Simon & Garfunkel
“Village Vanguard”
1965-1969
Studio Outtakes
Live Performances
BBC Sessiona

Lineage:

Mastered from soundboard tapes, off-line and off-air sources -> Cassette -> CDR -> CDR -> EAC -> WAV -> FLAC

01 For Emily
02 Overs
03 Homeward Bound
04 At the Zoo
05 America
06 Song for the Asking
07 A Poem on the Underground Wall
08 For Emily
09 Anji
10 Richard Cory
11 The Sound of Silence
12 Homeward Bound
13 A Most Peculiar Man
14 He Was My Brother
15 I Am A Rock
16 I Wish You Could Be There
17 Blessed
18 Bad Blues Feeling
19 Cloudy
20 Can’t help But Wonder Where I’m Bound
21 Sparrow
22 The Side of a Hill
23 I Am A Rock
24 A Church is Burning
25 Anji

Tracks 01-02: Studio out-takes 1966-1967
Tracks 03-09: Live from Carbondaile, Ill, Nov 08, 1969
Tracks 10-15: “Sing Out” T.V. Special from Canadian Television 1966
Tracks 16-19: Studio Rehearsal 1966
Tracks 20-25: BBC London 1966: track 22 On The Side of a HILL has been already composed
in 1963 for Art Garfunkel by Paul Simon and Art gives a beautiful redention of this anti-war song!

A very interesting and worthwhile, though not superb, collection of 27 live performances and outtakes, spanning 1966 through 1969.
Two three studio outtakes from 1966 to 1967
There’s also a version of “Overs” with considerably different lyrics than the one that turned up on Bookends.
Then there are a few songs from a 1966 “studio rehearsal,” though the cover doesn’t say whether this is a recording, TV, or radio studio, and some of them sound like Paul Simon solo tracks, with no evidence of Garfunkel. Anyway, these too are noteworthy for including two songs that never appeared on their albums: the nice, folky ballad “I Wish You Could Be Here” and “Bad Blues Feeling,” the latter of which shows the influence of Simon’s 1965 stint in Britain with its Bert Jansch-type licks. Six songs from a 1966 BBC appearance again yield rarities with a cover of Tom Paxton’s “I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound”; the anti-war “On the Side of a Hill,” which never made it onto any S&G albums; and
“A Church Is Burning,” which only came out on Paul Simon’s 1965 solo LP, The Paul Simon Song Book. The nine songs from a November 1969 concert don’t have any otherwise unavailable numbers, but do boast the best sound quality of anything on the CD. This bootleg isn’t solely notable for the rare compositions, though. The sound is very good at best and very listenable at worst. The performances are fine, and there are renditions of famous hits like “Homeward Bound,” “Sounds of Silence,” and “I Am a Rock” dotted throughout the program. ~

A new disc for the end of 1999, Village Vanguard gathers a lot of important material, some fairly common to the ROIO collector, some new to the more
“public” ROIO market.

The various studio outtakes and rehearsals have appeared before on other releases in the same sound quality.
The most striking of these is “Overs,” which has a unique organ line and very early lyrics – vastly diferent from the final version of the song.

It’s nice to get “Bad News Feeling” and “I Wish You Could Be Here” with Paul Simon performing – the latter is more commonly available in a version by The Cyrkle.
The highlight of this disc is the 9 November 1969 material. This concert, performed a few days prior to the Miami University show and immediately after the wrap of principal recording for Bridge Over Troubled Water, has a high energy level. This show was likely the first live performance of “Song For The Asking,” as Artie notes that Paul “just finished” the song. Unlike the Miami University show, there is no backing band here, likely due to the fact that studio recording tookplace in Los Angeles the day before this show. The recording quality of this section is the best on the disc, though not as clean as that of the aforementioned Miami U. show.

The other material on this disc – the “Sing Out” TV show and the BBC programme – are well-done, though the recording quality is typical of any off-air recording of the time: fairly low-fidelity, but quite listenable.