[CANCELLED: June 29, 2025] Paul Simon: A Quiet Celebration
Last year, my wife and I had tickets to see Paul Simon at The Academy of Music–a small space and we had very good, close seats (I could have gotten closer tickets, but we weren’t sure we wanted to get TOO close). We have seen just about everyone that we really want to (I have a list of bands that I still want to see but it gets shorter all the time). But one person on her bucket list was Paul Simon.
So when he announced this Quiet Celebration tour, I grabbed tickets immediately. Then two days before our show, Paul announced that he would have to cancel the shows because of terrible back pain. He was going to have surgery and hoped to get back on tour.
As it turns out, he was able to make the next night of his tour (which was about a week later). So he only missed two shows and ours was one of them. He never rescheduled that location, but instead, did another round of the tour. The Philly show was at the Mann Center (a very different venue from The Academy of Music (and it turned out a rainy night).
But we didn’t get tickets for the Mann in part because I didn’t think it would be easy, but mainly because it was my son’s birthday. So instead, we got tickets to the show in Bethel Woods, a 2 and a half hour drive away.
We got a room for the night and were excited to check out the area. Especially when I learned that the venue was on the site of Woodstock. And there’s a museum dedicated to the 1969 event. I was three months old when Woodstock happened and my parents were as far from hippies as you could get, so there was no love for this event in my house growing up.
However, I understand its cultural significance as well as the musical significance. And while I’m not someone who thinks it was the most amazing thing to ever happen, I still like the music and thought the museum would be cool. The museum is pretty cool. I enjoyed the memorabilia, in particular the woman who wrote down the music she saw and her thoughts about them–I’d love to see everything she wrote. It was also fascinating to see that no one really had an idea of what each band played–they had to look at various documents to ensure the playlists. But there’s even discrepancies in the museum itself. One sign says The Who played 24 songs, but the other sign lists 21 songs.
So the museum was a little underwhelming, but because we were there when we were, we were able to buy one of these limited edition posters, which is pretty cool.
So the weather that morning was unreasonably hot (day 3 of a 5 day heat wave). But on the way to the venue it started raining (and thundering). I was first concerned that they might cancel the show from the heat (Paul Simon is old, after all) and then I was worried that they would cancel it because of lightning. Either way would have been too much for us to bear, I fear. But the rain stopped and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees and it was quite lovely.
But they delayed the opening of the gates for some 20 minutes and the line was INSANE, so we hung out in the (air conditioned) museum until just before 8.
The walk from the entrance to the venue is REALLY long. Like, holy cow you have to walk a long way–easily ten minutes with the crowds. But Paul didn’t go on until 8 and we found our seats and waited. One complaint is that we brought refillable water bottles but there were no places to fill them. I suppose if we were earlier, we could have spotted them, but they assured us that the show would start at exactly 8 and it was like 5 of as we got near our seats.
But soon enough, the lights dimmed and the band came out. (more…)
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