Simon & Garfunkel Live At Kraft Hall 1968

For the last several days I have been watching live performances of Simon & Garfunkel from back in the 60's. The one I am particularly fond of is the live at Kraft Music Hall from 1968:




There are several 10-20 minute performances of theirs from around the world on YouTube but I especially like this one because there is a beautiful reverb that paints each song here. And two of my all-time favorite S&G songs are here: For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her & Patterns.

My first listening experience with "For Emily..." was the version on the 1972 best of collection. It was a live version and I was somewhat annoyed with live versions of songs on hits packages where I expected familiar studio recordings. Not really knowing this song meant it wasn't too burdensome for me to listen to it, but there were other songs on this album that I did know and was disappointed to hear live versions taking the seat of the ones I knew.

Mind you I was much younger then--in junior high, high school even--so I did not care too much for unfamiliar slow songs. But over the years "For Emily..." has grown deeply on me and has become a must-have S&G song. It is this live version from 1969, however, that is the penultimate classic for me. The original album version plays like a completely different song with more instruments and effects. This live version is Garfunkel's solo vocal with Simon's 12-string acoustic guitar and it is absolutely splendid!

A few days ago I decided to see if there was a live version video of this song on YouTube since so many wonderful things are now available on there to watch. To my surprise I came across this Kraft Hall version and I fell in love all over again. While the sonic fidelity may not be pleasing to many, I found it to be perfectly uplifting with an aforementioned large-hall reverb effect that added so much to the song. The sound source is from a mono film camera so there's plenty of noise and a flat, unequalized response. But that is good enough for me. Perfect even. I would eschew hi-fidelity, multi-track stereo any day for beautiful sounds captured by a single microphone and some wonderful, natural reverb.

To add to this wonderful live version of "For Emily...", there are some subtle strings which poke through just before the third verse. Just makes the song even more beautiful.

Watching this video also led me to learn the guitar intro to it and realize that the guitar solo in the middle is not as terribly complicated as the live '69 version had me believe all these years.

Among the other black & white videos I found of theirs was another where "For Emily..." was performed. While it was another fantastic rendition, there was absolutely no reverb and I just gotta have my fix of reverb otherwise it sounds too close and intimate. The only benefit to the no-reverb version is that you can hear every nuance of Garfunkel's effortless voice vibrato.

I only wish that this S&G Kraft Hall performance were longer. Would love to hear a few other of my favorites done there, including "Blessed", "A Hazy Shade of Winter" and "Scarborough Fair."

But there is one more performance I really enjoyed from this set. "Patterns" became a favorite song of mine the first time I heard it way back in my cassette days. And to hear them sing it here over the studio backing track is nothing short of what I define as the pinnacle sound of 60's pop/rock music. Once again that natural reverb sounds gorgeous and even adds an element of eeriness combined with the largely dark lyrics. Sound quality not an issue for me. Yes, it's not what I consider to be ideal but in my opinion a little de-hissing would be sufficient. In fact, it's the lo-fi-ness of the recording that makes it sonically more appealing to me. In this era of overproduction and limitless sonic technological improvements, there is much to be said about the simplicity of basic recording techniques and analog equipment.

I recommend watching the entire 19-minute performance but if the desire is to only see the ones I've written about, here they are:




Beware of other versions out there. Some YouTube users take the video, remove the original audio and superimpose audio from another source, usually a cd. I'm not a fan of this. I say leave the original audio in place no matter how bad it may sound to your ears. Some of us enjoy lo-fi!

And here is one that I uploaded myself:

Johnny & Andy's Christmas Club

I'm a huge fan of Christmas music and I was notably frustrated when my Real Player crashed this morning after I had recorded the annual Johnny & Andy's Christmas Club show on WDCB. Of course it crashed before saving the file. I've been recording this show every year since about 2003 and to miss a year is terribly disappointing. Not only that but for whatever reason WDCB decided to broadcast the show only once this year and at 7AM on Christmas Day. I also learned that another local area station, WXRT, had just last week their show on the air. I don't really listen to XRT so I had no way of knowing they were doing their show there. Double disappointment. To compound the problem even further, these shows are not available ANYWHERE. Thus, I have decided to play a small part in making these shows available.

I considered making them available as downloads from a hosting website such as 4shared. But I like the idea of streaming the audio instead. I would love to upload them to soundcloud but I already have an account there with a limited amount of upload time remaining. And these Christmas Club shows are all 2-3 hours long. So I'm going to try uploading them to YouTube. Hopefully there will not be any copyright issues by uploading them there. Most of the songs these guys play on their show are obscure and would pose no problems. However, they do throw in a few commercially available tracks that may or may not be problematic. Well, that will be for YouTube to decide. If I have any problems with my first upload then I will consider other options. I just want to get these out there for everyone to enjoy!

I will start with their show from 2014. As soon as it's live on YouTube I will link to it here.

YouTube Channel: MusicMasters

I created a YouTube channel that I titled "MusicMasters" and I will be publishing obscure and/or forgotten music on there from my personal collection. My intent is to cover 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's music that is not already on YouTube. There is so much music that is readily available on there. I started going through lists of songs I wanted to upload but most of the ones I checked are already there. This might make things a bit difficult as I wanted to do a song a day. I could easily accomplish this by uploading any song that is not already there but I only want to add my favorites and share music that I consider must-be-heard.

I uploaded my first one today and here it is:

Blue-Eyed Soul of Steve Colt

I uploaded this really cool song by Steve Colt from 1970 titled, "Please Please Please (Tell My Mind to Stop Teasing My Heart)." For those of you who aren't familiar with Steve Colt, he had some mid-to late-60's songs where he sounded like the white version of James Brown. In particular he had a song called "Dynamite" which just brings the house down. Check the song out on YouTube if you don't already know it. There are several uploads of the song there along with others. I decided to upload the lead-off track from his Paradox album because no one else has done so on YouTube and because it is my favourite song on the album.




The sound here is a little different from the 60's singles. A little less soul/R&B sounding and more along the lines of blues rock. But the voice is undeniably blue-eyed soul. Absolutely a great vocal performance and solid instrumentation. My only criticism is the horribly weak-sounding snare drum. I realize this was from 1970 but there had been better sounding recorded snare drums up to that point.

Steve Colt died at the age of 62 at a nursing home in 2005. An amazing musician indeed.

All Things Music

This blog will be all about music. Commercial music, my own music, musical instruments, radio and anything else related. I will offer links to some cool music files I have come to accumulate over the course of my 22 years or so of collecting. Hopefully, you will find this website as interesting as I am excited about bringing it to life.

I've titled this site "16 Track Mind" since, as a musician who spends plenty of time recording in my home studio, I have come to believe that 16 tracks is an ideal amount of recording capability for the music I create. Of course more than 16 is wonderful but might result in a tendency of overproduction.

I will link this page to my YouTube page as well (af14eva) with the intention of helping to create more traffic and hits on both sites. And I will try to regularly blog here as much as possible.

So keep the music turned on and keep it alive.