Simon & Garfunkel - Live From New York City, 1967 [LIVE]

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were the apotheosis of the '60s folk revival, bringing the music to the mainstream via Top 40 radio and network TV. This live set was recorded before a rapt audience at New York's Lincoln Center in January of 1967, just as their Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme album was carrying them to superstardom, and there's a palpable pre-Woodstock/Altamont sense of boundless possibilities in these performances. Carried by just their bittersweet, magnificently interlocking voices and Simon's acoustic guitar, the duo showcases its already impressive slate of hits ("Homeward Bound," "I Am a Rock," "The Sounds of Silence") and its stylistic diversity that was already confident enough to encompass breezy pop ("The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"), madrigal influences ("Benedictus"), and the introspective impressionism of "A Hazy Shade of Winter." Simon takes a jazz-folk solo instrumental turn on Davey Graham's "Anji," while Garfunkel showcases his angelic pipes on "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her." It's a remarkably crisp live recording as well, one whose digital remastering was overseen--but not artistically tweaked--by the musicians and their original engineer Roy Halee, ensuring the performance remains as true as the cold yet invitingly warm evening on which it was recorded. Their subsequent albums Bookends and Bridge over Troubled Water may have expanded their creative instincts and their fame, but, like the Beatles, their partnership eerily paralleled the decade's demise, its optimism and promise imploding in a swirl of cynicism and ego. Those facts make this find from the vaults all the more compelling. --Jerry McCulley Amazon.com

awesome

For a contemporary comparison try Nick Worrall's debut album, it has been compared to the classic 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme' album and is FREE to download. September 2, 2008

My favorite!

I am an avid Simon and Garfunkel LP collector - which I unfortunatly don't get to listen to as often as I'd like, but this is the CD I listen to when I need my S&G fix! I love love love live and acoustic versions of music because to me, an artist is not a true artist unless he or she can perform live and still rock it! This is the CD to buy if you want to hear the true art of Simon and Garfunkel. Another suggestion is the Greatest Hits album which I have to admit, at the age of 22, I made fun of my mom for owning this CD up until I turned 17 and discovered their brilliance!

March 8, 2007

cautivante intimidad.......

corrian los años del amor...del sentir que era posible cambiar algo..y esta edicion refleja simplemente una noche de ese particular año, 1967....nada mas y nada menos...un momento de una de las tantas noches que derramo ese año..y casualmente tocaban simon & garfunkel, derritiendo la apatia, la desesperanza y la monotonia....todo envuelto en una pristina calma y sensibilidad exasperante...canciones fragiles, por momentos arrolladoras o delicadas..pero que al final de cuentas hicieron historia. OBRA ALTAMENTE RECOMENDABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!! December 22, 2006

It's hard to be humble...

...when you're Simon and Garfunkel. And what reason does this duo have to be? Even as early as January 22 of 1967, when this concert was recorded, Paul and Arti were able to stack the setlist with three Top Ten selections ('Homeward Bound', 'I Am a Rock', and 'Sounds of Silence') and two other Top 40 numbers, 'Hazy Shade of Winter' and 'The Dangling Conversation', which Garfunkel introduces as their personal "favorite". Songs already in the works for later in 1967 included the likes of 'Fakin' It', 'Feelin' Groovy' and 'Scarborough Fair'. But chart success is far from what Simon and Garfunkel were all about at this most influential time in their careers.

Much is made in the liner notes by Anthony DeCurtis, and other reviewers here at Amazon, about the remarkable rapport between audience and performers on this disc. It's almost spellbinding in our day and age, when people come to concerts and all but ignore the performers, to hear the sounds of silence emanating from this reverant crowd at Philharmonic Hall in Philadelphia. Certainly not all 1967 performances were accorded such stature. It's hard to believe that the management of the auditorium went to the unheard of length of seating people on the stage behind the performers to accomodate the demand for tickets, and that Simon and Garfunkel would consent to such an unusual configuration for their performance. When listening to this disc, it is hard not to place yourself in one of these choice seats and imagine how it must have felt to hear these enigmatic performers unleash one poignant tune after another. I imagine you would be able to feel as though it was just you and them sharing these transcendent musical performances together.

And the music to this day remains glorious. Snippets of lyrical genius can be gleened with regularity from each and every song, and with each listen, some new image or combination of words or ideas will catch your attention. On one recent listen, 'Leaves That Are Green' left me with the brief aliteration "...and they wither with the wind", while 'You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies' emphasized its point by having each word in the title claim its own note. 'The Dangling Conversation' contrasts two people unable to connect with "we are verses out of rhythm, couplets out of rhyme, in sycopated time". 'Blessed' expands on the poor and the meek to include "meth drinkers" and the "groovy lookin'" before admitting "I've tended my own garden much too long". The writing of graffiti artists in 'Poem On the Underground Wall' is rendered as "a gently tapping litany". And in 'I Am a Rock', the self-isolated subject becomes "like a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow", capsulizing his unaffected and unaffecting nature. 'The Sounds of Silence' caress us with "a vision softly creeping" that "left its seeds while I was sleeping", while Garfunkels incredible vocal abilities illuminate images like "I kissed your honey hair with my grateful tears" from the first encore, 'For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her'. The pair sing "I won't be a slave anymore" in the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement, adding the defiant "you can burn down my churches, but I shall be free" in the second encore, 'A Church Is Burning'. Garfunkel tells the enthused crowd before the final number "Shut up, you've had your fun!", before performing the odd choice, 'Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.', the title song from their first disc, ending with "the morning is just a few hours away" before fading into an out-of-tune coda from Simon's frets. You could fill the auditorium with the lyrical gems that grace this concert with aural, literary, musical, cultural, and political and social import. While Simon was quite reserved regarding his vocal capabilities at this point in his career, his harmonies only enrich Garfunkel's leads, and his guitar work seems the perfect complement throughout, laced with both emotional expression and punctuation.

The recording is less than perfect. While everything that should be there is there, there is also an annoying buzz from the recording equipment (less pronounced after 'A Hazy Shade Of Winter', the middle track), but which cannot be ignored throughout the performance. Today's remastered, digital listener is less likely to be forgiving of such imperfections, but the perfection of these songs, performed live at the height of their influence demands that the good be taken with the bad. This is musical history, as well as a window into the best of what America was in perhaps its most turbulent and revolutionary of decades, save the 1770's and the 1860's. Even if you are not a Simon and Garfunkel aficionado, this concert should be taken in at least once to gain a better insight into who we were in the 1960's. September 17, 2006

a time capsule with added trace elements and vital minerals

Simon & Garfunkel
Live From New York City 1967
Columbia/Legacy (CK6I 513)
Arrives in stores July 16th, 2002
Simon & Garfunkel's records had many strengths, not least of which was recording quality decades ahead of its time. We don't think about this sort of thing today, when every tiny burg boasts half a dozen digital studios capable of recording anything most musicians can envision, but aural depth exponentially greater than that achieved by, say, the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan, was a large part of the impression and respect Simon & Garfunkel had at the time. They spent 800 hours in the studio mixing "Bridge Over Troubled Waters." Of course, it was impossible to get that quality out of a live recording in 1967, and so the first thing one notices about this new Columbia release is that it lacks one of the duo's greatest strengths.
It isn't a bad recording; not for a live recording from 1967, but it in no way compares to the duo's studio output. There are unique strengths to the release as well, but whether they make up for audio-deficit is up to the individual listener.
The strengths are these -- Simon's guitar work, unadorned by whatever he did to sound so respectful of the highest standards of folk in the studio, sounds earthy, even bluesy at times, on this release, and that adds a rawboned power to protest songs that, let's face it, originally sounded as if they weren't going to lead to any solutions, because those anemic, turtlenecked geeks weren't ever going to win any battle with the military/industrial complex they were warning us about. On this live album, oddly, they sound as if they might actually have a chance. Second, like most concert sets, this one represents the best and/or most popular material the act has released to date. Included here are "He Was My Brother," "Sparrow," "Homeward Bound," "Feeling' Groovy," "The Dangling Conversation," Benedictus," "I Am A Rock," "The Sound of Silence" and Wednesday Morning, 3AM," along with ten other potential favorites from their catalog and stage banter. For sensitive folkies, you will find these guys to be quite entertaining between songs as well as while producing those irreplaceable harmonies.
... a time capsule with added trace elements and vital minerals ... January 30, 2006

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