This used to be a regular feature, but it got harder and harder to find music that I 1) was familiar with and liked, and 2) was a live performance and not just music with an album cover as the video.
Anyway, I doubt that I’ll be doing this every week, but today, while I was working at home and listening to music, this song came up and I couldn’t resist looking to see if there was a live version of it by Paul Simon. As it turns out there are many.
When Simon first wrote this song we were in a what we thought were pretty bad political straits. Some of us feared, even at that point, that things could get worse, and I can certainly count myself among those who may have applied the “facist” label at times, but there’s something about the human psyche, at least the psyches of most humans, that refuses to believe that things can get really horribly worse. But one can’t help but think that if Simon could have had a glimpse of our actual future, he would have thought that he was living in the best of times, or near the best, anyway.
I chose this version because I liked the way he sings it in a sort of depressed voice. While the performance predates the election, it is still perfect for the age of Trump.
Paul Simon: American Tune.
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