Leave it to two nice Jewish boys to mix religion and politics on the first track on their debut album. On \u201cYou Can Tell The World,\u201d Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel do just that and sound pretty darned gleeful doing it too. As with all the other songs on the peculiarly titled Wednesday Morning, 3 AM<\/i>,<\/i> the duo only have their acoustic guitars and sterling voices to send their plaintive messages out to the world. This means they have nothing to hide behind and no gimmicks to help sell themselves. As a result, this album went virtually unnoticed when it was released in the wake of the Beatles\u2019 arrival in America. Soft and poetic folk tunes just weren\u2019t going to cut it. Had this debut been released two years earlier, it may have had a chance. On the other hand, it got them out of singing in the New York City subway, so it must have accounted for something in their minds.<\/p>\n
Listeners can hear a banjo playing in \u201cLast Night I Had The Strangest Dream,\u201d where the pair cleverly point to a future where there is no war. Unfortunately, the Vietnam War still had ten years to go before that conflict would be resolved. By that time, Simon & Garfunkel would have long since broken up to pursue fruitful solo careers. Peace has always been something to aspire to, but one look at the Middle East proves just how elusive such a noble aim has always proved to be.<\/p>\n
If you love New York, you\u2019ll surely cherish hearing \u201cBleecker Street.\u201d The Greenwich Village neighborhood this song depicts was the birthplace of the folk music explosion of the 1960s, as most recently captured in the Coen Brothers\u2019 latest film offering, Inside Llewyn Davis<\/i>. One of the first hits of this grass roots movement is \u201cThe Sound Of Silence,\u201d which can also be found in its fuller version on the subsequent follow-up, Sounds Of Silence. <\/i>Its weighty subject matter, described by Simon as \u201cman\u2019s inability to communicate with man,\u201d perhaps is best illustrated by the line \u201csilence like a cancer grows.\u201d Even now, in the age in Facebook, we are still struggling to make substantial connections with one another. Strange and sad, but true.<\/p>\n
It was a brilliant masterstroke to include Bob Dylan\u2019s instant classic \u201cThe Times They Are A-Changin,\u201d but haven\u2019t we always been saying that? It\u2019s like we want change, but have no idea how to bring about lasting<\/i> change. The cycles do have a way of bringing us back around to where we started. The adage, \u201cthe more things change, the more they stay the same,\u201d is more like it when it comes to American society. Some want tradition, others want progress. It\u2019s a generational argument that just doesn\u2019t have an end. Again, Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s words are good in theory, but putting them to practice is another story entirely.<\/p>\n
As modern day prophets, (they even dare to cover the gospel chestnut \u201cGo Tell It On The Mountain\u201d \u2013 if an artist did this today, they\u2019d probably be laughed out of the room), Simon & Garfunkel proved that you didn\u2019t need to plug into an amp to be heard. Sometimes the quiet, creeping thru the backdoor approach can be even more effective. Granted, after five critically acclaimed albums, they would run out of ideas and patience with one another \u2013 fame has a habit of creating sizable egos \u2013 but this was an \u201caudaciously hopeful\u201d way to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":31766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7683],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-43479","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-simon-garfunkel","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43479"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}