Live From Abbey Road
The Sundance Channel will air the premiere episode of Live From Abbey Road, featuring three songs by Paul Simon, on August 30th at 10p.m.
Archive for March, 2007
From the Vaults (2): Knockin’ Around on a Sunday Evening
Here’s Paul with Bob Dylan singing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” recorded live in Sacramento on June 16, 1999.
The photo is by Jose Luis Villegas of the Sacramento Bee.
After the jump you’ll find reviews from that show from the old site.
Great Surprise Review
From PopMatters:
Eno’s biggest gift to Surprise is standing well in the background of it; his work here involves beat-amending and the judicious employment of rhythm, which is more or less the sort of thing Simon got into with Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints and hasn’t really ever given up. No question that Eno has the innate ability to telegraph where Simon is going with things—he lovingly turns up the six-strings and lets them gently fade on pretty breezes of tracks like “I Don’t Believe” and “Another Galaxy”, and adds tasteful synthetics to make wonderful things of songs like “Everything About It Is a Love Song”. But his role is to fill in the blanks in Simon’s playbook of songs—and they’re some of his strongest ones in years.
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/music/reviews/paul-simon-surprise/
Strangest Interpretation
The music’s alright but the video is odd. Really odd. What about “Mother and Child Reunion” would cause a man to take a bath? What about a bath would cause a man to sing “Mother and Child Reunion”?
From the Vaults (1)
Paul Simon and the band doing the blues staple “Baby What You Want Me To Do,” with the great Toots Thielemans on harmonica. Recorded in Cesaria, Israel, on May 7, 1978.
Remembering Michael Brecker
Over the years, Paul Simon has shared the stage and the studio with dozens of exceptional musicians. Steve Gadd and Richard Tee. Ray Phiri, Vincent Nguini and Bakhithi Khumalo. Toots Thielemans and Philip Glass. Few, however, match the virtuosity of Michael Brecker, who died of leukemia in January.
If “Still Crazy After All These Years” is one of those Paul Simon theme songs - specific and universal in the same instant - the sax solo that Brecker innovated is its heart and soul. The New York Times attended a Manhattan memorial concert in Brecker’s honour, where the photo of Paul and Herbie Hancock below was taken (you can read more about it here). Our own tribute is musical - Brecker and Simon together in one of their last of many performances, on “Still Crazy” in 1992.
Welcome to the New Lasers in the Jungle
Rather, welcome to PaulSimonWeb.com, the third iteration of an unofficial Paul Simon website. Longtime readers might remember that this site was first known as “Hey Capeman! The Paul Simon Site,” coming online on New Year’s Day 1999. Since then, it has changed names and web servers. It appears it’s time, once again, for a change.
Over the course of the next few weeks, expect to see some overdue activity as new parts come online (old parts currently not functional should be back sooner or later). In the eight years this website has been active, the Paul Simon footprint on the web has increased exponentially. Great websites are updated regularly - even dozens of concerts are available for download (if you know where to look). This site’s evolution will not merely be cosmetic. It won’t duplicate what’s already being done, but will seek to once again stake out an appropriate corner of the Paul Simon web. But first, its operator has to get the hang of WordPress, a new host and lots and lots of design-related hiccups. Those interested in offering comments or assistance should speak up (use the comments or send an email to hurricane DOT eye AT gmail DOT com). This site always intended to bring Paul’s fans together online, and that has largely occurred, overwhelmingly due to the work of others. Here’s to keeping it up.
In the meantime, update those bookmarks and stay tuned.
