Member Review: Paul Simon

2Old2B writes:

It was really great to be backstage with Paul. He was friendly and made himself available to answer the endless questions my fellow backstagers and I put to him .

Onstage, he’s still got expert guitar playing on his side, both on acoustic and electric, along with a warm stage presence, but his voice was noticeably thinner and weaker in the higher and lower registers.

Simon is touring in support of his 12th solo studio effort, So Beautiful Or So What, which has been garnering some of his strongest reviews in years and the album was well represented by such standouts as the title track, Rewrite, and The Afterlife.

The concert was pretty low-key and lacking spark until it finally kicked into high gear with a double shot of reggae - Jimmy Cliff’s Vietnam and Simon’s own Mother And Child Reunion.

From there, Simon, a fairly static performer, picked up considerable steam with the zydeco-driven That Was Your Mother, followed by two back-to-back  country covers of Little Junior’s Blue Flames’ Mystery Train and Chet Atkins’ instrumental, Wheels.

Simon wears his wide-ranging influences on his sleeves and seemed determined to pay tribute to them by playing the gospel number, Gone At Last (originally a duet with the recently departed Phoebe Snow). He lovingly covered George Harrison’s Beatles song, Here Comes The Sun, during the first of two encores with multi-instrumentalist Mark Stewart providing beautiful harmonies.

The world music bent, which Simon successfully brought to the fore with 1986’s Graceland, was also well represented by such fan favourites as The Obvious Child, Diamonds On the Soles Of Her Shoes, Gumboots in the main set, and Late in the Evening and The Boy In The Bubble in the two encores.

I had one helluva time.

SET LIST:

Crazy Love, Vol. II

Dazzling Blue

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

So Beautiful or So What

Slip Slidin’ Away

Vietnam  (Jimmy Cliff cover)

Mother and Child Reunion

That Was Your Mother

Hearts and Bones

Mystery Train  (Little Junior’s Blue Flames cover)

Wheels  (Chet Atkins cover)

Rewrite

Peace Like a River

The Obvious Child

The Only Living Boy in New York

The Afterlife

Father and Daughter

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

Gumboots

ENCORE

The Sound of Silence

Kodachrome

Gone at Last

Here Comes the Sun (Beatles cover)

Late in the Evening

SECOND ENCORE:

Still Crazy After All These Years

The Boy In The Bubble

Hang out with your faves just like 2Old2B.

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