Paul Simon with Art Garfunkel, Phoebe Snow and Randy Newman - Saturday Night Live, NBC Studios, New York City, 10-18-1975

Recently, a commenter suggested that I should compile the musical performances from the "Saturday Night Live" T.V. show in the same way I compiled them from the "Playboy After Dark" T.V. show. That's a good idea, and I'll probably do that at some point. But in the meantime, there's this, as a kind of teaser. Did you know that in 1975, the first season of "Saturday Night Live," there was an episode that was almost entirely dedicated to musical performances related to Paul Simon, including a short reunion of Simon and Garfunkel? There was, and here's the music from it.

When "Saturday Night Live" got started, the show was still figuring out just what it would be. For instance, the first episode was unusual since all the comedic skirts were very short, less than two minutes long. Then this one was the second episode. It seems to have been an experiment in making the show much more musical than it turned out to be. In fact, the entire show was basically turned over to Paul Simon, like it was his personal T.V. special. He performed some songs, and picked other musical guests to perform other songs. He also did a couple of skirts, including one where he played basketball against a professional basketball player (Connie Hawkins, who was six feet, eight inches tall). The joke was that Simon is short, at five feet, two inches, so he would make a terrible basketball player. The regular cast was barely seen at all, other than the news update section.

In 1975, Simon was having a moment. Simon and Garfunkel broke up in 1970, and at first the commercial success of his solo career was much lower. But his 1975 album "Still Crazy After All These Years" went all the way to Number One in the U.S. album charts, helped by the hit single "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," which also went to Number One. This show took place only a couple of weeks after that album was released. 

His new album contained "My Little Town," the first Simon and Garfunkel collaboration on record since they broke up in 1970. So Simon had Art Garfunkel on the show to perform that song, plus two others. Garfunkel also got to sing a song by himself. 

 

Simon also used the show to shine the spotlight on some of his favorite musical acts. Not only did Randy Newman perform a song, but Simon actually sang one of Newman's songs himself, "Marie." This is a really special treat, since Simon almost never did cover songs. I haven't seen this cover version anywhere. 

Phoebe Snow was also having her moment of commercial success, thanks to her hit single "Poetry Man." But she chose not to sing that, and did "No Regrets," a song done by Billie Holiday, instead. Plus, Snow and the Jessy Dixon Singers helped out on "Gone at Last," just like they did on Simon's previous album. 

I wasn't able to find this music circulating as an audio bootleg, except for the three Simon & Garfunkel songs. So I found a high quality version of the video, converted it to audio, and chopped it into mp3s. I cut out everything that wasn't related to the music, like the few comedic skirts. That was about 20 minutes of material. I carefully edited the transitions to cut out the commercial breaks and things like that, so it would sound like a continuous concert.

This album is 39 minutes long. 

01 Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon)
02 talk (Paul Simon)
03 Loves Me like a Rock (Paul Simon & the Jessy Dixon Singers)
04 Marie (Paul Simon)
05 talk (Paul Simon)
06 Sail Away (Randy Newman)
07 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
08 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
09 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
10 Scarborough Fair (Simon & Garfunkel)
11 My Little Town (Simon & Garfunkel)
12 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
13 I Only Have Eyes for You (Art Garfunkel)
14 talk (Paul Simon & Phoebe Snow)
15 No Regrets (Phoebe Snow)
16 Gone at Last (Paul Simon, Phoebe Snow & the Jessy Dixon Singers)
17 American Tune (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/m4tnWz4R

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/9k79ChfHUojnDep/file

The cover image is a screenshot I took of a video of this exact concert. It shows Phoebe Snow and Paul Simon singing "Gone at Last." For the font, I used the colors and style of the T.V. show.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Paul Simon, Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, CA, 2-15-2001

The good news is, I have another MusiCares tribute concert to post. The bad news is, this is the last one I can find. Hopefully, some others will show up eventually. But in the meantime, here's a tribute to Paul Simon, from 2001.

Before I say anything about this album, I want to mention the MusiCares tributes I still can't find (or don't exist). With this one included, I've posted nine of them. But there are 23 more that I would still love to hear. Here's the list of the missing ones:

2025: Grateful Dead    
2023: Berry Gordy & Smokey Robinson
2022: Joni Mitchell
2020: Aerosmith
2018: Fleetwood Mac    
2017: Tom Petty    
2015: Bob Dylan
2009: Neil Diamond    
2008: Aretha Franklin
2007: Don Henley    
2004: Sting    
2003: Bono
2002: Billy Joel    
2000: Elton John
1999: Stevie Wonder
1998: Luciano Pavarotti
1997: Phil Collins
1996: Quincy Jones    
1995: Tony Bennett
1994: Gloria Estefan
1993: Natalie Cole
1992: Bonnie Raitt
1991: David Crosby 

Getting back to this concert, this actually has an audience bootleg source. All the other MusiCares concerts I've posted come from DVDs or TV. But don't worry much about the source issue. This is an unusually good sounding audience boot. Plus, I made some big improvements. I used the MVSEP program to get rid of all the audience noise during songs while keeping the audience cheering at the ends of songs. Then I ran all the songs through MVSEP again, boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. In my opinion, the end result is this sounds nearly as good as the other MusiCares concerts.

This followed the same formula as typical tribute concerts, with various guest stars singing cover versions, then an acceptance speech by Simon, and finally Simon played a couple of songs. But one thing that's a bit different is that Simon is friends with some professional comedians, so there was more comedy than normal for this kind of concert. In addition to Chevy Chase and Michael McKean acting as emcees, Steve Martin did about a five minute comedy routine while introducing Simon.

This unreleased album is an hour and 11 minutes long. 

01 talk (Chevy Chase)
02 You Can Call Me Al (Macy Gray)
03 talk (Chevy Chase)
04 Born in Puerto Rico (Ruben Blades & Danny Rivera)
05 talk (Chevy Chase & Gloria Estefan)
06 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Gloria Estefan)
07 talk (Chevy Chase)
08 Mother and Child Reunion (Ziggy Marley)
09 talk (Chevy Chase)
10 American Tune (Shawn Colvin)
11 talk (Chevy Chase & Stevie Wonder)
12 Loves Me like a Rock (Stevie Wonder & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
13 talk (Michael McKean)
14 Tenderness (Shelby Lynne)
15 talk (Michael McKean & Brian Wilson)
16 The Sound of Silence (Brian Wilson)
17 talk (Michael McKean)
18 Homeward Bound (Joan Osborne & the Chieftans)
19 talk (Steve Martin)
20 Graceland (Paul Simon)
21 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
22 talk (Paul Simon)
23 The Boxer (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LydU3Q4g

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/EE3jBlACedR3V1o/file

The cover photo is from this exact event, though I think it was from backstage before or after the concert. There was some distracting stuff in the background, so I replaced that with blackness in Photoshop. From right to left: Tony Bennett, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, and Shelby Lynne.

Various Artists - 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 10-29-2009

Here's a really great concert filled with lots of big stars performing classic songs. It was a two-day concert in New York City, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I'm posting both days of the concert, and this is the first one. I highly recommend this.

This two-day long concert had an unusual and interesting format: eight major artists were chosen: Crosby, Stills and Nash, Paul Simon (with and without Art Garfunkel), Stevie Wonder, and Bruce Springsteen for the first day, and Aretha Franklin, Jeff Beck, Metallica, and U2 for the second day. Each of those major stars were hosts for one fourth of the days they were on. Then they invited other stars to join them, to play a song or two. For instance, the first major artist, Crosby, Stills and Nash, had Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and James Taylor as their guests. The result was that, between the major stars and their guests, most of the major areas of rock and roll going back to the 1950s were represented. 

There were some key gaps though. For instance, although Mick Jagger was a guest on the second day to represent the Rolling Stones, there really wasn't any special representation of the Beatles, the most important musical act of all. (Although there were occasional covers of Beatles songs, at least.) Bob Dylan was also very missed. But then again, you can only do so much in two concerts containing about four hours each. 

I spent a long time putting this together. It was quite tricky. I was able to find all the songs from this, the first night, but only two and a half hours from the second night, even though that one probably lasted about four hours as well. The main source I used was an officially released DVD. But the longest version of that was only about three hours for both concerts combined. Plus, many of those were bonus tracks, which meant they were out of order and often had the starts and ends cut off.

Luckily for me, Wikipedia came through for me particularly well, with a list of all the songs performed in the correct order, including lots of details. You can see that, and more info about the concert, here:

25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts - Wikipedia 

From that, I was able to figure out the songs I was missing, and try to find them. It turns out four hours of highlights were shown on HBO the year the concert happened. That was longer than the DVD, so I found some extra songs there. Then I found an audience bootleg of the entire first day. That's why I was able to include all the songs. However, the sound quality of the songs from the audience bootleg was significantly poorer than the songs from the DVD and the HBO broadcast. But, luckily, I was able to clean things up quite a lot, by putting a lot of effort into audio editing. I ran all the audience boot sourced songs through two processes that I use in cases like this. For one thing, I used the MVSEP audio editing program to raise the volume of the lead vocals in contrast to the instruments. (That is such a common problem for concert bootlegs.) Then I also used MVSEP to wipe out the crowd noise during the songs, while keeping the cheers at the beginnings and ends of songs. In my opinion, that made the quality gap between the different sources a lot smaller, though still noticeable. ("Marrakesh Express" is an example of one of the audience boot sourced songs, and the songs just before and after it are not, if you want to make a comparison.)

However, I still had a lot of work to do. Another problem with the audience boot-sourced song is that the cheering at the ends of songs sounded quite different, with the sound of clapping of individual people near the taper more prominent. I mostly fixed this by copying and pasting cheering from the ends of DVD-sourced songs, and slathering it over the cheering of the audience boot-sourced songs. I also had a lot of transition issues. It was rare to have two songs in a row from the same source. I generally fixed that by patching in more generic cheering. Yet another problem was the banter between songs. The ones from the audience boot-sourced songs sounded really weak. So I did extra editing to pull the actual talking out from the background noise. 

I could go on and on. There were lots of little tweaks. But I'm hoping that the end result is this will sound like one coherent concert from one source, more or less, and you won't notice the "making of the sausage" with all the editing to get it to sound that way. It would be really great if this whole thing gets officially released one day, in top quality. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.

One thing that makes this concert special is all the collaborations. There are too many to count. Lots and lots of big names performing songs together, and usually the only time they ever did that for the songs. There were some interesting cover versions as well, as an attempt to have some inclusion of famous musician who died or otherwise didn't attend. Stevie Wonder singing the Michael Jackson song "The Way You Make Me Feel" and Paul Simon with Crosby and Nash singing "Here Comes the Sun" are just two examples of that.

This should particularly delight Bruce Springsteen fans. He dominated this first night, which his section of the concert lasting an hour and a half, easily the longest. And he assisted Jerry Lee Lewis on the first song of the night as well. (Plus, he showed up on the second night as well, as we shall see later.)

This album is four hours and eight minutes long.

01 talk (Tom Hanks)
02 talk (Jerry Lee Lewis)
03 Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (Jerry Lee Lewis with Bruce Springsteen)
04 Woodstock (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
05 Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
06 talk (Graham Nash)
07 Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
08 talk (David Crosby)
09 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
10 Love Has No Pride (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
11 Midnight Rider (Bonnie Raitt & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
12 talk (Graham Nash)
13 talk (Jackson Browne)
14 The Pretender (Jackson Browne & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
15 talk (James Taylor)
16 Mexico (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
17 Love the One You're With (James Taylor & Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 Rock and Roll Woman (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
19 talk (Graham Nash)
20 Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills & Nash & Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne & James Taylor)
21 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon)
22 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
23 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)
25 Here Comes the Sun (Paul Simon with Crosby & Nash)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 The Wanderer (Dion & Paul Simon)
28 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
29 talk (Paul Simon)
30 Two People in the World (Little Anthony & the Imperials)
31 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
32 Mrs. Robinson - Not Fade Away (Simon & Garfunkel)
33 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
34 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
35 Cecilia (Simon & Garfunkel)
36 Blowin' in the Wind (Stevie Wonder)
37 talk (Stevie Wonder)
38 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Stevie Wonder)
39 I Was Made to Love Her (Stevie Wonder)
40 For Once in My Life (Stevie Wonder)
41 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
42 Boogie On Reggae Woman (Stevie Wonder)
43 talk (Stevie Wonder)
44 The Tracks of My Tears (Smokey Robinson & Stevie Wonder)
45 talk (Stevie Wonder)
46 Mercy Mercy Me [The Ecology] (Stevie Wonder & John Legend)
47 The Way You Make Me Feel (Stevie Wonder with John Legend)
48 talk (Stevie Wonder)
49 The Thrill Is Gone (B.B. King & Stevie Wonder)
50 Living for the City (Stevie Wonder)
51 Higher Ground - Roxanne - Higher Ground (Sting & Stevie Wonder)
52 Superstition (Stevie Wonder & Jeff Beck)
53 10th Avenue Freeze-Out (Bruce Springsteen)
54 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
55 Hold On, I'm Comin' (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
56 Soul Man (Bruce Springsteen & Sam Moore)
57 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
58 The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
59 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
60 Proud Mary (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
61 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
62 Oh, Pretty Woman (John Fogerty & Bruce Springsteen)
63 Jungleland (Bruce Springsteen)
64 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
65 A Fine, Fine Boy (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
66 Do Run Run Run (Darlene Love & Bruce Springsteen)
67 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
68 London Calling (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
69 Badlands (Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello)
70 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
71 You May Be Right (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
72 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
73 Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
74 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
75 Born to Run (Billy Joel & Bruce Springsteen)
76 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher (Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QU2h1WV1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/7oTCzzonspG0GVX/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right: John Fogerty, Darlene Love, Bruce Springsteen, and Sam Moore.

Paul Simon - Bread and Roses Festival, Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 10-3-1981

Here's something I just randomly came across on YouTube the other day. For ages, I've been looking for a good solo acoustic Paul Simon concert. The only solo acoustic tour he did was in 1984, but all the bootlegs I've heard from that tour don't sound that good. I've finally found something worthy, though it's from 1981 instead.

This was a one-off, apparently the only solo concert he did in 1981. That was the year he did the famous concert in Central Park as part of Simon and Garfunkel, which was attended by over half a million people and released as a live album. That took place on September 19, just a couple of weeks prior to this concert. You can hear a passing reference to it in some of the banter near the end of the concert.

The Break and Roses Festival is an annual folk festival. I've posted albums from the festival before: Joni Mitchell in 1978, Stephen Stills in 1978, and Neil Young in 1980. Apparently, the other main acts at the 1981 version of the festival were Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, Al Di Meola, Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart, and Mimi Farina. I'm not aware of any recordings of those. But I'm sure the fact that Joan Baez was there performing her own set made it convenient for her to join Simon on one song ("The Boxer") for his set.

I have to warn you this album is not up to my usual sound quality standards. It comes from an audience bootleg, when I almost always use soundboard or FM radio bootlegs as sources. But I'm making an exception because this sounds pretty good as far as audience bootlegs go. As I mentioned above, it sounds better than several bootlegs I heard from his 1984, which are all audience boots too. It helps greatly that it's a solo acoustic performance, since that musical simplicity makes more forgiving for recordings.

There are some flaws with this recording. One is that the taper obviously stopped the recording at the end of every song, in order to save tape. As a result, most of the cheering was lost, and no doubt a lot of the banter between songs too. For instance, there's no introduction of Joan Baez, though that surely must have happened before "The Boxer." She's just there on stage all of a sudden, without any cheering or anything. I managed to fix the applause problem by taking little bits of what applause there was, putting together several songs of it, and then patching that into the ends of all the songs. But there was nothing I could do to bring back the missing banter. 

A curiosity is that he led the crowd through a short rendition of "Happy Birthday" for some girl in the audience that he didn't know. We can tell he didn't know her because he asked her what her name was. Chances are there was more banter leading up to why he was even interacting with the girl in the first place, but we'll probably never know since it wasn't included in this recording.

Simon's most recent studio album was "One Trick Pony," released in 1980. Curiously, he didn't play any songs from it. Perhaps he thought most of the songs from it really needed to be performed with a full band. Or, it's possible this isn't the full concert and he did play some of those, I don't know. But more interestingly, he played two songs he hadn't released yet: "Song about the Moon" and "The Late Great Johnny Ace." Both of them would be released on his next studio album, "Hearts and Bones," in 1983.

If anyone has what they think is a worthy recording from Simon's 1984 solo acoustic tour, please let me know. I've found mention of a couple, like from Pine Knob, Illinois, and Vancouver, that are supposed to some pretty decent, but I can't find those anywhere. 

This album is 37 minutes long. 

01 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
02 Duncan (Paul Simon)
03 America (Paul Simon)
04 Song about the Moon (Paul Simon)
05 talk (Paul Simon)
06 The Late Great Johnny Ace (Paul Simon)
07 Mrs. Robinson (Paul Simon)
08 Slip Slidin' Away (Paul Simon)
09 American Tune (Paul Simon)
10 Happy Birthday (Paul Simon)
11 talk (Paul Simon)
12 The Boxer (Paul Simon & Joan Baez)
13 Something So Right (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PPad69ov

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/GcRokWotsROGnIK/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. I found several, and I thought this one that also included Joan Baez was the most interesting. I used Photoshop to bring them closer together.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Stevie Wonder, White House, Washington, DC, 2-25-2009

Here's another "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" concert, honoring Stevie Wonder in 2009. It was the first one with President Barack Obama's direct involvement, and the second one overall.

This concert followed a typical format of a number of guest stars performing songs made famous by the winner, Stevie Wonder, then a short induction ceremony, then a short set by the winner. The one bummer in my opinion is that the concert was rather short. This one is a half hour shorter than the concert honoring Paul McCartney a year later. One nice bonus though is not only President Obama's involvement, but also a short introduction by First Lady Michelle Obama. 

This album remains unreleased. I got lucky and found an mp3 of the entire show. Then I broke it into individual mp3s for each song. (I could still use help from anyone who has a PBS pass that allows them to watch PBS shows on the Internet in order to get some of the other Gershwin Prize concerts!)

This album is 54 minutes long. 

01 talk (Michelle Obama)
02 Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder)
03 talk (emcee)
04 Overjoyed (Esperanza Spalding)
05 talk (emcee)
06 For Once in My Life (Tony Bennett)
07 talk (emcee)
08 Blame It on the Sun (Diana Krall)
09 talk (emcee)
10 Higher Ground (Mary Mary)
11 talk (emcee)
12 Summer Soft (India.Arie)
13 talk (emcee)
14 You and I (Martina McBride)
15 talk (emcee)
16 Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer (Anita Johnson)
17 talk (emcee)
18 If It's Magic (Paul Simon)
19 talk (Barack Obama)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm Yours (Stevie Wonder)
22 Superstition (Stevie Wonder)
23 talk (Barack Obama)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ZbWEnVNS

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/0Yh30jfYQR6JITn/file 

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Paul Simon, Warner Theatre, Washington, DC, 5-23-2007

Here's another "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" concert. This one honors Paul Simon.

This was the very first Gershwin Prize to be awarded. In 1998, some entertainment producers and promoters came up with the idea of having an award for comedians, which resulted in the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, connected to the Library of Congress and with an annual concert broadcast on PBS TV stations. That idea turned out to be a big success, so in 2003 the same group came up with the same idea, but for musicians. Then I guess it took a few more years before the first prize was awarded in 2007. You can read more about the prize and its history here:

Gershwin Prize - Wikipedia 

In this concert, there weren't that many guest stars performing Simon's songs. But that meant that most of the bigger names there (Lyle Lovett, James Taylor, Alison Krauss, Marc Anthony, and Stevie Wonder) got to perform two songs instead of the usual one.

As is usually the case with such concerts, it ended with a short set by the honoree, Paul Simon. Given the huge role Art Garfunkel had in Simon's music career as part of Simon and Garfunkel, I feel he got kind of dissed here, being only involved in one song, "Bridge Over Troubled Water." But the two of them had a turbulent relationship for decades. Their last tour together would take place in 2009, and their last performance together in 2010. After that, they had a more severe and prolonged falling out, though I was glad to see it reported that by 2024 they had reconciled as friends again.

This albums in unreleased in audio format. However, a DVD of it has been released. Strangely, it seems to be the only Gershwin Prize concert released on DVD. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 36 minutes long. 

01 talk (emcee)
02 talk (Bob Costas)
03 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Lyle Lovett)
04 The Boxer (Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin & Jerry Douglas)
05 Mother and Child Reunion (Stephen Marley)
06 Homeless (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
07 Slip Slidin' Away (James Taylor & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
08 Sunday Morning with the Sensational Nightingales (Billy Collins & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
09 That Was Your Mother (Lyle Lovett with Buckwheat Zydeco)
10 Still Crazy After All These Years (James Taylor)
11 El Condor Pasa (Marc Anthony)
12 Late in the Evening (Marc Anthony)
13 Gone at Last (Yolanda Adams & Jessy Dixon)
14 Something So Right (Dianne Reeves)
15 The 59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy] (Grover & Elmo of the Muppets)
16 Graceland (Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas)
17 talk (emcee)
18 talk (James H. Billingston)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 talk (Paul Simon)
22 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 Father and Daughter (Paul Simon)
25 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon with Stevie Wonder)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Loves Me like a Rock (Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
28 The Sound of Silence [Instrumental Version] (Philip Glass)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/C2ct9sek

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3k0vX3n5GD90SUE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It shows Simon with Stevie Wonder and some members of the Dixie Hummingbirds when they performed "Loves Me like a Rock" together.

Various Artists - Gershwin Prize for Popular Song Honoring Willie Nelson, D.A.R. Constitution Hall, Washington, DC, 11-18-2015

Back in 2023, I posted a Joni Mitchell tribute concert. You can find that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2023/04/various-artists-joni-mitchell-gershwin.html

The reason I mention that off the bat is because it turns out that was a "Gershwin Prize for Popular Song" tribute concert, and I've found a few more of them. Here's one from 2015, honoring Willie Nelson. (By the way, I just redid the cover art of the Joni Mitchell one, so all of the ones I post will have the same font and so forth.)

This award is actually bestowed by a branch of the U.S. government, the Library of Congress. It was first awarded in 2007. It's been an annual thing since then, although four years were skipped. (One skip was due to the Covid pandemic, in 2021. I don't know why there weren't awards ceremonies in 2007, 2012, and 2017.)

Here's the Wikipedia page about the prize:

Gershwin Prize - Wikipedia 

Just in the past few days, I've managed to find several more of these concerts, and I plan to post all of them here soon. 

These are the ones I've found so far:

2007 Paul Simon
2009 Stevie Wonder
2010 Paul McCartney
2012 Burt Bacharach & Hal David
2014 Billy Joel
2015 Willie Nelson (here)
2020 Garth Brooks
2022 Lionel Richie
2023 Joni Mitchell (posted already)
2024 Elton John & Bernie Taupin

Meanwhile, here are the ones I can't find:
2013 Carole King
2016 Smokey Robinson
2017 Tony Bennett
2019 Gloria & Emilio Estefan

I'm calling on one of you out there to please help me find the rest. It seems videos of these other ones are available, via the PBS website. For instance, here's the Lionel Richie one:

Gershwin Prize | Lionel Richie: Gershwin Prize | Season 2022 | Episode 1 | PBS

However, to be able to watch them, one needs to pay for the KPBS Passport. So if anyone has that, and can record the audio and/or video of it and share that with me, then I'll be able to post the other ones as well. It would be a share if those remain out of reach, especially the Carole King, and Smokey Robinson ones.

Speaking of remaining out of reach, this Willie Nelson was very hard to find. For instance, it's not on YouTube, and everything like this is on YouTube. But I was able to find a single mp3 file of the entire concert. Then I broke it up into mp3s for each song.

One interesting thing about this concert, compared to the other Gershwin Prize concerts I've found so far, is that there weren't that many guest stars, but many of the guest stars got to perform two songs instead of one. For instance, that was the case with Neil Young, Paul Simon, and Alison Kraus. And in the cases of Neil Young and Paul Simon, I thought I'd seen just about every unique songs they've performed, but I've never seen any recordings or mentions of these.

However, the big star of the show, naturally, was Willie Nelson himself. He performed four songs at the end, including a duet with Cyndi Lauper.

By the way, if you look at the song list, you may wonder who "David Mao" is. He was the Librarian of Congress at the time. I've noticed that in all these concerts, the person in that position gets to give the introductory speech to the inductee. That must be an interesting perk for that government job.

Everything here is officially unreleased, but the sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and ten minutes long.

alternate:

01 talk (emcee)
02 Stay All Night (Neil Young & Promise of the Real)
03 talk (Don Johnson)
04 Funny How Time Slips Away (Leon Bridges)
05 talk (Don Johnson)
06 Crazy (Raul Malo)
07 talk (emcee)
08 talk (Paul Simon & Edie Brickell)
09 Remember Me (Paul Simon & Edie Brickell)
10 talk (Don Johnson)
11 Pancho and Lefty (Rosanne Cash)
12 talk (Don Johnson)
13 Georgia on My Mind (Jamie Johnson)
14 talk (emcee)
15 talk (Michael Feinstein)
16 talk (emcee)
17 Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (Alison Krauss)
18 talk (Jamie Johnson)
19 Seven Spanish Angels (Alison Krauss & Jamie Johnson)
20 talk (Don Johnson)
21 I Never Cared for You (Anna Gabriel)
22 Whiskey River (Neil Young & Promise of the Real)
23 Man with the Blues (Paul Simon with Buckwheat Zydeco)
24 talk (emcee)
25 talk (David Mao)
26 talk (Willie Nelson)
27 Night Life (Willie Nelson)
28 talk (Willie Nelson)
29 Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (Willie Nelson & Cyndi Lauper)
30 talk (Willie Nelson)
31 Living in the Promised Land (Willie Nelson)
32 On the Road Again (Willie Nelson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/L2TUsCTY

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fHU7DyaiBYIQjdb/file

The cover photo is from the point in the concert when Willie Nelson and Cyndi Lauper sang the song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" together.

Various Artists - Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon, Hollywood Pantages Theater, Los Angeles, CA, 4-6-2022

I've recently discovered a bunch of tribute concerts. I find these really interesting, but they seem to often slip through the cracks in terms of being shared bootlegs. So I'm going to try to make posting these a higher priority. Here's a Grammy-related tribute to Paul Simon from 2022. It took place just three days after the annual Grammy Awards ceremony that year, and in the same city, so many of the stars who attended that could attend this one as well.

It goes without saying that Simon is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, so he deserves a tribute like this. In fact, I've found a MusiCares tribute concert from 2001 and a Gershwin Prize tribute concert from 2007 both celebrating his songs that I plan on posting too. Like those, this one features many big stars playing his most beloved songs.

It also features Simon performing a couple of songs of his own at the end of the concert. This is especially significant because he was 80 years old at the time of this concert, and his voice was noticeably weakening with age. He announced a farewell tour in 2018, so this seemed like one of his last public performances. Since then, though, he decided to have one more tour in 2025, with about 20 concerts. Be that as it may, one can hear the change in his voice in this performance. Thankfully, he realized his limitations and had another singer tackle the vocally challenging song "American Tune" while he just played guitar on it.

The music here remains officially unreleased. However, it was broadcast on television, so there are video files of it. I took a high quality version, converted it to audio format, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is excellent. I kept most everything, except I cut out some talk from the unnamed female emcee every time there was a commercial break, which happened every few songs. Hopefully this now sounds seamless, without any hints of those commercial breaks.

Some of the banter between songs were little speeches by famous non-musicians, such as Woody Harrelson, Dustin Hoffman, and Oprah Winfrey. Famous rock star Elton John also only talked. In his case, his talk was a video broadcast, so he probably didn't sing as well because he wasn't there in person.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk (emcee)
02 Kodachrome (Brad Paisley)
03 talk (Woody Harrelson)
04 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Jonas Brothers)
05 talk (Garth Brooks)
06 The Boxer (Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood)
07 talk (Elton John)
08 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
09 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Susanna Hoffs)
10 talk (Herbie Hancock)
11 talk (Sting)
12 America (Sting)
13 talk (Billy Porter)
14 Loves Me like a Rock (Billy Porter)
15 talk (Dustin Hoffman)
16 talk (Stevie Wonder)
17 Mrs. Robinson (Stevie Wonder with Sheila E. & the Jonas Brothers)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Something So Right (Bonnie Raitt & Brad Paisley)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Stevie Wonder & Ledisi)
22 talk (Sofia Carson)
23 Mother and Child Reunion (Jimmy Cliff & Shaggy)
24 Take Me to the Mardi Gras (Trombone Shorty & Irma Thomas)
25 talk (Eric Church)
26 Homeward Bound (Eric Church)
27 Slip Slidin' Away (Little Big Town)
28 talk (Folake Olowofoyeku)
29 Homeless (Take 6)
30 Under African Skies (Angelique Kidjo with Dave Matthews)
31 You Can Call Me Al (Dave Matthews with Angelique Kidjo)
32 talk (Oprah Winfrey)
33 Graceland (Paul Simon)
34 talk (Paul Simon)
35 American Tune (Rhiannon Giddens with Paul Simon)
36 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5j4GUcC1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Vz5ALstXCYeahHB/file 

The cover shows Paul Simon about to receive a hug from Oprah Winfrey. It's from this exact concert.

Various Artists - New York Children’s Health Project Benefit, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 12-13-1987

The first thing I want to make clear is that, while this is a star-studded benefit concert, it is also in large part a Paul Simon concert. Out of the 32 songs here, Simon sang lead on 11 of them, and backing vocals on another three. That's because Simon was the host and the prime mover behind the cause for this benefit.

I did a little research on how this concert came to be, and I think it makes for an interesting story. Apparently, when Simon was working on his studio album "Graceland" in 1985 or 1986, he was taking going to his recording studio in the heart of New York City most every day. Each morning, he would make eye contact with a homeless girl begging on a street corner. But eventually, after months, she didn't show up for a while. He asked around, and found out that she had died. Being homeless, she had no access to health care. Simon decided he wanted to do something to help.

Around this time, homelessness had greatly risen in New York City. Plus, many thousands of families were packed into squalid welfare hotels. Simon connected with Dr. Irwin Ledlener. a pediatrician, who was already working on the problem. 

Ledlener later recalled, "We went on a tour of some of the not-so-hot spots in the city. We went to the welfare hotels, to boarder-baby facilities where they had these infants whose mothers were crack
cocaine addicts, and we went to some of the infant H.I.V. programs. It was a hell of a day, just one thing after another." Simon and Ledlener decided that it was obvious many homeless children weren't getting any health care, so they decided to make that their focus. 

Ledlener told him it would cost about $90,000 for a mobile van to bring health care to where the homeless where. Simon paid for that out of his own pocket, and the van began operating in the fall of 1987. But it soon became clear that just one van wasn't enough. Plus, there were upkeep costs, and the need for a charity group (called the "Children's Health Fund") to keep medical records on the homeless kids no matter how often they moved. So Simon put this concert together. It raised about half a million dollars, which was doubled by a contribution from his record company. 

More vans were bought. The results were impressive, so the program kept expanding. By 2005, the charity had expanded far beyond New York City. They had 20 vans in 14 states. Simon followed up with two more benefit concerts (in 1993 and 2012) to help keep the charity funded. All in all, it seems like one of the best results of a benefit concert that I've heard of, although it's a shame the government wasn't performing this help already.

Anyway, getting to the details of this concert, keep in mind that Simon's most recent project was his wildly successful "Graceland" album, released in 1986. That sold 16 million copies worldwide. So perhaps it's not too surprising that Simon played eight songs from that album, while he still had support from the vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo and other South African musicians that had gone on tour with him to support the album. I checked, and this was essentially the very last concert of Simon's Graceland tour.

Other than that, there were short sets by Lou Reed, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Dion, Laurie Anderson, Bruce Springsteen, Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Nile Rodgers and Chaka Khan. Apparently, Billy Joel wasn't scheduled to take part, but since he dropped in at the last minute, he did an impromptu song. I believe Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five played a song, but it got cut from the bootleg I found. I think you can hear him for about ten seconds at the end of the Nile Rodgers medley, introducing Chaka Khan. Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band backed most of the musical stars who didn't bring their own bands, like Bruce Springsteen. Debbie Harry and Grace Jones were there, but they only introduced Lou Reed and then helped sing backing vocals to "Walk on the Wild Side."

One special moment was that Dion was backed by some major star power on his song "A Teenager in Love." His backing vocalists were Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed! You can see how that looked from the album cover. That's a sign of how much of a musical influence he was on all of them, since he came from an earlier generation.

There were some celebrity appearances as well. Springsteen was introduced by New York baseball stars Ron Darling and Don Mattingly. Whoopi Goldberg introduced Nile Rodgers. She spoke for longer, but I cut out some of it because she was just stalling for time while the band got ready, as she admitted, and it showed. Comedian Bill Cosby gave a speech prior to introducing Ruben Blades. But I cut out all of it except for a few words introducing Blades, since I can't stand to hear him due to his later revealed history of rape. Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon and Chevy Chase introduced James Taylor.

As far as I know, everything here remains unreleased. But the bootleg I found has soundboard quality.

This album is three hours and 13 minutes long.

01 The Boy in the Bubble (Paul Simon)
02 Gumboots (Paul Simon)
03 Whispering Bells (Paul Simon)
04 talk (Paul Simon)
05 Crazy Love, Vol. II (Paul Simon)
06 I Know What I Know (Paul Simon)
07 talk (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
08 Treat Her Right (Paul Shaffer & the World's Most Dangerous Band)
09 talk (Paul Shaffer, Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
10 Tell It to Your Heart (Lou Reed)
11 talk (Lou Reed)
12 New Sensations (Lou Reed)
13 Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed with Debbie Harry & Grace Jones)
14 talk (Lou Reed)
15 The Wanderer (Dion)
16 Runaround Sue (Dion)
17 talk (Dion)
18 A Teenager in Love (Dion with Simon, Springsteen, Joel, Reed, Taylor & Blades)
19 talk (Paul Simon)
20 Yinhle Lentombi (Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
21 Homeless (Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
22 Graceland (Paul Simon)
23 talk (Paul Simon)
24 You Can Call Me Al (Paul Simon)
25 talk (Paul Simon)
26 talk (Paul Simon)
27 Babydoll (Laurie Anderson)
28 Let x = x (Laurie Anderson)
29 talk (Paul Simon, Ron Darling & Don Mattingly)
30 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
31 Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)
32 talk (Bruce Springsteen)
33 Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen with Paul Simon & Billy Joel)
34 Cuentas del Alma (Ruben Blades)
35 talk (Ruben Blades)
36 Muevete (Ruben Blades)
37 talk (Paul Simon, Lorne Michaels, Kevin Nealon & Chevy Chase)
38 Looking for Love on Broadway (James Taylor)
39 Carolina in My Mind (James Taylor)
40 That Lonesome Road (James Taylor)
41 talk (Whoopi Goldberg)
42 talk (Nile Rodgers)
43 We Are Family - Le Freak - Good Times (Nile Rodgers)
44 I Feel for You (Chaka Khan with Nile Rodgers)
45 talk (Paul Simon)
46 New York State of Mind (Billy Joel)
47 Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon)
48 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
49 Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Drums (Paul Simon with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
50 talk (Everybody)
51 Rock and Roll Music (Bruce Springsteen & Everybody)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/jKCnMBjU

alternate

https://bestfile.io/en/uLq5HEnWr1SO0XO/file

The cover photo was taken at this exact concert. It shows the moment Dion was backed by an impressive bunch of stars on the song "A Teenager in Love." From left to right, that's Ruben Blades, James Taylor, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, and Dion. Dion had been further over to the left by about ten feet. In fact, I took him from a different photo taken in the same sequence. Then I used Photoshop to move him close to Springsteen.

Paul Simon - VH-1 Storytellers, New York City, 10-20-1997

Here we go with another episode of "VH-1 Storytellers." This time, Paul Simon is featured.

This concert took place just prior to the release of his 1997 album "Songs from The Capeman." It would be released one month later. These were the songs Simon wrote for a Broadway play he conceived called "The Capeman." That would open in January 1998. However, the play was poorly received and closed only two months later. 

Simon planned to tour to support the album. But when the play flopped, and his album sold poorly, he cancelled plans for the tour. He ended up doing no full concerts in 1997 or 1998 except for this one. It came at an interesting time, just before Simon realized the album and play would do poorly. So, by chance, these contain almost the only versions of some songs he would ever perform in concert. He did four songs here from the "Capeman" album, complete with some other vocalists on the record and in the play: "Adios Hermanos," "Bernadette," "The Vampires," and "Trailways Bus." When he did go on his next tour in 1999, the only song from the album to be included was "Trailways Bus." The other three were only ever performed again in two 2009 concerts supporting a revised (and drastically altered and shortened) version of the play.

As I've mentioned with other albums in this series, the shows almost always started out in the middle of the first song. This episode was doubly annoying. First, it started with only the tail end of "Mrs. Robinson." Then, it included some amusing false starts of "The Boxer," but not the song itself! So I wanted to fill in those versions. 

It was hard finding the rest of "Mrs. Robinson" though, because it was done in a solo acoustic format. Luckily, I found one performance from 1999. Simon sang the song in the middle of the baseball field at Yankee Stadium during "Joe DiMaggio Day," no doubt due to the song's lyric "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, the nation turns its lonely eyes to you." He happened to be accompanied only by his acoustic guitar playing, which worked great for me. But unfortunately one of the songs three verses (and the following chorus) wasn't included. I used the MSVEP audio editing program to get rid of the crowd noise entirely, since 50,000 plus cheering fans in a stadium sound very different then the couple hundred fans in the Storytellers concert. I put in some cheering from elsewhere in the Storytellers concert to help it fit in.

As for "The Boxer," I had to resort to using a version from his 1990 tour, since that more closely represented his version in the false starts. I also got rid of song of the cheering for that that didn't match.

Simon is one of those artists who doesn't talk much between songs in his concert, so it's nice to hear him talk extensively here. I believe everything from this concert remains officially unreleased.

This album is 50 minutes long.

01 Mrs. Robinson [Edit] (Paul Simon)
02 The Boxer [False Start] (Paul Simon)
03 The Boxer (Paul Simon)
04 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)
05 talk (Paul Simon)
06 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Paul Simon)
07 talk (Paul Simon)
08 Graceland (Paul Simon)
09 talk (Paul Simon)
10 Adios Hermanos (Paul Simon)
11 talk (Paul Simon)
12 Bernadette (Paul Simon with Marc Anthony)
13 talk (Paul Simon)
14 The Vampires (Paul Simon with Marc Anthony)
15 talk (Paul Simon)
16 Trailways Bus (Paul Simon with Sara Ramirez)
17 Slip Slidin' Away (Paul Simon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17167810/PALSMN1997StrytllrsNwYrkC__10-20-1997_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ydcWqpXE

The cover photo is from a concert in The Woodlands, Texas, in 1999. On September 26, 2004, I slightly updated it with some AI enhancement using the program Krea AI.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, 3-29-2001

Here's something that any fan of the Beach Boys will certainly enjoy. I don't know much about the backstory for this one (maybe someone else can explain?) - I'm guessing it was an anniversary of some sort. But in 2001, a bunch of great musicians got together to celebrate the music of Brian Wilson. That's basically the same thing as celebrating the music of the Beach Boys, since I think all but one of the songs performed here was originally recorded and released by the Beach Boys. (The lone exception, "Love and Mercy," is from Wilson's more hit and miss solo career.) 

In my opinion, most of these kinds of tribute concerts have more dud performances than good ones. But this one is solid pretty much all the way through. It's hard to go wrong with Beach Boys songs, for starters. But also, a lot of big names took part, such as Paul Simon, Elton John, Billy Joel, Heart, David Crosby, Aimee Mann, and many more, and it's hard to go wrong with them as well. Plus, Brian Wilson himself joined in at the end.

Most or all of the performances are unique, meaning these particular artists never did these songs before, and probably not since. They were special versions just for this show.

This concert has never been released in any kind of audio format, as far as I know. But the songs here all come from a DVD that has been released. I edited it down somewhat to remove some speeches praising Wilson. I wanted to keep it more focused on the music. (One section I removed was a talk by Beatles producer George Martin about the song "Good Vibrations.")  However, I did keep all the talking that directly preceded or followed each song that was relevant.

Unfortunately, there was a lot more to this concert that was not included on the DVD, and I can't find it anywhere else. For instance, Wilson sang lead or co-lead on five songs at the end of this album. But in the concert, he sang a few more: "Lay Down Burden," "Do It Again," "Caroline, No," and "Surfin' U.S.A." If anyone has more than I do, please let me know so I can add it in.

This album is an hour and 12 minutes long.

01 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
02 Our Prayer (Boys Choir of Harlem)
03 California Girls - Help Me, Rhonda (Ricky Martin)
04 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
05 Surfer Girl (Paul Simon)
06 Surf City (Go-Go's)
07 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
08 In My Room (David Crosby, Carly Simon & Jimmy Webb)
09 talk (David Crosby)
10 The Warmth of the Sun (Vince Gill)
11 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
12 I Get Around (Evan & Jaron)
13 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
14 God Only Knows (Elton John)
15 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
16 I Just Wasn't Made for These Times (Aimee Mann & Michael Penn)
17 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Billy Joel)
18 Don't Worry Baby (Billy Joel)
19 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
20 Sail On Sailor (Darius Rucker & Matthew Sweet)
21 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Chynna Phillips)
22 You're So Good to Me (Wilson Phillips)
23 talk (George Martin)
24 Good Vibrations (Heart)
25 talk (Chazz Palminteri)
26 Surf's Up (David Crosby, Vince Gill & Jimmy Webb)
27 talk (Chazz Palminteri & Brian Wilson)
28 Heroes and Villains (Brian Wilson)
29 talk (Elton John)
30 Wouldn't It Be Nice (Elton John & Brian Wilson)
31 talk (Brian Wilson)
32 Barbara Ann (Brian Wilson & Everyone)
33 Fun, Fun, Fun (Brian Wilson & Everyone)
34 talk (Brian Wilson)
35 Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson with the Boys Choir of Harlem)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16584567/VA-_2001AllStrTrbtetBrnWlsnRdoCtyMsicHllNwYrkC__3-29-2001_atse.zip.html

I have to admit, the cover is a bit fakey. I found a photo of Elton John, Billy Joel, and Paul Simon sharing the same microphone during a finale at this concert. But since it's a Brian Wilson tribute and he was there, I wanted him on the cover too. So I Photoshopped him in, using a photo that also comes from the finale at this concert. They were on stage together, just not this close. The lighting is pretty accurate. For instance, there's a shadow falling on his body that actually fell on someone else standing there.

No Nukes Concerts, Madison Square Garden, New York City, 9-23-1979: Stephen Bishop, Poco, Paul Simon, and Others

This is the fifteenth album I'm posting for the 1979 No Nukes concert. (I only have one more to go after this, and that's a set from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I'm waiting for someone to help so I can post that one, as I explained elsewhere.) This one is rather different, because it's a compilation of all the musical artists who played short sets of three songs or less.

The biggest star here undoubtedly has to be Paul Simon. He was a surprise, last-minute addition. I'm guessing he didn't have a band to play with at the time, since he didn't play any other concerts in 1979, so he just sang three songs while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar.

At the time of this concert, he hadn't released a studio album in a surprisingly long time. "Still Crazy After All These Years" came out in 1975.  However, he did release a single in 1977, "Slip Slidin' Away," and it was a big hit. It's included here.

Another better known artist here is Stephen Bishop, who had a few hits in the 1970s and early 1980s. His biggest hit was "On and On" in 1977, and he played that here.

Here's his Wikipedia page:

Stephen Bishop (singer) - Wikipedia

Poco is another relatively well known band. They had many hits in the 1970s and 80s, though most of them only reached the lower portions of the charts. Their latest album at the time of this concert was "Legend," released in 1978. It contained probably the two biggest hits of their career, "Crazy Love" and "Heart of the Night." Both of those songs are included here.

Here's their Wikipedia page:

Poco (band) - Wikipedia

Raydio also had a couple of big hits in the 1970s: "Jack and Jill" and "You Can't Change That." Their song included here, "You Can't Change That," was in the U.S. Top Ten just a few months before this concert. Although Raydio isn't that well known today, their lead singer Ray Parker Jr. would go on to greater fame as the author and singer of the 1984 Number One hit "Ghostbusters," from the movie of the same name. (By the way, note "Ray" in the name "Raydio.")

Here's their Wikipedia page:

Raydio - Wikipedia

Holly Near is a singer-songwriter who is still going as I write this in 2024. She never came close to having a hit, but she found her niche as a folk singer who focused on political issues. Most notably, she publicly identified herself as lesbian in the mid-1970s, at a time when that was risky for music careers, and often tackled issues of feminism and gender identity in her songs. 

Here's her Wikipedia page:

Holly Near - Wikipedia

The duo of Joy Ryder and Avis Davis is so obscure that they don't have a Wikipedia page. That's not surprising, because they only ever released one single together, in 1979. As you can tell from the song title, the A-side, "No More Nukes," couldn't have been more appropriate to the No Nukes concerts. No doubt that's why they were included, despite their obscurity. 

All of the songs here were performed on September 23, 1979. Most of them were from the evening show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. However, the songs by Holly Near and the duo of Joy Ryder and Avis Davis were performed at the much larger daytime concert at Battery Park, also in New York City.

There were two songs here that made the official No Nukes album: "Heart of the Night" by Poco and "You Can't Change That" by Raydio. I'm very grateful, because this is the only occasion in this series of albums where I took something from the official albums, since those two songs weren't available in worthy sound quality otherwise.

It's quite possible that some of these artists played more songs. For instance, I wouldn't have even known Raydio performed at all if their song hadn't been included on the official album, since they didn't show up on any bootleg recordings. 

However, Poco is a unique case, because that's the only one where I had additional songs from an audience bootleg, in addition to the soundboard sourced songs I've put here. The other songs they played were: "A Right Along," "Twenty Years," "Legend," and "A Good Feelin' to Know." Probably those, plus the three here, made up their entire set. However, I didn't include those ones I just mentioned due to the poor sound quality of the audience boot. As mentioned above, "Heart of the Night" is from the official album, so it sounds the best. 

But I did include two songs from the audience boot: "Crazy Love" and "Rose of Cimarron." That's because those two were acoustic or semi-acoustic in nature, so they sounded markedly better than the other full-band songs. So those two songs sound worse than all the other songs here. Even so, I felt they sounded good enough to merit inclusion. 

This album is a pretty mixed bag, consisting of a few songs here and there from musical acts that had little to do with each other. But even if you don't like all of them, you can choose just to keep the ones you do like. I'd be surprised if most people wouldn't at least like the Paul Simon songs.

This album is 55 minutes long.

01 talk (Stephen Bishop)
02 On and On (Stephen Bishop)
03 talk (Stephen Bishop)
04 Somewhere in Between (Stephen Bishop)
05 Singing for Our Lives (Holly Near)
06 Crazy Love (Poco)
07 Rose of Cimarron (Poco)
08 Heart of the Night (Poco)
09 You Can't Change That (Raydio)
10 Valentine's Day (Joy Ryder & Avis Davis)
11 No More Nukes (Joy Ryder & Avis Davis)
12 talk (Paul Simon)
13 Slip Slidin' Away (Paul Simon)
14 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)
15 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17362822/VA-NONUKS1979MdisnSqurGrdnNwYrkC__9-23-1979PlSmonPcoStphnBshpEtcatse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/RnJ6HZ8K

I couldn't find any photos from the concerts of any of the musical acts here. I could have gone with a generic late 1970s Paul Simon photo, or something like that. But instead I decided to have a picture that mainly showed the crowd. There are three people on stage in silhouette. I believe they are, from left to right: Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, and Bonnie Raitt.

Simon & Garfunkel - BC Place Stadium, Vancouver, Canada, 8-22-1983

There are some no-brainer, must-have concert bootlegs that I've never gotten around to posting for one reason or another. This is one of them.

After breaking up in 1970, Simon and Garfunkel did a bunch of reunion tours, but never made much new music together. The closest they got was in 1981 to 1983, when they released "The Concert in Central Park" live album, then began recording a new studio album, to be titled "Think Too Much." I've already posted my version of what that would have sounded like, here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2021/12/simon-garfunkel-think-too-much-various.html

But in addition to some studio recordings that ultimately never got released, they also toured some before breaking up again. This is clearly the best bootleg recording from that tour, a soundboard. 

The set list is fairly similar to "The Concert in Central Park" album, recorded in 1981, especially by having Garfunkel sing harmonies on a bunch of Paul Simon solo hits from the 1970s. But they also did three songs from the planned new album: "Cars Are Cars," "Think Too Much," and "The Late, Great Johnny Ace." Plus, they varied up the set list in other ways, for instance with the covers "I Only Have Eyes for You" and "One Summer Night." So it's definitely worth having both, in my opinion. This also is about half an hour longer, so it just has more songs in general.

This album is an hour and 43 minutes long.

01 Cecilia - Mrs. Robinson (Simon & Garfunkel)
02 America (Simon & Garfunkel)
03 My Little Town (Simon & Garfunkel)
04 Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Simon & Garfunkel)
05 Scarborough Fair (Simon & Garfunkel)
06 Cars Are Cars (Simon & Garfunkel)
07 I Only Have Eyes for You (Simon & Garfunkel)
08 Homeward Bound (Simon & Garfunkel)
09 Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (Simon & Garfunkel)
10 Late in the Evening (Simon & Garfunkel)
11 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
12 The Late Great Johnny Ace (Simon & Garfunkel)
13 El Condor Pasa [If I Could] (Simon & Garfunkel)
14 Think Too Much (Simon & Garfunkel)
15 Still Crazy After All These Years (Simon & Garfunkel)
16 Kodachrome - Maybellene (Simon & Garfunkel)
17 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
18 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
19 Slip Slidin' Away (Simon & Garfunkel)
20 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
21 The 59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy] (Simon & Garfunkel)
22 Old Friends (Simon & Garfunkel)
23 Wake Up Little Susie (Simon & Garfunkel)
24 One Summer Night (Simon & Garfunkel)
25 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
26 Late in the Evening [Reprise] (Simon & Garfunkel)
27 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/WGogkFTs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/nxHotHUyVT2eMps/file

I looked for photos from this exact concert, and found two, both of them black and white. The other one only showed Simon, so I disregarded that one. This one is weird. I have no idea what was happening when this was taken. Their faces actually were even closer, with Garfunkel's nose overlapping Simon's a little bit, but that seemed even stranger, so I used Photoshop to move Garfunkel back a bit. I also used the Palette program to colorize it.

For the text at the top, I found an artistic rendering of their name, and stretched it to fit the space. Then I found a nice paisley pattern and used that to add some color and character to the letters.

Simon & Garfunkel - Millett Hall, Miami University, Oxford, OH, 11-9-1969

This is one of Simon and Garfunkel's most bootlegged concerts, due to its excellent sound quality. I recently downloaded a version that was posted on the Internet this year that has even better sound quality. This now sounds as good as an official album from the 1960s.

In late 1969, Simon and Garfunkel went on tour for the first time in about a year, despite the fact that they were still putting the finishing touches on their new album "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which would be released in January 1970. Most or all of the short tour was professionally recorded for a possible live album that never came to pass, as well as for video footage meant for a TV special broadcast at the end of November. Decades later, an archival live album of highlights of this tour was released called "Live 1969." I prefer this bootleg over that album. "Live 1969" is a seemingly random selection of songs in seemingly random order, with band performances mixed with acoustic ones, and no banter between songs. Whereas this is longer, and a compete show, with the songs in order and all the banter included.

Speaking of the songs being in order, versions of this bootleg have been around for decades, but I believe the song order has been messed up all that time. In short, Simon and Garfunkel performed an acoustic set and a set with a full band. All versions of this bootleg that I've seen have the full band set first, followed by the acoustic set. But it appears to have been the opposite. It's usually done the other way for concerts in general, and that's how it was done for the other shows on the tour. I even found a review of the concert from the night before the states as much. Here's an excerpt from the article:

"During the first half of the show, there was little informal bantering between performers and audience. However, the numbers , which included 'Homeward Bound, ' 'America,' 'For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her.' and 'Scarborough Fair,' were warmly received.  For most of the second half, Simon and Garfunkel performed with the backup group that records with them. 'Mrs. Robinson,' the first number after the intermission, was ruined by a too-loud background and an audible whistle in the equipment."  

Other details in the article make clear the two sets should be released. For instance, the full band set included an encore of "Bye Bye Love" for both nights.

Further research revealed that the correct date of the concert was November 9th, not November 11th, as it has been on all versions of this bootleg up until now. There are mentions of the concert being on the 9th written in that time period. So I made that correction too.

Some versions of this bootleg contain two extra songs compared to other versions: "Overs" and "A Most Peculiar Man." Those do seem to fit with the show. For instance, they have the same stellar sound quality. But they seem to have been out of order. So I had to use some guesswork to figure out where to place them. The last song of the first set not including these two, "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her," ends with a regular amount of applause. But "A Most Peculiar Man" ends with a rapturous amount of applause (which gets suddenly cut off). That wouldn't make much sense, since it's not one of the duo's most favorite songs. But it would make sense if that was the end of the set and they left the stage. 

So I'm pretty sure that song ended the first set and I have the songs in their correct spots. But if anyone knows of the correct, complete set list for the show, please let me know. It's also possible that other songs were played that didn't get bootlegged. For instance, the review of the show from the night before that I quoted above mentioned two more encores after "Bye Bye Love," which is not the case here.

This show was rather unusual in that four songs from the still unreleased "Bridge Over Troubled Water" album were played, as well as an original, "Cuba Si, Nixon No," that never got released, plus a cover of a relatively obscure song, "That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine." (One song on that album, "The Boxer," had been a big hit as a single already.) So the audience was in for some surprises. The biggest was the song "Bridge Over Troubled Water." This future classic was only played in concert for the first time a week earlier. The audience was totally amazed, as you can tell from the lengthy applause when the song ended.

This concert is an hour and ten minutes long. I cut out a little bit of dead air between songs, but not much, maybe a minute or two in total. 

As an aside, the band members were all part of the famous "Wrecking Crew" that played on the recordings of hundreds of hits in the 1960s and 70s, including drummer Hal Blaine.

01 Homeward Bound (Simon & Garfunkel)
02 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
03 At the Zoo (Simon & Garfunkel)
04 America (Simon & Garfunkel)
05 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
06 Song for the Asking (Simon & Garfunkel)
07 A Poem on the Underground Wall (Simon & Garfunkel)
08 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
09 For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her (Simon & Garfunkel)
10 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
11 Overs (Simon & Garfunkel)
12 A Most Peculiar Man (Simon & Garfunkel)
13 Mrs. Robinson (Simon & Garfunkel)
14 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
15 Fakin' It (Simon & Garfunkel)
16 The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)
17 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
18 So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright (Simon & Garfunkel)
19 Why Don’t You Write Me (Simon & Garfunkel)
20 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
21 That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine (Simon & Garfunkel)
22 Cuba Si, Nixon No (Simon & Garfunkel)
23 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel)
24 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)
25 Bye Bye Love (Simon & Garfunkel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15176023/SimnandG_1969_MillettHllMiamiUnversityOxfrdOH__11-9-1969_atse.zip.html

Good color photos of Simon and Garfunkel in concert in the 1960s are surprisingly hard to find. The problem with the one I chose for the cover is that I have no idea where or when it's from. However, I saw some black and white photos from the tour, and they looked basically like that. (Simon would grow his hair longer shortly thereafter, and grow a mustache for a little while too.)

Simon & Garfunkel - Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel, Granada TV Studios, Manchester, Britain, 3-17-1967

Not that long ago (as I write this in May 2022), I posted some albums of Simon and Garfunkel performing for the BBC and other radio or TV shows in 1965 and 1966. Next, we come to 1967. In my opinion, this is the best bootleg from that year. 

Granada TV, one of the few British TV stations at the time, put on an hour-long special showcasing the duo in early 1967. It was simply called "Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel." Even though the duo was extremely popular in the 1960s and beyond, selling tens of millions of albums, they didn't actually get on TV or the radio that much, other than short appearances that typically featured the same few songs over and over again. What's great about this is that it's professionally recorded for TV, so it sounds great, and it's nearly an hour long (53 minutes), so they were able to dig deeper into their musical bag of tricks.

It's basically just a concert broadcast on TV, though recorded in a studio before a small audience. As a result, there's no host at all. But Simon and/or Garfunkel did make some interesting comments between most of the songs.

All the songs only featured Simon and Garfunkel on vocals and Simon on an acoustic guitar. However, there's an interesting version of the song "7 O'Clock News - Silent Night." On the album version, the "7 O'Clock News" was a radio news broadcast with bad new contrasting with the Christmas hymn. But since this was a British TV show, there apparently was some person who read a recent British news broadcast, making it very different from the album version.

Oh, by the way, if you want to see as well as hear this, just search for it on YouTube. However, note that it's only in black and white, since most British TV shows didn't start broadcasting in color until about 1969.

01 He Was My Brother (Simon & Garfunkel)
02 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
03 Leaves That Are Green (Simon & Garfunkel)
04 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
05 A Most Peculiar Man (Simon & Garfunkel)
06 Homeward Bound (Simon & Garfunkel)
07 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
08 For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her (Simon & Garfunkel)
09 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
10 The Dangling Conversation (Simon & Garfunkel)
11 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
12 The 59th Street Bridge Song [Feelin' Groovy] (Simon & Garfunkel)
13 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
14 Richard Cory (Simon & Garfunkel)
15 7 O'Clock News - Silent Night (Simon & Garfunkel)
16 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Simon & Garfunkel)
17 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
18 At the Zoo (Simon & Garfunkel)
19 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
20 Cloudy (Simon & Garfunkel)
21 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
22 Benedictus (Simon & Garfunkel)
23 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
24 Blessed (Simon & Garfunkel)
25 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
26 A Poem on the Underground Wall (Simon & Garfunkel)
27 I Am a Rock (Simon & Garfunkel)
28 Anji (Simon & Garfunkel)
29 The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700332/SIMNNGRFNKL1967_PSnAGGrandaTVStdiosManchstrBrtin__3-17-1967_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows Simon and Garfunkel when they were on the Andy Williams TV show in early 1968. I don't remember where I got the fancy text at the top, but I think it's a screenshot taken from another TV show.

Simon & Garfunkel - BBC Sessions (1965)

The vast majority of artists who performed BBC in the 1960s and 1970s were British, since BBC stands for "British Broadcasting Corporation," after all. But occasionally, artists from the US or other countries would be in Britain enough for some BBC sessions of their own. Simon and Garfunkel have enough material here for a BBC album, though just barely. 

In truth, only half of this features both Simon and Garfunkel, and that's from a single session that took place in July 1965. The first half features a session with only Paul Simon. Although American, he had been living in England for most of the previous two years, figuring he had a better chance of making it as a folk musician there than in his home country. He developed enough connections to have a single BBC session in January 1965. 

It was an odd one though. It was actually recorded for a religious radio show, even though the connections between his songs and religion was tenuous at best. I believe the six songs he recorded in a single session were then played on that show for one song per show slowly over spring 1965. It helped him gain popularity and more concert bookings, since he didn't have any albums in print in Britain at the time. (Simon and Garfunkel's first album "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." was released in late 1964, but only in the U.S.)

At the time, the partnership of Simon and Garfunkel was also tenuous, because Garfunkel lived in New York City while Simon lived in England. But every now and then, Simon would briefly visit the U.S. or Garfunkel would visit England, and they might play some concerts as a duo or do some recording in the studio. The BBC session in July 1965 was one such time when Garfunkel briefly came to England. At that time, they were still relative unknowns. They would only hit the big time in September 1965, when "The Sound of Silence" would be released as a single with a folk-rock arrangement and shoot to number one in the U.S. by the end of the year. At that point, Simon would move back to the U.S., and they would stick together as a duo to exploit their success. 

Unfortunately, it seems they didn't do any more BBC sessions aside from the one in July 1965. Perhaps by the next time they were both in Britain, they had become so famous that they felt they didn't need that exposure. 

Surprisingly, none of the performances here have been officially released. I'm particularly surprised that "I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" has never been released, since it's a nice cover of a Tom Paxton song that it seems was never recorded by them in a studio. 

The sound quality in generally is very good, though there were a few problems. "A Most Peculiar Man" came to a sudden halt in the middle of the song. It seems Simon wasn't happy about something, and asked the recording engineer to play back the recording. If he went on to do a finished take, that hasn't been available to bootleggers. I patched in the second half of the song from the version he did on his obscure 1965 solo album "The Paul Simon Songbook." I also removed the few seconds of him talking to the engineer, since it didn't fit anymore.

"I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" has "[Edit]" in the title because it suffered the usual BBC problem of DJs talking over some of the music. The version of "Anji" here is only a fragment that's less than a minute long. I'm guessing that it faded out as the radio program ended, and that's the only recording that survived. Even though much had some talking over it. I fixed both songs the usual way, by using the audio editing program X-Minus to wipe the talking.

Also, for some reason, to my ears, the sound quality of "A Church Is Burning" doesn't sound as good as the rest. But it's still pretty decent, just a bit more muffled.

This album is only 34 minutes long. Simon and Garfunkel did go on to play on other radio and TV shows. But those generally fell into two categories. One, they had short appearances where they tended to play the same famous songs that are probably overplayed enough already. The other are some longer appearances, with more song variety and banter between songs. I plan on posting a couple of the best such shows in full later on.

As an aside, while putting this album together, I also found a few other rare songs that I'd previously missed. So I've added those to the two "Rarities" albums I previously made. I also upgraded the volume balance between songs and mp3 tags for those.

01 I Am a Rock (Paul Simon)
02 Bleecker Street (Paul Simon)
03 talk (Paul Simon)
04 Kathy's Song (Paul Simon)
05 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)
06 talk (Paul Simon)
07 A Most Peculiar Man [Edit] (Paul Simon)
08 April Come She Will (Paul Simon)
09 I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound [Edit] (Simon & Garfunkel)
10 Sparrow (Simon & Garfunkel)
11 The Side of a Hill (Simon & Garfunkel)
12 talk (Simon & Garfunkel)
13 I Am a Rock (Simon & Garfunkel)
14 A Church Is Burning (Simon & Garfunkel)
15 Anji [Instrumental] [Edit] (Simon & Garfunkel)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700628/SIMNNGRFNKL1965_BBSessons_atse.zip.html

Given how famous Simon and Garfunkel are, I'm surprised that I haven't been able to find many good photos of them from 1965, especially in color. So instead I found a black and white publicity photo and colorized it. This could have come from 1964 or even earlier; it's hard to tell, but they definitely were on the young side with this one.

Paul Simon - Queen's College, London, Britain, 1964

As part of my overall BBC project (check out my post about that), I took at look at what BBC sessions Simon and Garfunkel did. There's some, though barely enough for one album. However, that led me to, or reminded me of, some other interesting stuff worth posting.

I have a particular interest in very early bootleg recordings of famous musicians. Here's a special one for Paul Simon, dating all the way back to 1964. Exactly where and when this is from is a contentious issue that I will get to in a minute. But I think it's highly likely this concert took place before the first Simon and Garfunkel album was released in October 1964. Yet it seems to be a soundboard that sounds remarkably good for such an early bootleg.

As to the where and when this happened, note that most versions of this bootleg floating around the Internet claim it took place at Queens College in New York City some time in 1964. At first, that would make sense, because Simon graduated from Queens College in 1963 with a major in English. But I've seen extensive lists of all the places he played in 1964, with or without Art Garfunkel, and it looks like he didn't play in public in the US at all that year. He spent most of the year trying to start a music career in England, only occasionally coming back to the US to record or mix the first Simon and Garfunkel album, "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." By contrast, he played dozens of venues in England in 1964, and one of them was a girls' school in London called Queen's College. So I strongly suspect there was a confusion between the two places with the similar names (one with an apostrophe and one without).

There are more clues as to the place this happened. At the time, Simon was torn between pursuing a solo music career, or sharing a partnership with Garfunkel. One problem was that they weren't appreciated in the pivotal New York City folk scene. That was centered in Greenwich Village, and Simon and Garfunkel were looked down upon as coming from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Queens. By contrast, Simon found a very receptive audience when he played in England, where he was only seen as an American, which was unusual and cool for the British folk scene at the time. So he lived in England for nearly all of 1964 and 1965. But Garfunkel was still going to college in the US, and only occasionally made some visits to Simon in England. That said, they definitely wanted to play together whenever they were in the same place. So had Simon put on a concert in New York City, where Garfunkel was going to college, why would it have only been a solo show?

As for the time this concert took place, there are some clues there too. The main one is that the song list better fits the songs Simon was playing in 1964, not 1965. He had written "The Sound of Silence" and four others early enough for them to be included on the "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M." album, which was recorded in March 1964. By the start of 1965, he'd written some more classics that he certainly would have wanted to show off at any concert, like "I Am a Rock," "Kathy's Song," and "April Come She Will." (We know this because he played them at a January 1965 BBC session.) Whereas in mid-1964, he didn't have that many excellent original songs yet, so he had to rely more on covers. 

One key clue is that two of the songs he performed at this concert, "Goin' to the Zoo" and "I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound," were written by Tom Paxton. "Goin' to the Zoo" was first released in 1962, and then both songs was put on the "Ramblin' Boy" album, released in October 1964. However, it's very possible that Simon knew them already after repeatedly crossing paths with Paxton in the New York City folk scene, where Paxton was a major figure. But in any case, they were widely known songs in the folk music world that were fresh to audiences in 1964, but would have been a bit old well into 1965. (Simon also played "I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound" in a January 1965 BBC session.)

Another factor is that Simon played "Scarborough Fair" in this concert, and it is known he learned the song from folk singer Martin Carthy after moving to England. But all that really tells us is this had to have taken place at some point after early 1964, when he first moved there. 

One bootleg version I've found of this show claims it took place on May 1st, 1964, in Queen's College in London. However, that has the caveat that the date is uncertain, and I have no idea how they got that date. If I had to guess, I think it's probably a little later than that, from the summer or fall of 1964, but that's just a guess.

One problem in figuring out the date and location is that there's very little banter between songs. I'm fairly certain Simon spoke a lot more, but the taper turned the recording device off as soon as the songs ended, in order to save tape. This was common practice in those days, when tape was much more expensive. One can tell this because the applause was cut off after a couple of seconds for all but two or three of the songs. So we don't get any "It's great to be in England" type comments that could give us more clues. 

We also aren't sure if this is the full concert or if there was more at the start, although I suspect this was the whole thing. At least we know this recording has the proper end, since he commented that he wasn't going to do an encore.

Although the sound quality is really good, I edited virtually every song due to that applause problem I just mentioned. For the many songs where the applause was cut off, I patched in more applause from elsewhere in the recording to give the impression of complete applause after all the songs.

I've already posted two albums of Simon and Garfunkel rarities. I included four of the performances from this exact show on the first rarities album: "House Carpenter," "Gospel Ship," "Pretty Boy Floyd," and "Goin' to the Zoo." Those are all covers where these are the only known recordings. That said, it's definitely worth hearing the full concert and not just those four songs.

This album is 39 minutes long.

01 Scarborough Fair (Paul Simon)
02 House Carpenter (Paul Simon)
03 Gospel Ship (Paul Simon)
04 Pretty Boy Floyd (Paul Simon)
05 A Church Is Burning (Paul Simon)
06 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)
07 Leaves that Are Green (Paul Simon)
08 The Sun Is Burning (Paul Simon)
09 I Can't Help but Wonder Where I'm Bound (Paul Simon)
10 talk (Paul Simon)
11 Goin' to the Zoo (Paul Simon)
12 He Was My Brother (Paul Simon)
13 talk (Paul Simon)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700334/SIMNNGRFNKL1964_QuensCollgeLondnBritin__1964_atse.zip.html

I'm pleased as punch at the cover art, which I feel evokes the feeling of listening to Simon in a small club very early in his career. It's a photo of Simon performing at the Jacquard Club in Norwich, England, in August 1965. Even at that relatively late date, Simon was a relative unknown, playing small clubs all over England. But one month later, a version of "The Sound of Silence" with full band instrumentation was released in the US and started climbing the charts, eventually hitting number one. Simon quickly moved back the US, reunited with Garfunkel, and continued to have massive success. So this photo could have just as easily been taken at any other English club in 1964 or 1965. Other photos from the same series show he was playing in a small basement to about 60 people (according to an article that goes with the photos). I've included one here so you can see what I mean.

Unfortunately, the photo was in black and white. So I used the Pixbim program to colorize it.