Paul Simon's "Late in the Evening"

[Disinfectus]

@Loach

One-Trick Pony. The movie is forgotten but the album remains. It’s a shame, the movie has some really good music. There are some songs that appear in the movie and don’t appear and don’t appear on the album and vice versa. The songs in the movie are different versions than appear in on the album. The band was probably the best group of musicians he had behind him during his career. Eric Gale on guitar, Tony Levin on bass, Steve Gadd on drums. They are all in the movie playing his band.

I don’t remember much about the plot, but if you want to see some of the best NY session players of all time grooving their hearts out, this is the film for you.

I was at the Central Park concert. Steve Gadd was on drums and Richard Tee on keys. No Tony Levin, though the masterful Anthony Jackson was on bass. I don’t recall if Eric Gale did that show or not.

[Loach]

@Disinfectus

I don’t recall if Eric Gale did that show or not.

Nope it was Pete Carr and David Brown. I had to look it up. The Central Park concert was on HBO soon after it happened. I watched it over and over. Couldn’t tell you how many times. My sister was at the concert. I was a little too young for that.

[Disinfectus]

@Loach

I was a little too young for that.

I was fifteen. It was my third concert. Funny thing, we were up in a huge tree and could only see the tops of everyone’s heads. Didn’t matter, the sound was amazing. One of my fondest memories (because I was a huge Gadd fan) was hearing the drums to the opening of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” reverberating through Central Park. Which is, of course, another amazing Steve Gadd drum track.

[carrps]

@Alessan

I suppose it depends on when you think the Graduate came out (answer: 1967). The film and their breakthrough are inseparable.

Maybe for people who weren’t paying attention, but I knew S&G and had their album before The Graduate came out. When I saw the movie, I thought “Cool, they’re using S&G songs” not “Who are the guys doing the music? I love it!”

[K364]

@Alessan

I suppose it depends on when you think the Graduate came out (answer: 1967). The film and their breakthrough are inseparable.

S&G breakthrough was in 1965 with “Sounds of Silence” and got the Graduate soundtrack gig because of their prior success. What the Graduate did was move them more out of Folk and into Pop.

[Hatchie]

I’d agree, Simon and Garfunkel’s breakthrough was “The Sound of Silence”, the song, which got them on the charts, and all the hip people had the album and played it endlessly though it was not Top Ten.

What boosted them into the cultural stratosphere was the Graduate soundtrack album with Mrs. Robinson, which hit it big at the same time as “Bookends”, a one-two punch, and they were like the Beatles and Bob Dylan and Donovan and the Stones, youth culture gold, for white kids at least, you had to pay attention, with the bonus that the older generation would have to admit that there was something happening at the Zoo, which we knew all along, and now we got to say I told you so!