I do have to take issue with your statement that Simon and Garfunkel were becoming obsolete when the Graduate was released. They were the ones people liked to point to when needing examples of intelligence and depth in top 40 music. Folk rock, S & G's signature style, may have started declining in 1967 as that was the year Hendrix, Joplin, The Doors, and the Dead started becoming household names. Dylan had suffered his motorcycle accident and wouldn't be back until 1969 and his sound in songs like "Lay Lady Lay" was far different from his "Postively 4th Street" sound. The albums S & G made after the Graduate, most notably "Bookends" and "Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme" were very much in the folk and folk rock tradition and they not only sold well, some of the songs have become classics in representing the best of late 60s music. But as I see it, Simon and Garfunkel carried the folk rock banner until the very end although a case could be made their later songs like "Cecelia" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was hardly what you would call folk rock. But as for declining by late 1967, Folk Rock as a mainstay? Possibly. Simon and Garfunkel? I disagree. Just my two cents.(PS: I was there at the time so I base my thoughts on what I remember not something I have read. Oh, and the Graduate blew me away also when I first saw it but I was a few years younger than you (15) so the reasons may have been different)

While Spike's comment on the movie is otherwise apt, Flick's point quite well taken - and shared. Perhaps Spìke's "obsolete" characterization was hastily reached, considering that, whereas the influence of folk music of the 1950s and its poetry was acknowledged, the genre into what the music of Dylan and others evolved was at its peak in 1967. With Simon & Garfunkle albums ('Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme,' etc.) barely issued under considerable recognition from critics and audiences, their music scarcely could be considered obsolete.