So the best concert I have been to? It’s hard to say since there are too many ways to judge what exactly is the best, concert-wise. You can like a concert because you just love the music of the artist, or like the entertainment aspect of it, or you can just have a good time with friends… so many reasons.
But I really would like to write about a concert I have seen in 1991, because it was an historic one, it was a real event, the time stopped in New York City this day, I mean people took a day off to attend it! However it’s gonna be challenging because 19 years have passed since, and the memory is what it is, not that good after all these years.
So I was lucky enough to be in New York City when Paul Simon decided to do a free concert in Central Park, just 10 years after the famous one he did with Garfunkel in 1981. I had heard about it weeks in advance, and you could feel the excitement in Manhattan. They had built a gigantic stage on the great lawn of Central Park at least a week in advance and I remember going there a few times to check it out. It was my first year in NYC and I was very impressed by everything. It was in the middle of August, the air was hot and humid and the forecast was unstable, stormy weather, and they had predicted some chance of rain.
My aunt had flown to spend the month of August with me, and being a die-hard Paul Simon fan, it was just another excuse for her to be there.
We went to the site the day before, seeing there were already a circus around it and hearing sound checks from a distance. Actually Paul and his band were rehearsing at the end of the afternoon on August 14th, and we heard and saw glimpses of the rehearsal from afar. The security guards were really present, but still friendly, however they did not let us go very close … I just remember hearing Paul interrupting himself in the middle of a song, his arms in the air, chanting, ‘no rain, no rain’.
Fortunately, it must have been a good invocation he did there, because it did not rain the following day. We decided to come early, way early in the morning, seeing there were already people camping out there. It may sound kind of crazy to spend the whole day uncomfortably sitting on the ground in the middle of strangers, but it is such a great memory. People were “parked” behind barricades quite far from the stage and we tried to move to the front of the metallic barriers. We were first disappointed to be stuck so far, but later extremely happy to see they were removing the barricades.
Some people come to outdoor concerts as if they were camping for a month with cool-boxes on wheels and sleeping bags, and this time was certainly not an exception. We came with almost nothing, to be at ease, but we could have eaten tons of things affable and auspicious people were offering in this Woodstock atmosphere. The crowd was huge, they talked about 750,000 people, and I have no idea how they did this estimation. The lawn was just a sea of people and it was still quite early in the morning.
When, without fore-notice, they withdrew the barricades (I can’t remember what time it was), people obviously rushed to the stage, it was a human wave that we decided to surf right away! Actually I am not sure we had the choice. We went as close to the stage as possible and I’m proud to say we managed to stay front row during the whole concert.
A whole day is a long wait, but I don’t remember a dull moment, between the opportunistic sellers of home-made t-shirts, the food and drink vendors, the fans, the crowd, the helicopters above the park, the roadies on stage, it was a circus and even now I still can see the scene.
I frankly don’t remember what time Paul Simon came on stage, at this point I had lost track of time, I think the sky was beginning to turn dark. The crowd just exploded, the energy level was intense and we got a little crushed against the barriers of course, but I have known worst situations considering the size of this crowd!
Paul started with ‘The Obvious Child’ in a blasting sound, ah these powerful Olodum drums! But everybody knows the set list, since the concert was entirely recorded and filmed:
‘The Obvious Child’
‘The Boy in the Bubble’
‘She Moves On’
‘Kodachrome’
‘Born at the Right Time’
‘Train in the Distance’
‘Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard’
‘I Know What I Know’
‘The Cool, Cool River’
‘Bridge over Troubled Water’
‘Proof’
‘The Coast’
‘Graceland’
‘You Can Call Me Al’
‘Still Crazy After All These Years’
‘Loves Me Like a Rock’
‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’
‘Hearts and Bones’
‘Late in the Evening’
‘America’
‘The Boxer’
‘Cecilia’
‘The Sound of Silence’
He mostly played songs from his two most recent (at the time) and very successful albums ‘Graceland’ and ‘Rhythm of the Saints’, but also chose to play songs from his earlier songbook including a number of tunes from the Simon and Garfunkel period. What can I say about the performance? It was flawless, powerfully executed, Simon being the professional he is. He was obviously enjoying himself, at ease and smiling all the time. One of the highlight of the s
how was the sudden appearance of Chevy Chase on stage in the middle of ‘You can call me Al’. There were rumors that Steve Martin would show up but it was Chevy who popped up, played saxophone on that famous chorus and clowned around for a few minutes. The musicians were all excellent and some of them were long time Paul Simon’s friends, like Steve Gadd (drums) and Richard Tee (piano), or Vincent Nguini (Guitar) who may still play with him these days. It was an all-star band with musicians from the United States (the famous trumpeter-composer Chris Botti, and jazz saxophonist-composer Michael Brecker), from South Africa (the wonderful ‘Graceland’ lead guitarist Ray Phiri, the talented multi-instrumentalist Tony Cedras), from Cameroon (the charismatic Armand Sabal-Lecco) and from Brazil (the intrepid and jumping around Mingo Araujo, the more serious but nevertheless accomplished Cyro Baptista). I remember that some songs were completely transformed, Africanized, in particular ‘Cecilia’, which was metamorphosed into a slow quiet Afro tune.
how was the sudden appearance of Chevy Chase on stage in the middle of ‘You can call me Al’. There were rumors that Steve Martin would show up but it was Chevy who popped up, played saxophone on that famous chorus and clowned around for a few minutes. The musicians were all excellent and some of them were long time Paul Simon’s friends, like Steve Gadd (drums) and Richard Tee (piano), or Vincent Nguini (Guitar) who may still play with him these days. It was an all-star band with musicians from the United States (the famous trumpeter-composer Chris Botti, and jazz saxophonist-composer Michael Brecker), from South Africa (the wonderful ‘Graceland’ lead guitarist Ray Phiri, the talented multi-instrumentalist Tony Cedras), from Cameroon (the charismatic Armand Sabal-Lecco) and from Brazil (the intrepid and jumping around Mingo Araujo, the more serious but nevertheless accomplished Cyro Baptista). I remember that some songs were completely transformed, Africanized, in particular ‘Cecilia’, which was metamorphosed into a slow quiet Afro tune.
I think there were two encores with the ‘old’ ones, and inevitably it all ended up with ‘The Sound of Silence’. It went very fast, and when it was all over it felt like a dream. As soon as the public was leaving, high and still euphoric, but moving slowly as if they were still stoned by what they have just lived, homeless people were rushing in, all wide-eyed and amazed about the treasures they were finding. I bet it took them days to clean up all that mess.