the sounds of silence

As I sit here, I’m listening to my newly acquired Simon & Garfunkel boxed set. This has been a long time coming, as I finally gave up my plan to borrow and steal my sister’s copy of “Collected Works”, which is now out of print. For some reason, I had failed to research and actual find the replacements for the “Collected Works” release, and, for whatever reason, I couldn’t handle buying all the albums separately.

You might not have pegged me for a S&G fan. After all, their whole output was done before I was born. But, more than anything else, Simon & Garfunkel was the music of my childhood. I have vivid memories of lying on the floor of our dining room, listening to S&G playing on a HeathKit turntable that my father had built. There was other music playing in my childhood, but this is where my father’s musical taste and mind really intersected.

When Simon & Garfunkel’s “Collected Works” was released on vinyl (the Internet tells me this was December, 1981), my sister and I collaborated and bought it for my father. This was really just all five albums packaged together, and the only thing new for us was “Wednesday Morning, 3AM”, S&G first album, which, for whatever reason, Dad never got. We had bought it not to get new music, however, but to replace the deteriorating original LPs. We had played them too often.

The vinyl collection is long gone, a victim of my parent’s move. (I’ll take credit for the Talking Heads and ABC, but the Wham! album was not my fault). With my latest move, my long S&G drought has come to an end.