Simon & Garfunkel for Prog Folk?

It would definitely be stretching the definition.

The Dark Elf wrote: First, let me just say I absolutely adore Simon & Garfunkel. Second, no, they are not prog folk. Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Strawbs...those are prog folk -- they fundamentally altered the presentation of folk music.  S&G was merely a splendid but fairly conventional folk duo with a large studio budget. They are Bob Dylan, with the same lyrical profundity, but with vastly superior vocal accomplishment and orchestral arrangements here and there. When the song "Sounds of Silence" didn't sell, they swapped the acoustic arrangement for an electric guitar track a la His Bobness.

lazland wrote: We are too narrow thinking in our definitions of “folk”, “prog”, and etc.  You could make a cogent argument that the type of progressive music played by Genesis certainly in the Gabriel period was an English pastoral folk music, much of it talking about particularly English tradition. S&G, Baez, Dylan, CSN, CSN&Y were all born of a deep Americana tradition which could also be called folk music, and much of their music, incidentally, very much influenced what we call “traditional” progressive rock artists. In reality, music is a spectrum, and the differing types of music are themselves on a spectrum. This is one of the reasons I have such an issue with the arcane way PÅ classifies its artists, or worse, the way it rejects artists. I wrote a review this week for a wonderful “folk rock” band from Wigan named Merry Hell, which has attracted a lot of interest. In my review, I referenced Barclay James Harvest as coming from the same Northern UK working class tradition. Guess what? It turns out the band are huge fans of BJH and acknowledge their influence. The artists are far wiser when it comes to such matters than us.

lazland wrote: We are too narrow thinking in our definitions of “folk”, “prog”, and etc. ... In reality, music is a spectrum, and the differing types of music are themselves on a spectrum. This is one of the reasons I have such an issue with the arcane way PÅ classifies its artists, or worse, the way it rejects artists.

When it comes to an ill-defined music genre like prog, the cataloguing of music becomes a bit hasardous. Prog is quite an ill-defined genre, in my opinion, and thus the inclusion/exclusion of bands/artists into a "prog" database becomes as hasardous, or - if you prefer - as inconsistent as it is here on PA. Here, a limited number of people decide on the inclusion or not of a band in the database, with the utterly stupid limitation of being able to tag a band (and not albums) with just one single sub-genre label. Viewed from cataloging principles this is a major, and quite awkward, limitation and flaw of the PA database, and apparently the site owner - who had the wonderful idea of creating this site and database but clearly wasn't as informed on creating databases from a cataloguing and users point of view - is not willing to adapt/update the current database to modern day standards.

Which leads maybe to the question, apart from inclusion into the database, to be able to review albums that might interest prog fans that are not necessarily present in the PA database... But this would probably need a review of policy regarding the links between the PA database and eventual reviews... which means creating a different policy regarding the PA database and the PA reviews section. I don't see that happen, at least not at short term, but it would/could be an interesting evolution of PA...

Bringing this all back to Simon & Garfunkel, I think they don't have their place in the current database, but reviews of their albums on this site could be very interesting and welcome, imho. It would need a "detachment" (or "disconnection") of the database and the review section, which would mean a complete revision of this site, so I don't see it coming...

Fantastic band but I think they don't really fit the vibe of this database. ;P

Traditional regional folk genres =/= the 60s counter culture folk movement, by the way. Though the usage of the term "folk" for both certainly confounds things.

RYM lists them as a mix of folk pop, folk rock, chamber folk and folk baroque but basically they were gussied up folk pop. Prog folk needs more complex arrangements, more complex time signature changes etc. This does remind me that i bought the box set years ago which features EVERY studio and live album they did during their time together. I still haven't heard some of the live albums so will have to visit those soon. Great folk act though.

Sean Trane wrote: The Dark Elf wrote: First, let me just say I absolutely adore Simon & Garfunkel. Second, no, they are not prog folk. Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Strawbs...those are prog folk -- they fundamentally altered the presentation of folk music.  S&G was merely a splendid but fairly conventional folk duo with a large studio budget. They are Bob Dylan, with the same lyrical profundity, but with vastly superior vocal accomplishment and orchestral arrangements here and there. When the song "Sounds of Silence" didn't sell, they swapped the acoustic arrangement for an electric guitar track a la His Bobness. TBH, I wonder just how much S&G are "folk" at all. They're certainly not sounding Celtic/European folk, and I'm not sure I detect anything either from the Appalachian mountain range folk music forms (hillbilly, bluegrass, etc) and beyond: from Acadian area in New Brunswick to Cajun area in Louisiana. To me, I'd also say that S&G are more of (a splendid, indeed) Singer/songwriter duo (even if we know only Paul Simon composed) that played acoustic guitars when needed. I'll go on a stretch, as I'm not all that familiar with Joan Baez's catalogue, but I'd consider her more of a protest singer/songwriter with an acoustic guitar before considering her as folk artiste. in other words, acoustic guitar =/= folk automatically

Definitely progressive, definitely folky, but I think the only place on PA they are welcome is Prog Related.