It could've been a great tune were it not for the...

The other day I played my Simon and Garfunkel greatest hits CD, the first tune being Sound of Silence. Now this has a beautiful melody and is sung perfectly but it's got bl00dy drums all over it which are completely unecessary. I'd like to see Paul Simon re-master this without them. Who's idea was it to have drums on it? So, what other tunes can you think of which would be perfect were it not for some irrelevant guitar solo, drumming etc?

Anything by Radiohead if it had been sung by someone other than Thom 'suicide watch' Yorke. He's SO miserable!

All the songs on Dylan's Desire which feature a violin would have been improved greatly if it had been in tune and immeasurably if it had been left out altogether. Having said that there weren't any great songs on it anyway in my view, as I have mentioned many times previously. Apologies to those of you whose short term memory still functions.
(p.s. I'm guessing you probably haven't got a lot of time for Leonard Cohen either. James)

Layla without the extraneous piano passage at the end.

No, I love the Layla coda.

Too right, not forgetting the dreary slide noodlings from Duane Allman. Not his finest hour..well five minutes or so.

Hey Jude without the na-na-na's - nah! only kidding, best part!

Disagree re Dylan's Desire. Scarlet Rivera's violin made the album great. Number 174 in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 greatest ever albums, but WTF would they know, eh?

PS: Leonard Cohen and Neil Young within a week of each other at the London Arena in June anybody?

Mondo:

I'm seeing Neil (my third time) in March. But how's this for 11 days in March:
Sunday: Broooce (poor seats, do I sell?)
Tuesday: Broooce (can I offload my Michael Kiwanuka tix for the same night)
Wednesday: Wilco
Thursday: Roger Hodgson
Friday: The Lumineers
Monday: Shawn Colvin
Wednesday: Robert Plant

This is why I work.

...and clearly get well paid Val!!!

...or if I were a groupie...
'0)

That would explain it PS! :-)

Ooh, jealous of you seeing the Lumineers. That should be a good show.

Saw Michael Kiwanuka at a festival in 2011, had no clue who he was but I thought he was great.

The first Queen album would of been great if it wasn't for Roy Thomas Baker's heavy handed over production. He also completely ruined the track 'unknown soldier' with the stupid explosions on the first Lone Star album.

Yes the ending of 'Layla' is absolute tosh. The single version of 'Layla' is perfect.

The Hammond organ solo in Argent's Hold Your Head Up. Totally superfluous.
The second four mins of the single version of American Pie. Everything that needed to be done was covered off in the 1st four.

I don't think the op realises the irony of his post about putting `bl00dy drums' on The Sound of Silence. The song, in its original form, was originally just a track off their first album `Wednesday Morning 3am', which bombed. After that the duo pretty much split, with PS coming over to England to pursue a solo career and AG going back to collage. Then the Byrds released Tambourine Man---taking a Dylan folky tune and electrifying it and the producer of Wednesday Morning remembered the song The Sounds of Silence and thought maybe they could get the same effect (and success) from doing the same to that. Without either of the duo's knowledge and using session musicians, electric guitar and drums were added and, the more now folk-rock, The Sound of Silence was released and became a huge hit. Because of this the duo reformed and the rest, as they say, is history.
If you want to hear the original version Nuge, without the `bl00dy drums', it's on that first S&G album---Wednesday Morning 3am.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zLfCnGVeL4

Cheers for the back story and heads up Steve. The only version i'm familiar with is the hit single as featured on their Greatest Hits. Still, it doesnt say much for cloth-eared record buying punters at the time who thought the addition of drums made the song better. The electric guitar is just about acceptable but still not a good call. The producer still needed shooting IMO. I'll check out the original version sharpish.

I think I would have enjoyed John Lennons ' Imagine' if it hadn't been for the vocals and guitar

Steve Lilywhite's influence in the production of this Dirty Work significantly contributed to it being one of the poorest albums that The Stones have ever made imo

All of the swearing by Ozzy between tracks on the Reunion live album. Why does this annoy? Well if you listen to all of the previous Black Sabbath live albums there is no swearing on them at all. Same goes for the 1975 Asbury Park boot. So why did Ozzy feel that adding healthy doses of the family of f-words helps make it a better show/album/experience. The songs are still great, but the between song patter is grate.

That and the lack of creativity from Keef and Mick. The boots from the sessions for it are significantly more interesting. There is a 15 minute song with Don Covay, sounding incredibly like Tom Waits, although word would have it that he was not there at the sessions, that is just superb, not classic formula Stones, but something really good and different to the stuff they decided to go with for commercial reasons.