It's hard determinining whether this outstanding Simon & Garfunkel box set succeeds or complements the earlier "Collected Works" box. That set gathered only commercial studio releases and offered only convienience to the fan already having the original albums.

"Old Friends" corrects that on disc one, track one: a demo version of "Bleaker Street" that introduces S&G's strengths: Paul Simon's folk guitar mastery and insightful, uniquely New York combination of discovery and disgust, joined to Art Garfunkel's cleansing tenor, superb folk-rock harmony and sense of rock n' roll structure.

Subsequent songs build from that discovery, supplemented by sound clarity missing from the original releases. You hear the original and "remix" of "Sounds of Silence," and the original holds more power in this context. The group's familiar hits are here (all in studio versions, unlike 1972's "Greatest Hits" set) with live tracks displaying S&G's informal performing style and constant acknowledgement of its influence. (Here, they cover the Everlys' "Bye Bye Love," Gene Autry's "Silver Haired Daddy," and their own "Hey Schoolgirl," first recorded as Tom & Jerry. Interestingly, no live tracks are from their Monterey Pop appearance.)

You see simple, striking folk covers and Simon originals from "Wednesday Morning 3AM" progress to the "Abbey Road" ornateness and power of "The Boxer" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Like the Beatles, S&G began simply, slowed and grew the recording process to create something brief but lasting, then saw personal and professional friendships fracture under the weight. "Old Friends" introduces that process to new fans and completes the story for longtime followers. Highly recommended.

Why frustrating? Well, let's see: this set has great sound quality, there are a number of interesting rarities and live cuts that were not previously released, and the inevitable booklet includes a mean set of liner notes by David Fricke. The problem is, anybody who's into S&G enough to appreciate that sound quality, those archive tracks, and those liner notes would probably prefer to hear the original albums in their entirety, rather than a truncated selection such as provided here.

What Columbia/Legacy should've done was make this a four-CD set. Then all of the original studio albums could have been included, as well as all of the archival stuff, and probably a few other things as well. The live tracks from the GREATEST HITS album, for instance. Or a couple of tracks from the 1981 reunion concert in Central Park. Or songs from the long-out-of-print PAUL SIMON SONGBOOK album. Or mono single mixes of some songs.

As it is, this isn't a particularly bad compilation. It just could've, and should've, been a little bit better.

This marvelous collection mangages to be a through overview of the duo's high-flying years, while at the same time being sympathetically sequenced and is highly listenable. It's all here, from Paul's slightly awkward early folk protestation, to their superb mid-sixties experimentalism (witness tracks like the delightful 'Fakin' It'), to the heights of super-stardom contained on the third disc. Perhaps grandest of all, the compilers, where possible, chose to include far superior live renditions. The folk backing may have provided S&G with their first true hit on 'Sounds Of Silence', but on many other album songs, it strangled them of their atmosphere. There's no comparison between the dramatic live reading of 'Blessed' and it's counterpart on the '..Silence' LP. Ditto for Simon's uninhibited live 'Anji' compared to the strangely restrained album version. The duo also finds the inherent loneliness in live versions of 'A Most Peculiar Man'.

In short, this is an eclectic, still-vital collection. It is music that a generation came of age to. They also came of age to Herman's Hermits and The Animals as well, but few of S&G's contemporaries of that era have aged as gracefully.

The material, culled from an almost-perfect career, is pretty well beyond debate now. To second-guess songs like The Boxer or A Most Peculiar Man, you have to be like one of those punk revisionists who occasionally whine about how they never thought Abbey Road or Sgt. Pepper was all that great an album. Any discussion on the Old Friends box set must center on whether or not Sony/Columbia did a good job conveying the scope of the duo's talent. The answer, of course, is yes. The unreleased and live tracks are a revelation and the rest are well-chosen. As for the ongoing debate as to whether to buy this or Collected Works, this one has the edge for sound and presentation, although Works has all the released material (except the obscure B-side, You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies). Any S&G fan worth his salt, however, knows the brutal truth: you have to shell out for both.

You couldn't go too far wrong picking the best of S & G, and Columbia did a good job on this one; they missed some of my favorites, but...you cannot please everyone, and I don't expect them to call me first. However, this is more than compensated by some of the new stuff, which is just tremendous; the live Poem on the Underground Wall is great. It really takes you right back to one of their concerts from that era. None of the reviews below, I think, mention the best revelation to this long time fan (my FIRST album was Parsley, Sage) and that is "Blues Run the Game". This song is from another songwriter (read the notes to get the heartbreaking story) and it is as good as anything S & G released in their heyday (OK, excepting The Boxer, but that WAS the best song anyone made in the 20th Century). It is a sad, beautiful tune, and I only wish we had had it available thirty years ago. If the rest of the box was garbage, it would almost be worth it for this one tune.