Well, sure! Maybe! Sort of! No! But I did get to come home and listen to Hearts and Bones and Graceland and remember warmly the time I taught my son about metaphors using “Bridge Over Troubled Water” as our text. Good times!

If I were Harper Simon, I would be very annoyed by this.

Simon, a cute fellow of 36, looked more like Harland Williams or David Arquette than like his father, though there was a strong similarity in the voice, if mostly in the phrasing. (He sounded most like him in the lower registers, and strained for his high notes.) His originals were charmingly written, especially “The Audit” (which I thought was a Neil Young song, and I was wrong) and “Berkeley Girl,” a pretty bit about roses and amethysts which any girl would like to have written for her own self. It was very “Only Living Boy in New York,” and there is nothing not to like about that.

But Simon, whether from humility or generosity, gave the show to his friends: he started with a Nick Drake cover and only played a few songs before inviting his friends up to sing their songs instead. The beautiful Inara George and Petra Haden were there, Haden both playing violin and singing two old standards, while Charlie Wadhams, David Rawlings, and Jon Brion offered up two songs each. The really charming part of the show, though, was Simon’s accompanists, Benmont Tench on piano and Sebastian Steinberg on upright bass. Every time Simon stopped to shyly retune his guitar—or one of his friends sitting in began to retune each other’s guitars to their own likings—Tench stepped in with entr’acte music from a classical take on “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” to some Marx Brothers twinkles, punctuated with Steinberg’s thumps and Haden’s virtuosic bowing finishing his musical thought.

The show itself ended with a group sing-along of Jimmy Cliff’s thought: You can get it if you really want. It would have been nice if Simon had a little less humility and made us listen to his own thoughts instead.

Simon’s self-titled solo album comes out Oct. 13 on Tulsi Records.

—Rebecca Schoenkopf

Twang was out, sitar guitar blues were in, lyrics dangled the political next to the magical, and the storytelling collaborative performance was never without a sense of humor, affection and distinct talent. Raining Jane and Willy alike sang of second chances and loss, paper cuts and paper planes, pin balls, war and miracles. I had brief thoughts of Gillian Welch, Regina Spektor, Jethro Tull, Allison Kraus, The Triplets of Belleville, or a barbershop quartet, but nothing quite fit. It felt more like flowers tapping their petals on a tin wall, feminine feet splashing in an ice cube mountain spring, bees buzzing around fresh honey, a crisp trot through a bright meadow, a conversation in a nest on the moon, or a lover squeezing your head between their hands and sing-saying into your eyes, “You and me, this could be, miraculous.”

—Beth McNamara

With a history of selling out Central Park and other massive venues, it may not come as a surprise that shelling out for tickets breeching three-digit price points makes a Paul Simon concert impractical for those living on a budget. But give Paul Simon a month-long residency at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, add some artists such as Grizzly Bear and Josh Groban, and you have a bill that draws an audience varied both in age and predilection.

At least, in theory.

As The Roches took the stage (three older women who were clad like the Rolling Thunder Revue had taken place earlier that evening), it became evident through a combination of thunderous applause and in-seat-dancing that the crowd was largely comprised of Baby Boomers.  Of course, this was not to be unexpected, but it did raise the question of how a group like Grizzly Bear would be received.

Comprised largely of two or three song sets, groups and artists took turns covering Simon’s material, occasionally being joined by Simon himself. This showmanship may have been lost on some of the crowd, but by and large, the response was always welcoming.

It was with no semblance of irony that as Grizzly Bear finished their lush, soundscaped versions of “Graceland” and “Mother and Child Reunion,” the audience took a nasty turn.  After genial applause, there was an uproar of whistling and clapping when the stagehands removed a set of synthesizers and effects pedals from the stage, shunning artists that Simon had invited to play over some sort of lust for acoustic purity.

The other artists didn’t have a chance to offend as their convention was more traditional, but as I stood at the back of the concert hall during the encore, the crowd screamed their approval for Simon when he sang a line about smoking a joint. I couldn’t fight the feeling that many of those who cheered the loudest no longer understood what they were cheering for.

— Austin Murphy