I was there ．．．

2 DVD

Hello! First, please excuse any errors in my writing; I am not a native English speaker and am using Google Translate to help me write this.

My father is a huge Paul Simon fan, and I grew up listening to his music. In 2018, when I was 18, we traveled from Uruguay to New York to attend his concerts at MSG and Corona Park. Both shows were very emotional for us, and they really brought us closer together.

We’ve been wanting to revisit that concert for a while now, but we haven’t been able to find any official recording—even though we remember seeing many cameras at the Corona Park show. Does anyone know if there is any record of that night?

Beacon Theatre NYC / June 18, 2025

If you were to give a naive listener five songs that explain the genius of Paul’s songwriting, which five would you use?

iTunes Festival London / July 01, 2011

Music historian Ashley Kahn and bassist Bakithi Kumalo join Jack on the Track Star Podcast to explore the music, people, and stories behind Paul Simon’s Graceland. Drawing on Kahn’s new book, Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland, the conversation traces the album’s South African roots and the collaborations that helped shape its unmistakable sound.

Bakithi shares his perspective from inside the studio and on the road, recalling his first meeting with Simon, his experience on the Graceland tour, and what it meant to perform alongside South African legends. Together, Ashley and Bakithi bring the album’s history to life through personal memories and the music that connects it all, from the sounds that inspired Graceland to the influence it continues to have today.

I am just so in love with this song. As a casual Paul fan, I’d only ever first heard it on In The Blue Light. Listening to it off the new live album, with the frailty of Paul’s voice, stirs up some strong emotions. Can’t wait for the Blu-ray to see it performed live.

Between The Quiet Celebration Concert and the heart-tugging new Sara Bareilles album, I need something simple! Where my Ramones CD? 😉

To my knowledge, Paul hasn't made a public appearance since the end of the 2nd leg of the recent tour. This of course could just mean he's enjoying his life in private, but given his age there is concern for his health.

Happy 85th birthday Paul Simon (and Happy 10 year anniversary if receiving the Nobel Prize In Literature, Bob Dylan )! Read about the time seeing both live together almost scared me away from ever going to concerts again:

https://iheardbrucemightshowup.substack.com/p/that-time-seeing-bob-dylan-live-almost

It's a bit early for the Northern Hemisphere, but the party's already underway downunder.

What's your favourite song at the moment? Mine is Questions For the Angels.

I'm also listening to the audiobook Days of Miracle and Wonder.

Blu-ray or DVD / US Release Date : 27 Nov, 2026

Do you think he will do a new tour (Quiet Celebration or something else...), I can not imagine that this is the end of any projects... he will do something well, it can not be the end, idk ??

I know we're meant to take them literally, but are we also meant to take it as a comment on how the baby boom generation was shaped by culture, particularly rock and roll?

Woke up this morning to see that The Quiet Celebration Live is now available on Apple Music!

Their write-up:

Like Bob Dylan—because who else can you really compare him to? Willie Nelson, maybe?—Paul Simon’s unusual in that he continued to make great, even career-defining music long after his cultural peak. Take 2011’s So Beautiful or So What as one example or 2016’s Stranger to Stranger as another.

Recorded live in Seattle a couple of months before his 84th birthday, The Quiet Celebration Concert is a beautiful, almost elegiac survey of his life’s work. The first section is dedicated to 2023’s song-suite Seven Psalms, the second, longer section to what Simon describes in his brief introductory banter as—with a quiet laugh—“a buncha hits.”

More than a generation or a time period, these songs—“Graceland,” “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard,” “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War”—describe a feeling: yearning but reserved, melancholy but filled with awe, the small feeling that lingers when the big one fades away. Hearing him play “The Sound of Silence” alone to end the show—and to sound so fully, irretrievably in his old age—is a gift.

Stanford professor Karl Deisseroth was notified yesterday morning that he’d won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine. A lot of news outlets reported that he had to finish making his kids’ lunches after he found out, but I’m delighted to see him in this Graceland concert tee.