Unbelievable show in Toronto last night!!! Paul announced that he will have a new album out in September also.

Woot! Just a week till my show in Nashville. And then Exhibitionism the next day.

Paul Simon gets to be 'Phil Everly for a night,' singing with Don, during farewell show

[www.tennessean.com]
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"Bye Bye Love" - [www.youtube.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2018-06-22 05:53 by bye bye johnny.

Paul Simon announces historic concert event "Homeward Bound - The Farewell Performance" to take place Saturday, September 22 in Queens, NY at Flushing Meadows Corona Park

[www.paulsimoninthepark.com]

[twitter.com]

Thats going to be a shit show in Queens that day.
There are mutiple events happening that day in and around Queens.
There is a show at Forest Hills and another festival happening near Flushing.
The subways and LIRR will be a nightmare.

Boring

Shoulda been Central Park and I'm truly shocked its not.

Saw Paul twice on this tour. He brought a 14 piece band with him. It was almost surreal it was that good!

I was at the Nashville show when he brought out Don Everly, and I have to say that the whole show was just so so good. Exceeded my expectations, which were high.

Here's the setlist:

America
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
The Boy in the Bubble
Dazzling Blue
That Was Your Mother
Rewrite
Mother and Child Reunion
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
Can't Run But
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Wristband
Spirit Voices
The Obvious Child
Questions for the Angels
The Cool, Cool River
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
You Can Call Me Al

Encore:
Graceland
Still Crazy After All These Years
Late in the Evening

Encore 2:
Homeward Bound
Kodachrome
The Boxer
Bye Bye Love
(with Don Everly)
Old Friends
Bookends Theme - Reprise
The Sound of Silence

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RollingFreak
Shoulda been Central Park and I'm truly shocked its not.

I guarantee it's because he didn't want to fall short of his prior performances/attendance figures

The security required for an outdoor show in Manhattan is likely more expensive in this era. The Queens show has a long list of prohibited items, including drones, professional recording equipment, selfie sticks, and hula hoops. Full list:
[pagesix.com]

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Send It To me

Quote
RollingFreak
Shoulda been Central Park and I'm truly shocked its not.

I guarantee it's because he didn't want to fall short of his prior performances/attendance figures

I'm sure he would draw a huge crowd since it's been promoted as his last tour. There's no way he would be playing large arenas right now if he didn't say this was his farewell tour. That's pretty much the only reason I saw him opening night. I think the previous time he played Vancouver was at a 3000 seat theatre instead of Rogers Arena.
How many people can the Flushing Meadows venue hold approximately?

Quote
Aquamarine
I was at the Nashville show when he brought out Don Everly, and I have to say that the whole show was just so so good. Exceeded my expectations, which were high.

Here's the setlist:

America
50 Ways to Leave Your Lover
The Boy in the Bubble
Dazzling Blue
That Was Your Mother
Rewrite
Mother and Child Reunion
Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War
Can't Run But
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Wristband
Spirit Voices
The Obvious Child
Questions for the Angels
The Cool, Cool River
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
You Can Call Me Al

Encore:
Graceland
Still Crazy After All These Years
Late in the Evening

Encore 2:
Homeward Bound
Kodachrome
The Boxer
Bye Bye Love
(with Don Everly)
Old Friends
Bookends Theme - Reprise
The Sound of Silence

Wow! That is an incredible set list and an amazing body of work. Thank you for posting.

Quote
Send It To me

Quote
RollingFreak
Shoulda been Central Park and I'm truly shocked its not.

I guarantee it's because he didn't want to fall short of his prior performances/attendance figures

Interesting article about how attendance figures for the free Central Park concerts were completely made up and wildly exaggerated. Actual attendance may have been as little as one-tenth of what was reported.

[www.nytimes.com]

Great Lawn: A Bubble of History Bursts
About New York

By JIM DWYER JULY 23, 2008


Here is an official history of attendance at great public gatherings in Central Park: James Taylor played in Central Park’s Sheep Meadow in the summer of 1979, and officials announced that 250,000 people came. A year later, Elton John performed on the Great Lawn, and the authorities said he drew 300,000 people. Then Simon and Garfunkel performed in September 1981, and city officials and organizers reported that 400,000 people had packed into the park. Ten years later, it was announced that Paul Simon drew 600,000. The biggest concert of all, it seems, was by Garth Brooks, on Aug. 7, 1997, at the North Meadow, with a reported attendance of 750,000 people.

That march of history has come to a screeching halt.

Ten days ago, Bon Jovi played on the Great Lawn, and the city’s official head count came to 48,538 people — a number tallied by parks workers with clickers at the entryways to the lawn. This total includes only the people admitted to the 13-acre oval that makes up the Great Lawn, and not any of those gathered in the walkways and swaths of ground to the east and west of the lawn.

Still, the Bon Jovi crowd was a fraction of the colossal throngs that are part of the city’s collective mythic memory. If fewer than 50,000 people were able to fill the oval, how could a half million more people get anywhere near the Paul Simon concert held in the same space?

The answer, city officials say, is that they didn’t.

“You look out at the sea of people from the stage, and your mind tells you, ‘That’s what hundreds of thousands of people looks like,’ ” Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, said. “Now we know it’s 48,500.”

This is the sound of the hot air balloon of history being popped. It is no accident. For the last four years, the city has been struggling to defend a decision to deny permits to two antiwar groups that sought to hold a rally of 75,000 people in Central Park around the time of the 2004 Republican National Convention.

The city argued that the big crowds would damage the Great Lawn, which was restored in 1998 at a cost of $13 million. The groups argued that the city had permitted concerts and a papal Mass to be held on the lawn, and sued, claiming they had been excluded because of their political views.

In January, the city settled the suit by paying $50,000 to the groups and an additional $500,000 in legal fees, and agreed to hire a panel of experts who would advise the commissioner on the use of the Great Lawn by crowds.

“It’s the single location in Manhattan that can function as an appropriate site for mass activity, either political rallies or concerts,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer for the Partnership for Civil Justice, which brought the legal challenge to the city’s decision not to issue a permit. “They want to end that as a venue for mass political actions. It’s an historic location, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered.”

Mr. Benepe said that was not true, and that the precise counts show that the old numbers simply were in the realm of fantasy. “The truth is that those historical crowds, you couldn’t accommodate that many people if you crammed them into every open space in Central Park — Great Lawn, North Meadow, Sheep Meadow,” he said.

Of the 13 acres on the Great Lawn, only 10 can be used by an audience, with the rest of the space reserved for the stage and for aisles. Each acre has 43,560 square feet, and based on standard space allocations of five to seven square feet per person, could accommodate somewhere in the vicinity of 6,000 and 8,000 people. Of course, on the lawn, many people spread out on blankets. Just outside the lawn oval are five or six more acres of space, with poor lines of sight but within earshot.

“Capacity was not the issue when they denied the permit,” Ms. Verheyden-Hilliard said. “It was the content of the speech.”

The Bon Jovi concert had big commercial backing that was linked to last week’s All-Star Game.

“You still have Major League Baseball and Bank of America using the lawn for events that work with their advertising,” she said.

How, by the way, did anyone figure that 300,000 people came to hear Elton John or 750,000 for Garth Brooks?

“You would get in a room with the producer, with a police official, and a person from parks, and someone would say, ‘What does it look like to you?’” said Doug Blonsky, a former city parks administrator who is now the president of the Central Park Conservancy. “The producer would say, ‘I need it to be higher than the last one.’ That’s the kind of science that went into it.”



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2018-06-24 15:06 by tatters.

Just got home from a fantastic show. Paul was in great form and his backup people were absolutely phenomenal.

Never heard a band referred to as "backup people"

Mick has good backup people.

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Cooltoplady
Never heard a band referred to as "backup people"

Whatever, I'm old, it was two am. His band was GREAT!!!!!!

I saw him in London. Great show, such great songs and performer(s)....
To me, Simon's pessimism of how we treat the planet was quire remarkable.

The final show in Queens is at the schoolyard of his song "Me and Julio down by the schoolyard", as far as I understood. It seems like a logical place to end his run.

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shattered1978
I saw him in London. Great show, such great songs and performer(s)....
To me, Simon's pessimism of how we treat the planet was quire remarkable.

The final show in Queens is at the schoolyard of his song "Me and Julio down by the schoolyard", as far as I understood. It seems like a logical place to end his run.

Yes,it does.
But don't think we have seen the last of him in concert.
One off gigs, charity shows, guest shots etc. It will probably end up being above the likely Stones schedule in the future (14 concerts per annum).
And, his records of course will keep on coming....