By Bill Lloyd

Easing into the day with coffee and a favorite album. This morning, it was one of my favorite ever albums. Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends didn’t sell as well as Bridge Over Troubled Water, but it’s still my favorite. When I first bought a cd player because Foster & Lloyd’s first album came out on CD, I bought two cds that day along with the player..The Beatles Rubber Soul and this album.

Amazing acoustic guitar playing and Simon’s insightful and meticulous songwriting is just incredible and still hits home. Garfunkel’s heavenly harmonies always went to unexpected places. Their partnership may have been fraught, but it was also magical.

Side A works as a song cycle with Side B being more radio-oriented singles..so Side A has some gravitas with Side B, as a whole, being more Beatles/whimsical. The production is SO smart, so musical and so sonically rich that I would rank it alongside Sgt. Pepper at the top of the heap.

Do I like it? Yes I do. Mellow enough to ease into the day,o but America, especially in relation with what’s going on these days, hits even harder. Paul Simon just turned 84 a couple weeks ago. Glad he’s still with us. The line in Old Friends..”how terribly strange to be seventy” certainly hits close to home for me. That’s about a month away. Oh yeah, and I still have the poster it came with!