PAUL SIMON : PAUL SIMON'S CONCERT IN THE PARK

 

Disc One (55:52)

  1. The Obvious Child
  2. The Boy in the Bubble
  3. She Moves On
  4. Kodachrome
  5. Born at the Right Time
  6. Train in the Distance
  7. Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
  8. I Know What I Know
  9. The Cool, Cool River
  10. Bridge over Troubled Water
  11. Proof

Disc Two (61:50)

  1. The Coast
  2. Graceland
  3. You Can Call Me Al
  4. Still Crazy After All These Years
  5. Loves Me Like a Rock
  6. Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
  7. Hearts and Bones
  8. Late in the Evening
  9. America
  10. The Boxer
  11. Cecilia
  12. The Sound of Silence

Label : Warner Bros.

Release Year : 1991

Recording Date : August 15, 1991

Venue : Central Park, New York City, New York, USA

Review (AllMusic) : Ten years after playing a free concert in New York's Central Park with Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon returned, backed by the New York session musicians and the native musicians from South Africa and Brazil who had enlivened his solo work. The show was filmed and recorded, and the audio release was a 23-track double-disc set running nearly two hours. Half the selections came from his Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints albums, but unlike the Graceland Tour of 1987, the Born at the Right Time Tour of 1991 made room for Simon's earlier solo work as well as a few Simon & Garfunkel songs. Simon made such stylistically various material work together by front-loading the set with the newer stuff and rearranging some of the older solo stuff, so that "Kodachrome," for example, was refitted with a guitar line courtesy of Graceland player Ray Phiri. (Wisely, except for a becalmed Africanization of "Cecilia," Simon didn't monkey with the S&G songs, most of which came at the end of the set.) But Simon also toned down the Brazilian percussion that had dominated the Saints material and sang it more convincingly, so that "Born at the Right Time," for example, was far more effective than it had been in its studio version. On the whole, then, Concert in the Park managed to be an enjoyable and surprisingly cohesive career summary.