My son plays in a hard core band and if you listen (which is hard at times) closely to the lyrics you will see that Sounds of Silence is 50 years ahead of the time. I'm surprised how close the lyrics fall in line with modern hard core music.
Fight fire, save lives, laugh in the face of danger.
Interesting Sound of Silence factoid: it was recorded as an acoustic song, as was normal for S&G at the time. The drums and other instruments were added after the fact; I believe I read that S&G were in England at the time, not even present for the post-production changes. There's a very egregious slip in the tempo that the poor drummer* has to adjust to. From memory, it's right at the "and the people bowed and prayed" lyric.
* it is a pure sumbitch to add drums after the fact. I had several clients who wanted to do this in my studio.
Very powerful and prophetic song. S&G were big in my house growing up in the 60's and 70's.
Interesting Sound of Silence factoid: it was recorded as an acoustic song, as was normal for S&G at the time. The drums and other instruments were added after the fact; I believe I read that S&G were in England at the time, not even present for the post-production changes. There's a very egregious slip in the tempo that the poor drummer* has to adjust to. From memory, it's right at the "and the people bowed and prayed" lyric.
* it is a pure sumbitch to add drums after the fact. I had several clients who wanted to do this in my studio.
Very powerful and prophetic song. S&G were big in my house growing up in the 60's and 70's.
My son does it quite a bit and it can be a PITA if a different producer is trying to do it. Mostly he will play to the basic guitar track and then the other instruments build on what he did.
Fight fire, save lives, laugh in the face of danger.
I'll say right off that I can't stand Simon & Garfunkel. Their whiny, self-righteous, hippie crap makes me want to punch the radio. However, they could (and did) write some powerful lyrics (even if they couldn't deliver them worth a crap).
This cover, though, of Sound of Silence just nails it (at least IMHO. The video ain't much, so just tune in for the audio.
Heard that song a lot growing up as it’s one of my mom’s favorites. Always thought, once you really got into the lyrics, the song was much “darker” than the harmonious performance S&G lent it would suggest. The first time I heard the Disturbed version I immediately though “Yeah…THAT’S how that song was meant to sound.”.
If there's one thing I've become certain of it's that there's too much certainty in the world.