
May As Well – Angel Olsen (2014, Jagjaguar Records, Taken from ‘Burn Your Fire for No Witness’)
As May rolls sunnily into view, we usher in this month’s theme, a theme that came to me one evening as I watched an excellent documentary on Simon and Garfunkel on the usually rubbish Sky Arts Channel. In that documentary Simon and Garfunkel were shown in their studio where they were recording their classic ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ album. It showed them larking about and generally doing a lot of things other than making music (Here’s Art Garfunkel eating some pasta, here is Paul Simon talking about baseball with some gonk with a beard and here are the pair of them playing cards together, that sort of thing).
Then around half an hour it cuts to them actually making some music, a voice comes on the telly and tells us that what we are going to hear is the original demo for ‘Bridge over Troubled Water in which Garfunkel records his vocals in a different part of the studio whilst Simon strums away and records his vocals in the main bit – or something anyway, you can hear Garfunkel but you can’t see him, if that makes sense.
It was an excellent version, one I hadn’t heard and one that no matter how hard I try and how hard I look that I cannot find it anywhere, but it did give me an idea for this series. A series which I am calling ‘Alternative Versions’. A series which will look at demo versions of songs, Peel Sessions – or other recorded sessions of songs, remixes, acoustic versions, live versions, versions recorded with an orchestra backing them, studio outtakes, rehearsal versions, instrumentals and anything that falls in between all that lot.
This kind of thing really: –
Eat Y’Self Fitter (Peel Session #6)– The Fall (1983, Rough Trade Records, Taken from ‘Peverted by Language’)
Prague (demo) – Mega City Four (1992, Big Life Records, Taken from ‘Sebastopol Road’)
Disarm (acoustic) – Smashing Pumpkins (1993, Hut Records, Taken from ‘Siamese Dream’)
Breathe (Glitch Mob Mix) – The Prodigy (1996, XL Records, Taken from ‘The Fat of the Land’)
But of course, I’ll post the original version as well so we can have some light hearted banter about which version is better.
Let’s just pop back over to Simon and Garfunkel because whilst I couldn’t find the studio demo of ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ I did stumble across this rather fine live version of the song, which is essentially just Paul Simon on piano and Art Garfunkel’s voice and I think it’s one of the first times they ever played it live.
Bridge Over Troubled Water (Live in 1969) – Simon and Garfunkel (2008, Sony Music, Taken from ‘Simon and Garfunkel Live in 1969’)
Tomorrow – Fontaines D.C