The thing about New York City is that, no matter where you’re going or how you’re getting there, you’re bound to stumble onto something along the way. Once, while headed to a friend’s place on the west side, I hung a left on 54th street, thinking it ought to be as pleasant as any crosstown path for a couple of blocks. What appeared to be an ordinary street turned out to be anything but. Before I hit the studio where they tape The Daily Show, I stumbled upon a historical landmark of epic proportions. About three-quarters of the way down the block, I noticed a series of black flags hanging off a building. I thought them to be quaint, as if some NYC company hadn’t yet managed to upgrade its AdWare from late-eighties flags to 21st-century personalized holographs. As I approached, the words on the flags appeared to me, letter by letter. An H here, a C there, an A an O and an F; it took a second for me to spell it out: The Hit Factory.

I didn’t go in that afternoon. I almost went in the next day. On the third day (it happened to be on the way to many of the places I was going) I decided to take a picture when I passed it next. I forgot.

So I suppose it’s fitting that the Hit Factory will be closing its doors. What was the site of many a Paul Simon recording and mixing session (read the liner notes that accompany pretty much everything he’s released since Graceland) has been written off into obsolescence. Soon after the Factory announce it was closing down its mixing console, the legendary Muscle Shoals Music Studio (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon) announced it was following suit.

The advent of technology – dirt cheap storage media, high-speed cables, digital recording, non-linear editing, PowerBooks, ProTools and home studios – means the recording game has changed. It’s likely a net positive that those who grace us with their recorded music are able to produce their art in the comfort of their own home. Still I can’t shake the feeling that there’s no downside. Somehow the basement doesn’t command the same reverence that the state-of-the-art (in its time) facility that was the Hit Factory basked in.

Still, time hurries on, and the democratizing effect of technology continues. The laptop I’m typing on has an application called GarageBand that makes recording your own music so easy you don’t even need friends to join your band. Autotuners ensure that flat and sharp are about as current as eight-track cassettes. And without the vocorder, how could you turn your own voice into that of something else?

“This is the story of how we begin to remember,” Simon sings on “Under African Skies.” These – the Hit Factory, Muscle Shoals, Sun Studios, the whole lot of them – are indeed the roots of rhythm. The thing about rhythm, though, is that it’s ephemeral. The beat drops and picks itself up an instant later. By the time you hear it, it’s gone. The spaces between are crucial – “The powerful pulsing of love in the veins.” The all-inclusive studio is no more. “The roots of rhythm remain.”