Simon & Garfunkel - The Essential Simon & Garfunkel
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Free Music Notes for The Essential Simon & Garfunkel
Free Music Review: An incredible collection
Hit: 5 Stars
Simon and Garfunkel are a true American original. They are clearly the best folk duet of all time and created so many great songs over just seven years! Maybe just a touch of Dylan influence on some their 1964 songs, but not too much. They always had their own unique sound and voice. These two CD's do them righteous justice. Terrific sound and a nice job of remastering on several of the tracks. I especially like 'If I Could" and "My Little Town." But the quintessential song, "Bridge Over Troubled Water," the timeless masterpiece, soars above all the others.
Perhaps the only negative aspect of their songs was that many of them barely topped 2 minutes, and are really too short. But let's face it, it was the era of 45's and brief-AM-static-filled radio play. Too bad. It took some doing in the late 60's and early 70's to create FM rock which was so much better. Oh well.
Enjoy.
Free Music Review: Sony's practical joke
Hit: 1 Stars
First of all, don't be fooled by the "live" recordings that the back cover shows: they are no prev. unreleased material, they're songs from the "Live from New York City, 1967" CD (Sony, 2002).So why would Sony release yet another Greatest hits album with material from just 8 months ago? Simply because S&G are on tour. So if you want a good S&G hits album, buy the one with the 2 guys walking on the beach at dusk. If you want an average live recording album, buy the one from last year. And if you want some really good material, then get The Columbia Studio Recordings 1964-1970 [BOX SET]. Of course you can always buy some unofficial wonderful records elsewhere... But that's another story.
Free Music Review: Just like the other mixes of wonderfull bands
Hit: 4 Stars
*sigh* Well, this is a wonderful disc if you're trying to just have a quick selection of great S&G songs. But, just like other "greatest hits!" albums of other artists it has no transition or composition qualities. Part of the art is how the CD is put together. How the songs work with each other, like a well written english papaer. If you want my advise, stick to the classic albums.Free Music Review: Great, but not a replacement for their classic albums
Hit: 4 Stars
I love this album and think it is a must own for S&G fans. The remastering offers fantastic clear sound and the producer chose some of the best cuts of their classic hits, particularly several live pieces. The mixing is consistently excellent and the line up flows well from piece to piece. A few songs from older albums I think are a bit grainny, which is cleaned up here nicely. The album also includes many of their greatest folk hits so it will offer great appeal to fans who lean in that direction. That said, it is no replacement for owning the full set of other classic albums. As these singers aged, their style evolved considerably, so the only way of hearing that change is to own the earlier classic albums. Moreover, S&G's body of work remains so large that these two discs could not contain it all, though they could have fit well over another half hour of music on these discs and I am annoyed by the wasted space. Certain great songs are also left out, such as Kodachrome and 50 ways to leave your lover. As I said, the focus here is on the folk music instead of their work that verged more toward rock.
None of this, however, should detract from the great pleasure S&G fans will take from this excellently remastered album.
Free Music Review: Good start...
Hit: 3 Stars
These songs are great. That needs to go up front. And these are the songs that casual S&G fans will want. But if you're like me and you have the Columbia "Greatest Hits" album, you get used to how those songs sound on this release. Some of them are the same. Some are quite different. So much so that I don't plan to get rid of my Greatest Hits CD and let this one replace it. There are NO songs on Greatest Hits that aren't on this collection, but the number of songs that sound different is large enough to justify (at least to myself) keeping that original collection.Herein lies the problem, and the reason this only gets 3 stars. There is never, NEVER a reason that any disc of an anthology should be 42 minutes long! NEVER! Disc 1 is 42 minutes, Disc 2 is 55 minutes. Consider that these should be approaching 80 minutes per disc, and that's over an hour of unused disc space! Some would argue that putting "filler" on a CD doesn't improve anything, but not a lot of S&G's music would be considered filler. I can make a better collection myself (and probably will), and fill up the discs. It's just a pet peeve of mine, so if you don't mind short anthologies, don't let me stop you.
Overall, the music is great. If you're a collector like me and like to have the "Essential" line, consider it, but beware that you're not getting much music for your money.