Friday, May 15, 2009

Simon & Garfunkel - So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

I was going to post "The Boxer," because it occurred to me that it was first released forty years ago this spring (as a single--it didn't appear on album until a couple of years after that). But then, why post a song you've likely heard, when something a little more unusual was available? "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright" is from the Bridge Over Troubled Waters album, and combines a seemingly surreal but sort-of-based-in-reality lyric (Garfunkel did actually study with Frank Lloyd Wright shortly before the great man's death in 1959, although I doubt they ever harmonized 'til dawn) with music clearly based on a certain type of Brazilian music (reasonably complex chords on classical guitar, a thousand violins, a quiet singer, genteel reverb). It was not like anything their contemporaries were doing, or indeed like anything S&G did before or after. Here it is.

Bonus points if you can make out what the faint voices are saying near the end.

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