Quad LP/Tape Poll Simon and Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water[SQ/Q8]

[EMB]

Columbia PCQ 30995, 1972 quad edition of the 1970 best-seller, and S&G's last studio release.

Side 1:

1. Bridge Over Troubled Water
2. El Condor Pasa(If I Could)
3. Cecilia
4. Keep The Customer Satisfied
5. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Side 2:

1. The Boxer
2. Baby Driver
3. The Only Living Boy In New York
4. Why Don't You Write Me
5. Bye Bye Love
6. Song For The Asking

ED

 

[MIDIQ]

Great music, and a very good Quad mix, I vote 10.:banana:

 

[winopener]

One of the "must have" of the quad era. Why Columbia didn't took the decision to remix in quad more S&G it's a mystery.

 

[EMB]

Why do record companies do anything illogical? Not only was Columbia selective about its quad releases despite having many more multis of fine albums from which to choose, they repeated the felony in the early days of CD's by issuing not only logical, hi-profile and best-selling titles, but some genuinely obscure ones very few would bother to buy.

BOOKENDS would have been a logical one to do; but logic doesn't always win the day.

ED

 

[jsgamache]

The mix does some nice things when decoded in DPLII, but there is one particularly cool moment in "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright." When Simon's voice comes in on the bridge, it does so fairly discretely from the rears.

 

[EMB]

Very well mixed album, I gave it a '9'. Obviously, this was one of the 'smart' choices for quad release on Columbia's part, and it's unfortunate they didn't get more serious about saturating the market with quad titles(sound familiar?) Had the label shown more confidence in its format of choice, who knows how far it might have gone?

ED

 

[ClarkNovak]

Just finished hearing it thru my new Fosgate Model 5 :banana: Fantastic! SQ is a little muddled after listening to so much SACD and DVD-A source material, of course, but this has always been a favorite album (one of the few my parents and I could listen to together!), and the mix is pretty darn fine, exposing many layered elements that are buried in the 2-channel mix. I especially love the way the choir's voices can be heard distinctly in the rears during the crescendo of "The Boxer", and the big brass section blaring out during "Keep The Customer Satisfied." I gave it an 8 - I'm not sure a matrix recording can get better from me.

 

[ceedoubleyou]

LOL...another one!!!! dam do these ever come on eBay?

 

[Lucanu]

I'm not very into S&G stuff, but I have to admit I love this album.
BOTW and The Boxer sometimes makes me ready to cry... touching songs
The quad mix opens up the intensity on those songs

 

[jaybird100]

I like the "ethereal" quality of Art Garfunkel's vocal on "BOTW"; it just seems to hang in the air and caress you from all sides. I agree also about the multi-layered recording being more effective in quad. This would have been a great album for Columbia to have released on multi-channel hybrid
SACD, but after Paul Simon's defection to WMG, there were probably legal issues involved.

 

[Shawn_McCann]

Just heard the quad mix last night, via headphones in stereo. Some revelations in the instrumentation...never realized there was a trumpet playing in the instrumental verse of The Boxer! And it's stunning. I always thought it was just a pedal steel guitar.

Does anyone know if there's a way to decode to this album to four channels on a computer without using Adobe Audition?

 

[ClarkNovak]

Does anyone know if there's a way to decode to this album to four channels on a computer without using Adobe Audition?

Currently, no. Audition is the only package that has the center channel extractor routines needed for SQ/QS decoding.

 

[WillTX]

Makes me wanna buy the album on ebay. I have the Stereo LP I wonder how it would sound with my SONY SQA-200 SQ decoder which is a separate box hooked up to my GE component 8track AM/FM with the record player on top.

 

[jaybird100]

This is one of my favorite quad albums. It takes on an etherial quality, much unlike the stereo version. It would have also been a good choice for re-release as a multichannel SACD. Too bad Sony didn't see it that way.

 

[zaragon]

I fully agree - it's a milestonealbum. As to the vocal of Simon on So Long Frank L. Wright, there was a lot of hassle about that in the old days, as it is fully out-of-phase to make it go to the rear channels... this was a problem in those days, as his vocal would not be heard on a mono-broadcast of the quad-album! BOTW is one of the very few albums which has this effect. The q8-track feels more coherent in the mix, imho. Also agreed, it is weird that Sony never re-issued this classic album on SACD... don't think it has much to do with rights, but Sony probably feel that the album has been re-issued so many times now... and SACD and DVD-AUDIO is slowly ..(hate to write it..) dying... - I also read somewhere, that they actually made a quad-mix of BOOKENDS, but due to the bad times of quad in those days, it never really made it... some guy was posting, that he knew the guy who did the mix. Now what we need would be a great re-release of ARTIE's fantastic 1st solo-album, ANGEL CLARE, which is a showcase of his tremendeously beautiful voice and capabilities as a singer and interpreter. Recorded in the Grace Cathedral of SFO, it is a true gem just waiting to be revived....

 

[jaybird100]

I don't think Sony still owns the rights to the BOTW album, either in quad or stereo. Paul Simon now records for Warner
Bros., and they would have done it as DVD-A...had they done it. I think Art Garfunkel is also on Warner, but not sure. I never knew about the out-of-phase voice on that one track, but a mono broadcast of a quad LP would sound a bit strange, indeed, if sounds were mixed to center back. It may not have been intentional, but you never know.

 

[zaragon]

Hi there -
Garfunkel's latest release is on the Rhino label... dunno if they are somehow connected to WB. The original mastertapes are bound to be in the hands of Sony/Columbia somewhere buried in their vaults.. As to the mono-broadcasting of SQ-albums... that was a problem in those days, as it was imperative that ANY media being broadcast should not loose any important musical detail when received on mono-equipment. This is why the center-rear was so rarely used on SQ-material. CD-4 had an advantage here, had an FM-carrier been used for demodulating signals.. (yes, it was in the making!). Back to rights: Only Simon's solo-work has been re-released on WB (to my knowledge), and the previous S&G-albums only re-released through Sony. I think Simon only has control of his solo-works... nevertheless, it IS a great pity that we don't get the multichannel versions of BOTW and BOOKENDS... In this forum I found the name of the guy claiming to have made the quad re-mix of Bookends... his name is Jim Reeves.

__________________________
it's GREAT to have been blessed with 4 ears!

 

[Bob Squires Jr]

Loved the record! not a dog song on it as far as I'm concerned!
I 'm blessed to have a very nice pressing of it in SQ
(A lot of Columbia's pressings were horrid!)
and my favorites are Baby Driver and The Only Living Boy In New York.
(aside from the title track bearing Garfunkle's angelic voice!)
A 10 for me!

It's a shame they never did Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme in quad.

-Bob

 

[EMB]

It's a shame they never did Parsley Sage Rosemary & Thyme in quad.

Unlike RCA--that company's Q8's extended as far back as Van Cliburn (1958)--Columbia did not do much in the way of (for the early '70s) 'vintage' quad releases. Haven't looked over any lists, but the oldest quad Columbia/Epic title I remember is from 1968--the Bloomfield/Kooper/Stills SUPER SESSION album.

Since Columbia started issuing quad in 1971, they understandably (and generally)stuck to that time frame, which is why BOTW was remixed to quad. That, and it was still selling well (another good reason). And, IIRC, it was recorded 8-track, whereas PSR&T was done in 4-track. Not that that would have precluded a quad mix, but obviously, BOTR just made more sense.

I'm sure, in the near future, someone will contrive a quad or 5.1 upmix of PSR&T, since some titles from that era have already gotten the treatment, and some of them are said to be pretty discrete....

ED

 

[Q-Eight]

I synched up two versions of "The Sounds of Silence":

The front has the centered vocals with instruments left/right
The rear has the insturments centered with Simon left, Garfunkel right.

It works out nicely I think.