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Ell
Jul-10-2008, 23:08 GMT
United Kingdom


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One of my memories of the Royal Albert Hall Graceland concerts was when a fan shouted from the audience `Say a few words`. Paul kindly repeated his response from `Live Rhymin` word for word - `Well lets hope we`reâ?¦lets hope that we continue to live`.
The only problem was that there was no rapturous applause as there was on the album.
Perhaps there were fewer Paul Simon fans there than Graceland fans and Nobody knew what he was talking about.
All a bit embarrassing but interesting that he would do something like that.

Ell
Jul-10-2008, 23:26 GMT
United Kingdom


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Apologies for going off the topic a bit....impulse.

Scaaty
Jul-10-2008, 23:37 GMT
Ireland


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"Songs from Surprise are unknown to the common concertgoer and will remain unknown forever. Simply because Surprise has not gotten much radio airplay and was not a commercial success"... well isn´t that the idea of going on tour so that the fans who may not have been exposed to the new songs then hear them and should be interested to hear more.
After all radio play is just about fashion .. look at leonard cohen who is beloved by the late night shows now but 10 years ago noone cared about him

matthew
Jul-10-2008, 23:58 GMT
United Kingdom


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In the UK, Father & Daughter received an enormous amount of airplay when it was released in 2006 as a single. I know it appeared earlier on the Wild Thornberry´s soundtrack but people know it from the 2006 release and because Paul played it on several TV shows and the BBC played it constantly for most of the summer. I even heard it being piped into the supermarket, etc.

At the Liverpool concert it received a big cheer when he played the first few bars and many people were singing along - so I cannot agree that it didn´t get much airplay or will remain unknown for ever.

I also cannot agree that Surprise was not a commercial success. It entered the UK album charts at number 4 and stayed there for two weeks. Then it remained in the album charts for another three months - that could not have happened without a lot of people buying it.

There are a lot of negative comments above - but to me Paul played a great range of songs Old and new. He cannot play everyone´s favourites because then he´d be on stage for 4 or 5 hours! I was very happy with the songs he chose and thought the set was superb.

As to the Echo Arena being 2/3 full - there must have been a decision early on not to sell tickets to seats at the very top of the arena - these were never available for sale. Shortly after the tickets went on sale there was a message on the Echo´s site to say there were only seats left in the Gold Circle. I was sat there and there were no empty seats to be seen.

I reckon the concert had sold out in that all the available seats had been sold.

mog
Jul-11-2008, 02:05 GMT
Canada


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Ok Matthew, you made a good plea.

I should have said: except the special case of UK, Surprise was not a commercial success.

Also, I tend to forget F&D is a Surprise song. For me, it is a 2002 song (and I do prefer the original version).

I am sure that Nobody in my entourage know about Surprise. If I say Paul Simon, they will probably scratch their heads. If I am lucky, they will say: what has he done since Graceland ?

I am pretty sure Outrageous won´t be big for Simon´s concertgoers in 10 years, but maybe I am wrong. At least for UK.

matthew
Jul-11-2008, 11:05 GMT
United Kingdom


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I think you´re right - maybe Outrageous won´t be on the setlist in 2018 - I am still glad I heard it live at the Birmingham NEC, Cornbury Festival and the Echo Arena. Hopefully he´ll play it again when I see him in Milan as well.

During the You´re The One tour (and 2002 concerts) he played almost every song from You´re The One - Love, Darling Lorraine, The Teacher, Hurricane Eye, Pigs Sheep and Wolves, Old, You´re The One, That´s Where I Belong and Look At That. Sure most of them have been dropped from the setlist but I expect those people that attended the concerts are glad to have heard those songs live.

DannyJ  
Jul-11-2008, 18:06 GMT
United Kingdom


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Matthew, I agree. In Liverpool 2002 he sang The Teacher, Hurricane Eye & Love... (and Love went wrong, he had to change guitar - that´s live music for you!) they went down really well, as we were there to see PS perform his stuff...

I think ´The Teacher´ is a fabulous song that has really grown on me with repeated listening. I usually find that if a song ´grabs´ me initially, I tire of it easily, as PS states with ´Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts´. And the ability to captivate audiences after all these years is a testiment to his enduring appeal.

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