Oakland's Vinyl Vault - Bookends

Well, the uproar over the absence of the Vault can cease.  It's back, so let's get right to it.  Today we look at Bookends, by Simon and Garfunkel

Release date: April 3, 1968
Singles: A Hazy Shade of Winter, At the Zoo, Fakin' It, Mrs. Robinson

So for all of those wondering, I'll explain the longer than usual hiatus of the Vault: it's too in love with Paul Simon.  You see, every time I buy new albums, I reshuffle the list.  Now, after the last entry, Paul Simon's Graceland, I bought some new vinyl, and I re-randomized.  Well, much to my astonishment, the randomizer spit out yet another Simon effort, this one.  Now, normally that wouldn't be a problem, though Simon has been well represented already (you may remember the inaugural episode was Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence, which looking back now is a quite a cheeky choice for the randomizer to make
). But, the NEXT album on the list was another Simon and Garfunkel album.  That was too much.  So I decided that I would hold off on writing this until I went and bought some new albums so that I could reshuffle the deck and hopefully get some fresh blood in there.  Unfortunately I've been a little busy and it took longer than I thought to get a chance to go to the old record store. So, I've finally reshuffled.  And I did get something from a band we haven't heard yet.  Aaaand the one on the list after that is another Paul Simon album.  Damn Simon loving randomizer!  Anyway, let's get on with it!

This is by far my favorite cover of all the Simon and Garfunkel albums, which isn't saying much because the other ones are god awful.  Like, some of the worst examples of photography I've ever seen.  The "Chicago" album covers are better.  So we're off to a good start before we even get the album out of the sleeve.

Once on the turn table, it sounds like it will live up to the great cover.  "Save the Life of My Child" is a nice number, and "America" has long been one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs.  But then we run into "Voices of Old People."  Why, oh why couldn't somebody talk them out of putting "Voices of Old People" on this album.  It is exactly what it sounds like.  To quote the back cover: "Art Garfunkel recorded old people in various locations in New York and Los Angeles over a period of several months."  And then they picked out the best cuts, I guess, and just threw them all together.  The result is an incoherent jumble of mumbling, barely coherent, flow killing suck-hole that pretty much undoes all the good that the rest of the songs on the A side of the album did.  It makes me not want to listen to Bookends.  Which is really a shame because the rest of the album is quite good.  The back side is fantastic.

Rating: Three wrinkled thumbs up - If you can figure out how to program your turntable to skip "Voices of Old People," I highly recommend doing it.  Fucking old people.

Now here's "America."  Fuck yeah.