Ah...when I was young...
Thanks, Jack

Yes ....very nice . Not Buddy Guy, Not Stevie Ray Vaughn, Not Bo Diddly, Pine Top Perkins, Leon Redbone Et al. but very classy and quality. Now to get Sam, Rand to have a Clue!!!!

No Chance.............

Thanks Bo Jack. nice to see somebody who appreciates quality music.

BOBO

One of the few true greats of the generation.

In the summer of '79 I saw Paul Simon at the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, Israel. The Mann seats about 2500. I was 29 months into a 30 month deployment as an Marine Embassy Guard, and was pretty homesick.

Towards the end of the evening, Simon sang the song "America." Spontaneously, out of a crowd of 2500, about 700-1000 American flags were produced, and were waved for the duration of the song.

I was there with my girlfriend, now my wife of 28 years. We recall it as one of our "Perfect Moments" Spaulding Gray (rest his soul) referred to.

Was driving home today gloating about a wonderful score of 24 healthy and robust Crocomisia "Lucifer" when it came on....

It still makes the hair stand up on the back my neck....

That song is the opposite of most songs - it seems to be getting more relevant as the decades go by. It sounds like it was meant to arrive now more than when he wrote it.

I've seen Paul Simon twice and Simon and Garfunkel once, and something happened during a Paul Simon concert that never happened to me before, and I've seen some greats.

At some point I always start thinking of getting out of there. I have that feeling of, "Okay, it's been a tremendous evening - let's go home." Maybe on some of the shorter ones, I wish it could go on a little longer, but not that often. I'm really into the encores, sometimes, but let's wrap it up. We're done here.

Anyway, this one time when Paul Simon had been cooking away for a couple of hours, I crossed into a state of bliss where I felt I could just stay and listen all night. I even thought, "Just go ahead and sing everything. Do every song you ever wrote, or ever even heard of, and then stop and write some more songs and do those too."

It was a weird feeling knowing he couldn't wear us out. He was so good, I wanted the concert to go on forever.

Okay, I've been obsessing about this video, and there is one really trippy thing that happens. Let me point out some little, petty things, then get to the big payoff at the end.

First, I think the musicians out there know that the A string is out of tune. Nothing too serious, but if you were in the booth, you'd say, "Uhh, Paul, let's try it again, but could you tune the A string first?"

Second, I love it when he hits the cool-sounding sitar fret buzz, right after "weary to my bones" because you can see him react. There's a flicker in his eyes and a slight micro-second of reaction. This is live and these are the moments, that make playing live fun. It doesn't hurt a bit, in fact it sounds cool, but he was not planning to do that. I love those moments.

Finally, sitting in recording sessions for hundreds of hours, as I have done, you occasionally get the moments of elevated honesty. Incidentally, this is what makes John Lennon so awesome. No matter if he's playing a pop hit live or just a demo in his apartment, he seems to be incapable of anything but total, soul-baring honesty.

In this one, Paul Simon is doing Hall of Fame vocals throughout, no question, including some breathtaking moments, but when he says, "I can't help but wonder what's gone wrong, " he is - at that precise moment - wondering what's gone wrong. I think because the line repeats, he can forget about concentrating on the lyrics for a second and really just reflect. That's right from the heart. I love that.

Okay, here's the payoff observation that I've probably oversold, but it is classic with this video. Paul Simon is playing along and you don't see any spotlights. Then he says his soul rose unexpectedly, and just then you see a spotlight above his head like an orb. Then there's this weird beam of light from the other light. Check it out. Doesn't the light look like his soul rising above his head?

And that, my friends, is one trippy video accident.

Ahhh, but its alright, its alright, it really is this song-thanks from flatback