Post and Jam: "Scarborough Fair" by Simon and Garfunkel

[raven_cromwell]

Watch on YouTube

One of the coolest covers I've ever heard of this song, which is a constant fav of mine already. Found through trying to convince stepdad that we were, in fact, talking about the same song, and that yep, it's chorus really did have Parsley, Rosemary, and Thyme and I wasn't just randomly guessing in the crossword puzzle we were doing. (We've found we're both crossword geeks, heightened by him getting a kick out of me figuring out the vast majority of words without "seeing" the screen; I can, in fact, visualize their braille equivalents in my head, which lets me fill in blanks once I have some letters.) Anyway, brilliant music rabbit hole to descend, and now it'll be on repeat for at least a week.

Comments

[delphi]

This is the first version of the song I heard as a kid, I think, so it's the default for me - and I'm not sure I've heard much else. Any other versions you'd recommend?

[raven_cromwell]

Yeah, absolutely! the Celtic Woman version, which was my intro and still so damn cool.
Funny story but: Folk just. wasn't a thing in our house growing up. So I really didn't understand! the concept of covers--not that other genres haven't done covers, lord knows, but it's really. really common in folk, and because I seesawed between classic country and 80's soft-rock, I got mostly original compositions.

In middle school, I realized I loved! violins to an almost obsessive degree, and my tech teacher at the time happened to have an intersecting love of anything and everything Celtic. The first incarnation--still the best damn it and everything from there went downhill--of Celtic Woman was being put together by the Riverdance producer at the time, and they'd put Nashville on the concert circuit.

Through one thing and another, tech teacher burned me a copy of the CD, and I heard and loved! this song. So naturally, very sheltered pre-teen me thinks ok, original composition.

And then, through a combo of my obsession with Irish history and my Mom thinking the lead actor was smokin', I watched the 90's movie Michael Collins repeatedly, and discovered Siniad O'Connor. At which point I discovered her! rendition of the song and went, outraged, to my Mom like: this rich famous artist has stolen a song from an up and coming duo. At which point she completely lost her cool and laughed hysterically, and then kindly walked my poor oblivious ass through the concept of covers. (and thus was my appreciation for public domain and creative commons born) But yeah, this's always the default of this one for me.

[delphi]

Oh, that's a beautiful version - thank you for sharing it!

My parents worked shift work and also were trying to balance a young family with a social life in a very small town '80s kind of way, so my sister and I were often left alone overnight when we were little. I spent my early childhood falling asleep to kids' tapes that my mother would leave on as a way to keep me in bed - "No getting up while the tape's still on," knowing that I'd be asleep by the time it played through. Folk standards being the bread and butter of kids' music, I was used to hearing multiple artists singing the same songs and was more surprised to learn about the existence of copyright when I was older. "What do you mean you can own a song?"

Also, I'd be remiss not to say: Sinéad O'Connor, also a favourite. I'm more familiar with her pop and political music than with her traditional stuff, but I could listen to her all day.