So (after a small delay - had a busy weekend last week) the next cab off the proverbial rank is “The Simon and Garfunkel Collection” so yet another greatest hits compilation that’s found its way into my Dad’s stack of CDs. And another choice that’s interesting for a number of reasons really. Mostly, the music of (Paul) Simon and (Art) Garfunkel is something that I would tend to associate more closely with my Mum than my Dad. Back in around 1991 or so, she used to drive around the mean streets of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in a green Peugeot 504 (nicknamed the Green Goddess - which once took on a petrol tanker at a roundabout and came out of the altercation unscathed!) and within this car she had a tape deck. She didn’t have a mass of different tapes to play though - but the ones that spring to mind were a Michael Bolton album (that went ‘missing’ when she took the car in to be serviced), a compilation of songs with the word ‘Night’ in the title somewhere as tape 1 and the word ‘Love’ as tape 2, and then Simon and Garfunkel. I know I’ve mentioned before that sometimes a particular sensation takes you back to a particular place, time and mood - and for me Simon and Garfunkel’s music will always take me back to being 11 years old, boiling hot but genuinely living through some of the greatest days of my childhood and being driven around in something that looked like this.
So, the obvious next question to ask is how this all ties back in to a memory of my Dad really. And oddly enough (as many memories of my Dad too) it relates back to drinking, pubs and in this instance specifically pub quizzing. My Dad was a huge fan of a pub quiz, and took great pride in having a knack of not winning a quiz, but instead coming second (in many cases earning as good a prize as the ‘winners’ of the quiz, without gaining the added burden of having to set the next quiz). For those who know me, just imagine me being raised in an environment where having random knowledge about everything and anything would come in handy - how different would I have turned out??
So yes - Simon and Garfunkel and pub quizzes, their influence and impact on my childhood and their related stars all came into alignment one evening last year when I attended a charity quiz at the Pilgrim Lounge at Boston United FC’’s ground. Having persuaded/dragged my good lady wife, some colleagues from our work places and significant others along to the quiz we were presented with the usual range of round titles (Current Affairs, Sporting Numbers, TV, Film etc etc.) and having to pick the round to play our Joker on. Now, having clocked that ‘Simon and Garfunkel’ was one of the rounds I was quietly confident that, given my childhood exposure to their music that we might do okay in that round, but naturally kept schtum about this knowledge for fear of the team relying on me and us ending up with egg on our faces.
Predictably this was an error in judgement really. As it turned out, I think I managed to suss out 8 of the 10 answers required and the other team members had stabs at the other two and when it came to the answers being read out and the scoring being completed - we achieved 10 out of 10 in that round. Tragically, we instead used our Joker on one of the other rounds (may have been Sporting Numbers - which was a horror show, by the way) and (almost as though it were meant to be) I think we finished second on the quiz. Dad would definitely have been proud of that one. While we didn’t get any sort of a prize, we did avoid the awkward situation that would have been presented when faced with the expectation of ‘donating’ our winnings back to the relevant charity (as every previous winner of said quiz has done, and as announced by the compere of the evening) - for some reason the team seemed dead sent against this notion. Another fond memory of that night was the sheer rage that resulted from our table not having any luck at the raffle, and coming away empty handed. You never truly know someone until you’ve heard them cursing the nature (and the organisers) of the raffle simply because they didn’t get to win a box of choccies!
Now, on to the music (as I suppose I ought to make mention of it somewhere in this, it being the point of the blog and all that). My good lady wife is somewhat unimpressed with this one - reckoning it to sound rather dated and very much ‘of its time’. Now, I might struggle to argue against that but again, the songs put me back to a happy time for me in the early 90’s and even from that far back they are clearly ingrained in my mind now as when I worked in retail I almost constantly had the tune of “Keep the Customers Satisfied” stuck in my head. And there are some great lyrics hidden away in the songs too. Who can hear the words “Hello lamppost, what you knowing? I’ve come to watch your flowers growing” and not smile (other than my wife apparently…). And I can almost guarantee that at least some of the songs will be familiar to you - whether through knowing the original or having heard a cover of one of them (Chris Eubank is a big fan of a cover of ‘Cecilia’ that was done by Suggs from Madness by all accounts, so it’s worth checking that one out on Youtube if you can). Mrs. Robinson is another classic as well, and Bridge Over Troubled Water is an amazing piece of work. So if you’re unfamiliar with the work of Simon and Garfunkel, there are worse ways to spend an evening then going through some of their stuff and seeing what strikes a chord with you.
Now, I realise that my timing of this blog may be deemed a little bit poor - what with it being father’s day and all that, but I haven’t put this one up to bring people down or make people feel bad for celebrating fathers. In many respects this is my way of doing the same thing. While during much of this life I know that my Dad enjoyed having some obscure knowledge and taking the chance to show it off a bit in a social environment, towards the end one fo the things that he did lose fairly early on after his diagnosis and treatment began was some of his sharpness and some of his memory recall too. But even before that, I picked up on the odd time that he’d slip up - but I suppose I just put it down to old age rather than actually suspecting that anything else untoward was going on up there for him. But undeterred I do try and keep up the family name and try and attend pub quizzes regularly and often think of my Dad when taking part - but always try and not take it too seriously. It’s all just a bit of fun in the end, right?
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