum in the US. On January 26, 1970, they released their fifth and final studio album, Bridge over Troubled Water. It was their most successful to date, peaking at number one in several countries, including the UK and US. The album sold over twenty-five million copies worldwide,[4][5][6] and received eight-time multi-platinum in the US.
The music of Simon & Garfunkel was a perfect fit for the 1967 film The Graduate, the tale of young, alienated Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) and his search to find meaning in his life. Director Mike Nichols propelled the story with songs by the folk-rock duo and jazzy instrumentals by composer Dave Grusin. Released on Jan. 21, 1968, the film's soundtrack reached No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart.
"Scarborough Fair," a traditional ballad about a centuries-old British trade fair, was combined by Simon with his own "Canticle" to create the medley that appeared on the pair's third studio album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. An alternate version of "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine," also from Parsley, Sage, appears on the soundtrack. It is only briefly heard in the film blaring from a car radio at a drive-in.
All of their best-known, best-loved hits, plus choice album cuts and three live performances. A Billboard bestseller when it was first released in 1972, this is still the best single-album Simon and Garfunkel collection available.Fourteen classic hits from Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, the unique marriage of the perfect songwriter with the perfect voice. Includes "Bridge Over Troubled Water", "Mrs. Robinson", "The Boxer", "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", "The Sounds of Silence", "I Am A Rock", "Homeward Bound", "America", "Cecilia" and much more."This album has had over three decades to make an impact, and it says something for its staying power that, in the face of more recent, more generously programmed, and better mastered compilations of the duo's work, it remains one of the most popular parts of the Simon & Garfunkel catalog -- which doesn't mean it isn't fraught with frustrations for anyone buying it. Its very existence is something of a fluke -- in the spring of 1972, the five original Simon & Garfunkel albums, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, Sounds of Silence, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Bookends and Bridge Over Troubled Water, were still selling almost as well as they had in the 1960s; indeed, Bridge Over Troubled Water had carved out a seemingly permanent place for itself on the charts for years; and between the continued radio play of the duo's biggest hits, and the inevitable discovery of their catalog by successive new waves of junior high and high school students, those five LPs stood among the most profitable parts of the Columbia Records back catalog, rivaling Bob Dylan's much larger library in sheer numbers. Columbia might have gone years longer without compiling the duo's hits, but then, in June of 1972, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel did something totally unexpected -- in the midst of Simon's still-emerging solo career (and the careful crafting of his identity as a single act), and Garfunkel's re-identification of himself as an actor, the two reunited for one night, to do a benefit performance at New York's Madison Square Garden for the presidential candidacy of Senator George McGovern. (The latter event also took on a life of its own, as the first widely available Simon & Garfunkel concert bootleg, with terrible sound but capturing for posterity what had to be one of the funniest moments of their stage history, when Simon, attempting to suppress his laughter, remarks in connection with requests being called out, that someone "wants to hear "Voices of Old People" from Bookends). The performance was widely publicized, both before and after the event -- McGovern had captured the hearts and imaginations of tens of millions of high school and college students around the United States that spring, and this reviewer can attest to the fact that millions of people who were not at that show felt like they were there in spirit. It was inevitable that Columbia would want to put out a new Simon & Garfunkel release to take advantage of the renewed attention and excitement surrounding the duo, and they probably could have gotten away with a straight greatest-hits collection; but thanks to some inspiration and cooperation between the label and the artists, Greatest Hits went far beyond that. Nine of the tracks on the 14-song LP did, indeed, comprise the duo's biggest hits -- including "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Mrs. Robinson," and "The Sounds of Silence" -- in their familiar studio versions; but interspersed between them were previously unheard live recordings of "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her," "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," "Homeward Bound," and "Kathy's Song," plus an alternate take of "America." At that time, Simon & Garfunkel had never released a live album, and as it happened, at least four of those five were among the most personal songs in the duo's repertory -- songs that millions of fans responded to individually (as opposed to the mass appeal of the pair's hit singles). The fact that they were present as excellent live performances made the appeal of this record irresistible to fans at every level, from the most casual to the most serious and dedicated. It was a sign of just how much they were loved and missed (and, perhaps, needed?) that without anything but that one unrecorded and untelevised benefit show to support its release, the record peaked at number five on the Billboard charts. And a couple of years later, it joined their original five albums as a perennial catalog favorite. And it still holds up -- it touches all the right buttons, providing an overview of the duo's most popular songs, but with those live cuts and the "America" outtake to make it essential in its own right, separate from the overview -- indeed, it manages to present both the duo's broader history, and their most widely appealing music, and their most intimate work, all seamlessly; only some interesting and ambitious singles that either hadn't stood the test of time ("Fakin' It") or were artistic blind alleys ("The Dangling Conversation"), were missing, along with "Punky's Dilemma," a perennial FM radio favorite that lay just below Columbia Records' and the duo's radar. All of that is the good part about this collection, which ought to get an unqualified rave -- the bad part, and the reason that it doesn't get that rave, is the sound quality, which was indifferent on the LP and worse on the CD, with sound that audibly cracks on parts of "The Sounds of Silence" and some of the other early studio cuts; Greatest Hits has begged for a sonic upgrade, and remastering from better sources, for two decades" (Bruce Eder, AMG)Simon & GarfunkelDigitally remastered
The sound quality in generally is very good, though there were a few problems. "A Most Peculiar Man" came to a sudden halt in the middle of the song. It seems Simon wasn't happy about something, and asked the recording engineer to play back the recording. If he went on to do a finished take, that hasn't been available to bootleggers. I patched in the second half of the song from the version he did on his obscure 1965 solo album "The Paul Simon Songbook." I also removed the few seconds of him talking to the engineer, since it didn't fit anymore. 2ff7e9595c
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