Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Hoot '12: Simon & Garfunkel/ the Who covers

Hoot '12: "The Only Living Boy in NY" b/w "Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand"

We were down for maintenance at the RKBS site but are back up and running... Don't forget to check out the other great Hoot covers posted recently, and we hope you dig these.




My history with Simon & Garfunkel is tangled and, truth be told, I really just never much cared for them.  Being a child of the '70s, I could never really avoid them though, echoing across the airwaves and culture as they were. But listening to their records is tied in my mind to some very specific tedious, bleak, stuffy, precious (in the bad way) moments, such as dissecting "Richard Corey" in Miss Sweeney's afternoon English class,  spring 1983.  Few units of time are as long as the eternity that follows someone putting, say, "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme" on the turntable and saying "We'll hit the road right after this side is done....  Uggghhhh...  I get a shiver even now.  Still, every once in a while there's something I really love, whether the Concert in Central Park, or some lyric or musical turn or general vibe in "America" or "The Boxer", or the fraying working relationship on display on the beautiful "Bridge Over Troubled Water" album. And off that  album, "The Only Living Boy in NY" is an an absolute favorite, and a song that says a whole lot while not saying much at all.  It'll jerk a tear to yer eye!  Plus the original version features some of LA's top "Wrecking Crew" hands: the great Joe Osborne (bass), Hal Blaine (drums), Larry Knechtel (organ) and Fred Carter, Jr (guitar)-- men who built a good number of your musical memories, whether you know it or not.  So, yeah, we took a crack at it anyway, and turned Paul C loose on the bass and Paul B on the take-off guitar.

Now, the Who?  I was always on-board for them from the moment I bought my "Hooligans" best-of compilation cassette at Sam Goody or Musicland in the Galleria in White Plains.  We were children of "Who's Next" and "Quadrophenia" primarily,  Dillo and me, and the whole pre-"Tommy" output always confused me a bit.  What was up with the baked beans, giant deodorant, zit cream, leopard skin and general shirtlessness of "The Who Sell Out"?!? As with the Kinks and Stones, this meant that a lot of the early gems went undiscovered for a while.  Among them, "MaryAnne with the Shaky Hand".  That's Paul B on the keys, RK power-popping it on the drums, Dillo on the bass and me on the Rickenbackers.

JK

"The Only Living Boy in NY":            https://www.box.com/s/t65sp35v7r8pp5jvrlih


"Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand":   https://www.box.com/s/uvgui0s9yjujd76hkjcq

No comments:

Post a Comment