When my father drove me up to Kelowna a few weeks ago he brought along some CDs in his car that he thought I’d like to listen to on the road. One just happened to be a greatest hits compilation of Simon & Garfunkel (well, just the second CD, because Dad is about as organized with his media as I am with my stuff) and from that he somehow made the latter hits of S&G the de facto soundtrack for my move. It helps, I guess, that you can easily sing along to Mrs. Robinson and Cecilia better than you can to Dad’s other greatest hits he brought along, those of Bob Dylan. It’s hard to sing along to someone who’s not technically singing himself.
We did discuss that The Byrds‘s Dylan covers (like Mr. Tambourine Man) would have been better for this; I prefer harmony to unison because the combined sound gives me more pleasure, and The Byrds were all about the complex harmonies (I think from David Crosby‘s influence, but I don’t know for sure).
Oh dear God, there’s even a William Shatner version.
A Youtube search has just informed me that we’re not the first people to document Simon & Garfunkel as Okanagan road trip music:
I wonder why it is. Maybe the summer desert climate matches their sound? Disregarding this song, of course.
I recently read an article in Scientific American Mind called Why Music Moves Us that I recommend; I’m fascinated by how music affects people, or specifically me. It seems that music “hijack[s] brain systems built for other purposes such as language, emotion and movement”. Now I have an explanation for my own stupidity!
I’ve been lax in my music recommendations lately, as friends have nagged, so I will get to that soon. There isn’t really anything else to talk about at the moment, as I’m still in the midst of organizing and cleaning and you deserve better than to listen to me talk about that. Thank God for good music to keep me from falling asleep at the mop!
Your disregarded song? That IS what happens in the winter in the Okanagan.
Well I’m disregarding it because I was referring to the Okanagan in the summer. As for the Okanagan in the winter, I’ve heard it’s a “real winter” which I’m really, really scared about and am trying to pretend won’t happen.
You can pretend…but you’ll be covered in about seven feet of snow soon enough.
Winters in the interior aren’t too bad, as long as you don’t live up on a mountain and have to take a logging road to work, hehe …if you’re in the town area it should be alright for getting around in.