Record Review: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme

Hidden Gem:
Simon and Garfunkel
Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme
1966 | Columbia Records

Most music from the ’60s has been remade and remodeled so much that it sounds like just another sad Oasis imitation. Isn’t that what nostalgia is? Rediscovering the sources of the familiar, even if you were never around to discover it the first time around. Modern folk is less a sentimental journey than a search for something authentic, or something influenced by something influenced by something authentic. Where do you go to find the real music of the untutored peasants, close to the land and unspoiled by big city pretentions? Woody Guthrie? Robert Johnson?

You won’t find it here. But stepping outside the “greatest hits” canon of this peculiarly American duo is worth the trip. S&G’s “folk” dripped with English major pretensions that are funny now but, like a 1930s movie, make you a bit misty-eyed for a nicer time. “And you read your Emily Dickinson/ And I my Robert Frost/ And we note our place with bookmarkers/ That measure what we’ve lost.” “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” is adapted from a 17th century English source. That’s folk, but it’s a long way from Blind Lemon Jefferson. It’s a paler shade of white music: genteel and bookish, introspective and sensitive, given to philosophical fancies – like a nervous gentleman caller who warms up a little once you take his hand.

He isn’t exactly a swashbuckler; he reads to you from Keats. Looking in your eyes, he tells you we all live an illusion, avoiding the thought of death even as the seasons change around us. He gets weird and intense, saying that, like a rat, he feels caught in the “patterns” of his mind. You like him anyway. After one glass of wine he dances around, doing his parody of Bob Dylan, “Simple, Desultory, Philipic, A.” Sobering up, he sings you his love song, “For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her.” He dreamt about walking with you in “frosted fields of juniper and lamplight.” Sweet.

In time, you see he isn’t a complete square. He can loosen his cravat and rock a little on “Homeward Bound.” He joins the youth movement with the gentlest protest song ever, “Silent Night.” The start of a beautiful relationship?

No, because you just don’t meet guys like Paul Simon in 1966 anymore. Still, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme is one time capsule worth cracking open; there are surprises inside.

by Robin Mookerjee

http://www.simonandgarfunkel.com/