Day 03: My Top 10 albums of all time in no particular order ..

Everything Has already been said and written about this album. Many would claim that this was not there best album but they are wrong ... laugh ...

It's a fantastic journey and I can only imagine it took an enormous ammount of work to create. The first song I heard from Simon & Garfunkel to really grab me was ''Feelin Grovy'', was not actually on this album but Bookends was the first album I owned myself from the amazing duo. The text on this album provides amazing imagery of the USA ... actually inspires me to jump on a Greyhound bus some day and do some people watching.

I love this song, you can play here from YouTube. ''Old Friends''

Play From SPOTIFY


From Wiki

The songs

The first side of the album is musically and thematically unified: it begins (and ends) with the brief guitar piece "Bookends Theme", evoking a "time of innocence", which moves immediately to "Save the Life of My Child" with the sound of a distorted bass synthesizer in the same key, played by co-producer John Simon and set up by Bob Moog himself.^[5][6] The song features vocal asides and sound effects including synthesizer sounds, disjointed choral voices and a sample from their single "The Sounds of Silence". This crossfades into "America", a tale of travelling young lovers that contrasts with the estrangement expressed next in "Overs". "Voices of Old People" is as it says, a collection of taped conversations leading into "Old Friends", an idyll of old age with powerful strings and horns, now stark, now sweet, that connect by a single held note to the final, vocal version of the "Bookends Theme". The whole side marks successive stages in life, the theme serving as literal bookends to the life cycle.

The second side features the single "Mrs. Robinson", famous for its inclusion in the film The Graduate and the accompanying soundtrack album. "Overs", "Punky's Dilemma", and "A Hazy Shade of Winter" were also written by Simon for The Graduate soundtrack, but the film's producers rejected them.^{[citation needed]} The song is driven by congas and overdubbed guitar figures. "Fakin' It" and "Punky's Dilemma" also make use of sound effects, percussion loops and an interlude in an English shop featuring the voice of singer Beverley Martyn in the former, background voices and someone stamping downstairs and slamming a door over the walking bass of the latter. "A Hazy Shade of Winter" has an electric rock sound, seguing suddenly into the intimacy of tinkling bells and quiet finger-picking for "At the Zoo".

The record's brevity reflects its concise and perfectionistic production. The team spent over 50 studio hours recording "Punky's Dilemma",^[7] for example, and re-recorded vocal parts, sometimes note by note, until they were satisfied. Simon's guitar parts are intricate, percussion is carefully invented and keyboards and electric bass introduced with economy and taste.

A 2001 CD reissue of the album includes two bonus tracks: "You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies" (originally issued as a B-side to the "Fakin' It" single) and a demo version of "Old Friends".

The "Bookends Theme" was featured during the opening scene of the film Girl, Interrupted, and "Bookends" in the denouement of the film 500 Days of Summer. The song was also included on the Stacey Kent album The Boy Next Door (2003).