Live From New York City, 1967

Review

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were the apotheosis of the '60s folk revival, bringing the music to the mainstream via Top 40 radio and network TV. This live set was recorded before a rapt audience at New York's Lincoln Center in January of 1967, just as their Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme album was carrying them to superstardom, and there's a palpable pre-Woodstock/Altamont sense of boundless possibilities in these performances. Carried by just their bittersweet, magnificently interlocking voices and Simon's acoustic guitar, the duo showcases its already impressive slate of hits ("Homeward Bound," "I Am a Rock," "The Sounds of Silence") and its stylistic diversity that was already confident enough to encompass breezy pop ("The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"), madrigal influences ("Benedictus"), and the introspective impressionism of "A Hazy Shade of Winter." Simon takes a jazz-folk solo instrumental turn on Davey Graham's "Anji," while Garfunkel showcases his angelic pipes on "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her." It's a remarkably crisp live as well, one whose digital remastering was overseen--but not artistically tweaked--by the musicians and their original engineer Roy Halee, ensuring the performance remains as true as the cold yet invitingly warm evening on which it was recorded. Their subsequent albums Bookends and Bridge over Troubled Water may have expanded their creative instincts and their fame, but, like the Beatles, their partnership eerily paralleled the decade's demise, its optimism and promise imploding in a swirl of cynicism and ego. Those facts make this find from the vaults all the more compelling. --Jerry McCulley --.com