bilbopooh's Full Review: Live 1969 [Digipak] by Simon & Garfunkel
Back in July, I made two startling musical discoveries. One was that Celtic Thunder had just released a new album. The other was that Simon and Garfunkel had released a "new" album as well - several months earlier. I was surprised I didn't know Take Me Home had been coming up, since I'd checked several times to see if there was anything new in the works from my favorite newly-found band. But I was shocked I hadn't heard a thing about Simon and Garfunkel's live album, since I'm always very up on their news and have several friends who are as well. I snatched the albums up together, a decision made all the easier by the fact that Amazon was selling them both for half-price. Though Simon and Garfunkel fans won't find much here that's genuinely new, it's still a nice album to have.
Several years ago, Simon and Garfunkel released the album Live in 1967, an acoustic set drawn from a single concert right in the middle of their principal period of musical partnership. I love the intimacy of that concert, the quietude of just the two voices and the guitar and the little bits of banter that Paul and mostly Art provided. Live 1969 is a little different. A few of the songs are acoustic, but the bulk of them are performed with a band whose members include Joe Osborn on bass, Hal Blaine on drums, Fred Carter, Jr. on keyboards and Larry Knechtel on keyboards.
The tracks are drawn not from a single concert but from several. Something of the innocence of that earlier recording seems to be missing, and occasionally Art's quips seem to hint at the strain between him and Paul. Mostly, though, this is just a chance to hear the duo live in their prime, making it easy to imagine what it must have been like to be part of one of those early audiences. As someone who saw them live in 2003, I can attest that Simon and Garfunkel in concert is a pretty amazing experience.
For the die-hard fan, there's nothing too new here songwise. Of 17 tracks, only one is a song not drawn from their studio albums. That's the exquisite That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine, a Gene Autry song recorded by the Everly Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel's most profound early musical influences. But even that isn't new if you got your hands on Old Friends, the three-disc boxed set released in the 1990s. The novelty, then, lies mostly in these particular performances and hearing the dynamic between the men and their audience, with the attractive packaging and heartfelt introduction by Bud Scoppa a plus.
Song for the Asking is the first really interesting track, as it includes an introduction from Art as well as some lovely harmonizing, which is absent on the Paul-centric studio cut. Art delivers a gorgeous performance of For Emily after shushing a mildly unruly audience. Scarborough Fair is performed without Canticle (despite the song list label to the contrary), as it's always seems to be in concert; I suppose they could only pull off all those rich layers of harmony in the studio. Still, this more basic version is lovely.
Track seven, Mrs. Robinson, is the first with the band, and Art introduces them accordingly, while getting testy with an audience member who complains the keyboards are too quiet and accidentally starting to introduce the wrong song. Why Don't You Write Me is fun because, unlike most of the other studio songs, it's not one they perform in concert these days. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright includes a nice little introduction in which Art explains that he'd studied architecture at Columbia and had suggested Paul write a song about Frank Lloyd Wright. (Of course, the song was really more about Art, but I read an interview with him years later in which he claimed not to realize that at the time.)
Of all the tracks, perhaps the most fascinating is Bridge Over Troubled Water, simply because there's a sense that you're listening to history unfold. On the other tracks, either Art, who pretty much does all the talking, announces the song, or Paul plays the opening chord, and the audience erupts into applause as they realize what they're about to hear. But on Bridge, Larry starts playing that iconic piano opening, and Art notes that this is a new song, and there's dead silence. It seems nobody in this November 28 audience has heard it before; I presume the silence denotes not lack of enthusiasm so much as a desire not to drown out any of this brand-new listening experience with applause. But silence it is, up until that final glory note, when the audience erupts into one of the most exuberant ovations I've ever heard. Just getting the experience second-hand is pretty powerful.
Other tracks include Homeward Bound, At the Zoo, Feelin' Groovy, The Boxer, The Sound of Silence, I Am a Rock, Old Friends / Bookends, Leaves That Are Green and Kathy's Song. One thing this concert drove home to me is that Simon and Garfunkel aren't very interactive in concert; there's never an invitation to sing along, and the chatter is minimal, though you do get more of that on the 1967 album. If you've never seen them live, either of these albums is the next-best thing.
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