Recently went on a vacation to Vancouver to catch the opening night of Paul Simon's Homeward Bound - The Farewell Tour at Rogers Arena. The vacation itself was an absolute shit show, but we did mange to make it to the concert which was what the holiday was based around, and of course visiting with friends and my Brother.
This tour of Paul Simon's is what has been dubbed as his very last tour. This would be my third time seeing Paul Simon in concert, and first time for Janis, and this is an artist that has been on her bucket list, so we were going.
The sold out show opened with a Simon & Garfunkel tune "America", then going in to "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover", that song kind of surprised me. After that song Paul joked about this not really being his last tour, he just wanted to raise the price of tickets. Of course he then back-tracked and did say that this was it, what IT is, I have no idea. Paul seemed to be in good spirits and looked to be having fun on stage with his 16 piece back-up band. At 76 years old Paul had a lot of energy and sounded pretty damn good, his voice was a bit scratchy at the start, but got better as the show went on. There were a few minor glitches with the screen behind the band, but not enough to take away from the performance, after all, it was opening night of the tour.
His setlist had lots of his most famous song including "The Boy In The Bubble", "Mother And Child Reunion", "Me And Julio Down By The School Yard". "The Obvious Child", among the hits were some lesser well known songs like "Rene And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War" a song which was inspired by a picture that Paul Simon found in a book at Joan Baez's house, Paul also went on to say that he believes this was the first time he had ever performed the song live.
Here is a picture of him performing that song with the actual photo on the big screen.
Other songs I didn't expect were "Spirit Voices" and "Can't Run But". After those songs it was back in to more classics "Diamonds On The Sole Of Her Shoes" and "You Can Call Me Al" that really had the crowd up and dancing and singing.
Paul and his band then came out for the three encores which included the songs "Homeward Bound", "Mrs. Robinson" and "Still Crazy After All These Years" which was amazing. The second encore included "Graceland", "The Boxer" which was also amazing.
And finally for the third encore of the evening we got "Questions For The Angels" and to close out the two hour and twenty minute performance he ended the night with "The Sound Of Silence". I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to hear Kodachrome and Love Me Like A Rock but with a catalog of music like Paul Simon's you were bound to not hear everything you wanted, a minor complaint. An awesome show and one I wasn't so sure that we were actually going to get to see after all the stuff that happened the days before. But we made it and enjoyed it very much.
A big shout out to the staff at Rogers Arena for being so accommodating to Janis and I. Janis had just had surgery the day before so was a little slow and hurting, so stairs weren't easy but the staff helped us in so many ways. Thank you! Good times!!!
Paul Simon at Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
T-shirt front.
T-shirt back.
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