A desire to live long enough to look back.” Listen to her cover of “Old Friends/Bookends” below. 1968 was an awful year to live through for anyone, especially a kid. When I originally wrote this review on Christmas night 2006, I'd been nostalgically pondering a Christmas 42 years distant- I was 14 then. “This song to me now feels like a memory of a place that just doesn’t exist anymore, a romanticization of a forgotten era,” Nadler continues. BOOKENDS (released in 1968) is the greatest of all Simon & Garfunkel albums, and one of the best records made in the 1960s. “Additionally, the sales all of my releases on Sacred Bones as well as all of their other wonderful releases will be donated tomorrow to the Loveland Foundation, a non-profit making healing services available to people of color, particularly to black women and girls, and to a nationwide bail fund that splits donations among community bail funds.” 100% of the proceeds of this track will be donated to Black Lives Matter,” Nadler writes. “Bandcamp is once again kindly waving their revenue stream as we all navigate through an extremely tumultuous time. Today, Bandcamp is doing their thing again, and so is Nadler, who’s just shared a new cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Old Friends/Bookends.” (My Gawd, I'm sounding like Mr.The last time Bandcamp did one of their revenue share-waiving days, spectral folk singer/ future AI pop star Marissa Nadler dropped an EP of covers. And that's OK.that's what makes you and I special. The mono, as has been posted here MANY times before, kicked the crud out of the stereo mix.īut, as with any critically acclaimed LP (this, Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks, etc.) You either get it or you don't. I have first pressings of both Mono and Stereo copies, and they are both great. Side Two should be taken for nothing more than it is. America is probably one of the most beautiful songs Simon ever wrote, and the "Bookends" concept is well played from start to end-wrapping up right back at the beginning when you first plunked the needle into the lead in groove. Once that Moog kicks in, all bets are off. From the beginning acoustic plucking, you think it'll just be another quiet S&G album. Side One is like a rollercoaster ride from start to end. IMHO, this is an LP where the sum of the parts is much greater than the parts themselves. Chilling, humbling, affects me like no other popular music album track I own. And the audio-verite recording of the old people is one of the boldest tracks on any 'rock' record ever. Dirty words for some but it hits the spot for me. It offers intelligence, without the cringe-worthy pretension that Simon was sometimes capable of, and restraint. Its not funky, soulful, heavy rocking, hip or any of the groovy things that modern critics seem to need to justify 'classic' recordings. But as I get older this is one album that I still find can move me and can also offer some new detail that I hadn't appreciated before. All of this stuff was a little too 'straight' for the hippy crowd back in the day, too 'ivy league angst' I guess. Alienation, self-doubt, the fragility of existence in a non 'head' way, ie less about counter culture drug philosophy and more about suburban 'normality' and the sometimes frightening glimpses of the void that can be seen through the cracks. The first side, the 'old friends' side is dealing with some pretty sombre stuff. Taken individually some of the songs may appear slight, but like 'Pepper' I think S&G and R.H were attempting a unified 'whole', a song cycle. From the cool cover thru to the superb production this album is one of the all-time greats.
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