Octo_Russ

Simon & Garfunkel [Greatest Hits] 

This was great fun listening to this disc today, 14 tracks with all their best known hits [though missing out 'Wednesday Morning 3AM'], i find it's actually hard to find a S & G greatest hits / best of package that's just perfect, i have an issue with every one it seems, this one has half of the tracks live, lots of serious clapping, though only at the beginning or end, there are so many of these packages been done for this duo, and some of them are 2 disc sets, but this is certainly one of the good ones.

Simon & Garfunkel were schoolboy friends, and started singing together in the mid Fifties, both born in America in 1941 about a month apart, they are both now 69 years old, Paul Simon is the creative one, but Art Garfunkel is the one with the better voice, i like the booklet / back insert, especially the back insert, i guess it's the Hudson River in the background, the shot captures the pair in a more unposed take.

The tracks that affected me the most were all of them except 4 & 13, and the two which touched me especially were 3 & 11, 'The Boxer' and 'Kathy's Song', this last song was about a girl called Kathy Chitty, an English girl he met while he lived in England in the mid Sixties, written from the perspective of being apart from Kathy, with him in America, and her in England, it's a poignant ballad of separation and longing, it's a song of just Paul Simon's voice and his acoustic guitar, which emphasises the loneliness all the more, his voice is great, a nice sense of sadness, the song revolves around the rain, one of the things England is famous for!, and maybe this got Paul Simon thinking about good old England and Kathy, it's starts off with gorgeous nostalgic lyrics,

I hear the drizzle of the rain

Like a memory it falls

Soft and warm continuing

Tapping on my roof and walls

And from the shelter of my mind

Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain drenched streets
To England where my heart lies

The double meaning of certain words and phrases is perfection in his craft, using the word shelter is a stroke of genius, it shows the rain tapping at his cranium, where he's nice and dry, and he uses the word window to open up an inner view of a land far away, with six verses all told, and no chorus, it weaves a lovely pattern, for me the last verse is the most meaningful,  

And as i watch the drops of rain

Weave their weary paths and die

I know that i am like the rain

There but for the grace of you go i

And of course the window metaphor comes back again, who hasn't watched the rain drizzle down a window pane?, and watched the shapes and movements change, here he likens a raindrop to a life, that for a moment lives and weaves it destiny, but quickly runs off to die, that's an incredible metaphor, and then he likens his life to an 'aimless' raindrop that would die if it wasn't for her making his life meaningful, i guess he would 'die' without her love, but more than 'mere' poetry, Paul Simon marries the whole thing with a sweet and sour tinged melody to break anybody's heart, a 3 minute masterpiece.

Here's Simon & Garfunkel singing 'Kathy's Song' on YouTube.