WHERE’S GARFUNKEL?
There’s one in every crowd, and in the instance of the five-night New York run of Paul Simon’s Graceland show, it was the reviewer for the New York Post (a daily rag). He liked the concert well enough, but thought that devoting only about half of the two-and-a-half hour program to Simon’s music was wrong since, to paraphrase, the crowd was paying to see Paul Simon.
WHERE’S GARFUNKEL?
PAUL SIMON WITH LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO, HUGH MASEKELA AND MIRIAM MAKEBA
Radio City Music Hall, New York April 26, 1987
Jim Feldman
There’s one in every crowd, and in the instance of the five-night New York run of Paul Simon’s Graceland show, it was the reviewer for the New York Post (a daily rag). He liked the concert well enough, but thought that devoting only about half of the two-and-a-half hour program to Simon’s music was wrong since, to paraphrase, the crowd was paying to see Paul Simon. And furthermore, he couldn’t understand what the ensemble closing number, “God Bless Africa”—an anthem banned in South Africa—had to do with what preceded it.
The Post review was to laugh—and we did, because, as Simon said (sorry 'bout that) at the outset, the evening was about “the music of South Africa and the Graceland album.” One mark of the show’s brilliance in conception and execution was that the Posf s writer appeared to be alone in his dissatisfaction—even though much of the audience was, indeed, comprised of Simon fans, many of whom first became aware of South African music via the Graceland album.