Live from New York City, 1967 (Deluxe Packaging)
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel were the apotheosis of the '60s folk  revival, bringing the music to the mainstream via Top 40 radio and network TV.  This live set was recorded before a rapt audience at New York's Lincoln Center  in January of 1967, just as theirParsley, Sage, Rosemary, and  Thymealbum was carrying them to superstardom, and there's a palpable  pre-Woodstock/Altamont sense of boundless possibilities in these performances.  Carried by just their bittersweet, magnificently interlocking voices and Simon's  acoustic guitar, the duo showcases its already impressive slate of hits  ("Homeward Bound," "I Am a Rock," "The Sounds of Silence") and its stylistic  diversity that was already confident enough to encompass breezy pop ("The 59th  Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)"), madrigal influences ("Benedictus"), and  the introspective impressionism of "A Hazy Shade of Winter." Simon takes a  jazz-folk solo instrumental turn on Davey Graham's "Anji," while Garfunkel  showcases his angelic pipes on "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her." It's a  remarkably crisp live recording as well, one whose digital remastering was  overseen--but not artistically tweaked--by the musicians and their original  engineer Roy Halee, ensuring the performance remains as true as the cold yet  invitingly warm evening on which it was recorded. Their subsequent albumsBookendsandBridge over Troubled  Watermay have expanded their creative instincts and their fame, but,  like theBeatles, their  partnership eerily paralleled the decade's demise, its optimism and promise  imploding in a swirl of cynicism and ego. Those facts make this find from the  vaults all the more compelling.--Jerry McCulley