plorentz's Full Review: Old Friends: Live on Stage by Simon & Garfunkel
I don’t get to see nearly as many concerts as I’d like to, but this year I’ve been lucky in that the few concerts I have seen have all been “event” shows for me – artists I’ve been wanting to see for years, and finally got the chance to. (In all but one case, they were marquis-name artists whose tickets have been prohibitively expensive, but I managed to land a free seat). In 2004, I saw Anita Baker (traded some small paintings for the ticket); Prince (thanks again, Kristina!), Sting & Annie Lennox together (courtesy of the now – temporarily? – defunct OutLowd.com), and Wilco, which I actually bought myself. Wooo-hooo!
Still, for every show I saw this year, there are at least a couple hot tickets I missed. Just last week, I missed Luna’s last Wisconsin show ever. The week before, I missed The Pixies on their reunion tour. Last month, I missed Morrissey in Milwaukee, and last Spring, I missed Belle & Sebastian in Chicago. I could be well into my forties before either act swings back into my neck of the woods.
Sigh.
I missed Brian Wilson’s Smile show at Madison’s newly opened Overture Center for the Arts, but perhaps my greatest recent disappointment was missing Simon & Garfunkel’s recent reunion tour (not to mention Artie’s solo show at the Overture in September). That’s why it’s nice – if not unexpected – that Warner Bros. has seen fit to release a two-disc document of the reunion (at the height of this year’s Christmas shopping season): Old Friends: Live on Stage.
And fittingly, I got my copy of this album – you guessed it – for free. (Thanks Mike.)
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My parents foisted a lot of music on us as kids. While cleaning the house, we were forced to listen to Helen Reddy’s Greatest Hits (not to mention my mother’s Big Bird-ish renditions of those greatest hits), and it was mandatory that all family members be present for the viewing of every single Peter, Paul & Mary PBS concert broadcast. And when we got our first CD player, Dad subjected us to repeated performances of Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite (with real digitally recorded thunderclaps!) at structure-leveling volumes.
But, there were a few artists in my parents’ record collection that I discovered and came to love without the benefit of their musical totalitarianism.
At some point, I remember Casey Kasem (whom I listened to religiously) play “Cecilia” as an American Top 40 extra, and I instantly loved it. When I later came across my parents’ copy of Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water LP, I was delighted to find the song listed there. I didn’t realize, of course, what I was getting myself into, when, one Saturday afternoon, feeling bored after having spent the day with the Smurfs, Dick Clark, and Don Cornelius, I finally played the whole record instead of just my then-favorite song.
I’d like to take this moment to apologize to my parents.
Mom, Dad, I’m so very, very sorry. I murdered that record.
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I like the title of this new live record a lot. Not just because it seems to carry with it the suggestion that whatever differences Paul and Artie have had over their fifty-year acquaintance are truly secondary not just to their magnificent legacy as recording artists, but also to their personal friendship; but also because, more than twenty years after we first met, I have come to think of these songs, and particularly these songs sung by these voices, as old friends too. (Which is why I bristle whenever I even think of Clay Aiken covering them.)
I’ll never meet Paul or Artie in person, but you can be damned well sure that they were with me the summer that my family lost our house…
When you’re weary
When you’re out on the street…
They were with me that weird, strange, scary-but-liberating night when I “came out” to my Dad over the phone from my dorm room at Carroll College…
Sail on, silver girl, sail on by
Your time has come to shine…
They were with me and my sister and my Dad when we took that little (little?) road trip down to Savannah…
All your dreams are on their way…
And “Cecilia” always shows up towards the end of the night at wedding receptions and company holiday parties.
….heeyyyyyyyy.
The music of Simon and Garfunkel is as much a part of my general consciousness as, say, Paddock Lake, Wisconsin, the little town where I grew up. It’s music that, in some ways, has shaped who I am as a person, and it’s music that I will always hold sacred. And if anything, Old Friends: Live on Stage serves as a grand testament to the immense power of these songs, and the transformational effect they have on their fans.
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Before they’ve sung a note, the audience has hushed over the simple acoustic guitar figures that open “Old Friends/Bookends”. Suddenly, a lone voice from the audience shouts rapturously – maybe even cathartically - ‘I LOVE YOU!’ And the tsunamic applause that follows is like a single gigantic exhale, as if everyone had been holding their breath for this particular moment. (And really, could you blame them if they were?)
But things get off to a slow start. On what is perhaps their fastest song, the two seem to be struggling against each other through the verses of “Hazy Shade of Winter” Paul, whose singing has grown more idiosyncratic (and indulgent) in his advanced years, sings the song like the solo artist he always wanted to be, almost like he’s deliberately trying to throw Artie’s harmony parts off. And a lumbering rendition of “I Am A Rock” does little to assuage this listener’s fears. Both singers sound – well – really, really old. And neither sound like their having much fun.
And in fact, that’s the way the album goes until about half way through the first disc, during the only banter reproduced for this set, in which the two relate stories about how they met and how they got started. And in the telling, you can hear the both of them loosening up, while poking fun at each other’s (and especially Paul’s) egos:
PAUL: We started singing when we were thirteen years old. We started arguing when we were fourteen. So that makes this the 47th anniversary of our arguing
ARTIE: I wanted to call us Garfunkel & Simon. But Paul convinced me that they should go alphabetical.
The audience eats it up, and this segment, which includes a quick rendition of their “first” song “Hey Schoolgirl, In the Second Row”, and a rip-roaring version of “Bye Bye Love” (with the Everly Brothers, no less!), not only had me belly-laughing, alone, in my car, on my way to work, at an obscene hour of the morning, but it’s also the point on this record at which the individuals Paul and Artie morph back into the duo Simon & Garfunkel. And damned if they don’t sound married.
From there, they deliver a steady stream of their biggest hits, from the delicate “Scarborough Fair”, and a climactic, lump-in-throat extended version of “The Sound of Silence”, which, like many of these songs, has taken on a whole new dimension of resonance in light of current events; to an appropriately explosive take on the epic “The Boxer.” And each new (old) song is rendered in vivid, captivating colors.
Still, Paul’s egoism occasionally gets in the way. The fact that there are three songs from Paul’s solo career included here – and nothing from Artie’s wonderful recent album Everything Waits to Be Noticed - is almost forgiveable, especially since, with the exception of “Slip Slidin’ Away”, they aren’t predictable choices; and “American Tune” and “My Little Town” both fit well in this particular setting.
I can live with that.
What I can’t handle is Paul mauling the second verse of what is perhaps his greatest composition “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” In an otherwise breathtaking performance of the song, which ends in an endlessly swirling cacophony of ringing cymbals and piano crashes, Paul’s “soulful” belting (i.e. struggling to hit those high notes he specifically wrote for his partner) rings false and clumsy.
Also clumsy is the lone new studio track, “Citizen of the Planet”, a pleasant, but utterly inconsequential (especially given what it’s appended to) topical ditty about, you know, peace and love and stuff. It’s understandable that Warner Bros. might want to release a studio track unavailable elsewhere for this album. After all, it’s been 35 years since Simon and Garfunkel released a new studio recording, and any new song would be a selling point, especially for a holiday release like this. But we shouldn’t be fooled. The real selling point of this album is “the old stuff”, and “Citizen of the Planet” simply feels anticlimactic.
This isn’t the first Simon & Garfunkel live album, and it’s not the first Simon & Garfunkel reunion live album. But, it may be the most powerful Simon & Garfunkel live album, because it’s the live album on which these songs have reached the most people. They have been living and breathing on our record players and radios for forty years now, and to hear them living and breathing once again (once and for all?) in the voices of these two men together is truly an awesome sound.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
“Old Friends: Live on Stage” by Simon & Garfunkel
Warner Bros. Records
Released 11/30/04
96 min.
SONGS:
DISC ONE: Old Friends/Bookends – Hazy Shade of Winter – I Am A Rock – America – At the Zoo – Baby Driver – Cathy’s Song – Tom and Jerry Story – Hey, Schoolgirl in the Second Row – Everly Brothers Intro – Bye Bye Love – Scarborough Fair – Homeward Bound – The Sound of Silence
DISC TWO: Mrs. Robinson – Slip Slidin’ Away – El Condor Pasa – The Only Living Boy in New York – American Tune – My Little Town – Bridge Over Troubled Water – Cecilia – The Boxer – Leaves That Are Green – Citizen of the Planet
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