''Carly Simon: Live from Martha's Vineyard'' is a 1987

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

concert special featuring

Carly Simon Carly Elisabeth Simon (born June 25, 1943) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and author. She rose to fame in the 1970s with a string of hit records; her 13 Billboard Hot 100, top 40 U.S. hits include "Anticipation (song), Anticipatio ...

recorded live on the shores of

Martha's Vineyard Martha's Vineyard, often simply called the Vineyard, is an island in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, lying just south of Cape Cod. It is known for being a popular, affluent summer colony, and includes the smaller peninsula Chappaquiddick Isla ...

. It featured Simon and a live band performing the majority of her '' Coming Around Again'' album as well as her classic hits such as "

Anticipation Anticipation is an emotion involving pleasure or anxiety in considering or awaiting an expected event. Anticipatory emotions include fear, anxiety, hope, and trust. When the anticipated event fails to occur, it results in disappointment (for ...

", "

You're So Vain "You're So Vain" is a song by the American singer-songwriter Carly Simon, released as a single in November 1972. The lyrics describe a self-absorbed lover, whose identity has long been a matter of speculation. Simon said the song refers to three ...

", "

Nobody Does It Better "Nobody Does It Better" is a power ballad and the theme song for the James Bond film '' The Spy Who Loved Me'' (1977). Composed by Marvin Hamlisch with lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, the song was produced by Richard Perry and performed by Carly ...

", and " You Belong to Me". On its first screening and release on HBO, the concert was titled "Carly Simon – Coming Around Again". Simon received a CableACE Award nomination for Performance in a Music Special in 1988.

Production and release history

The concert was filmed in the town of

Gay Head Aquinnah ( ; ) is a town located on the western end of Martha's Vineyard island, Massachusetts, United States. From 1870 to 1997, the town was incorporated as Gay Head. At the 2020 U.S. census, the population was 439. Aquinnah is known for its b ...

on a specially built stage over two days in early June 1987. The weather was very different over the two days, with the first being cloudy and misty and the second being bright and sunny, Simon recalls in several interviews that the original idea was to film both nights and then choose the best performances of each between them, but with the wildly different weather though, of course, it was not possible to intercut between performances. As a result, Simon reports that not only did she prefer the first evening's performance overall, but that the clouds and marine spray lent a certain air of mystery and intrigue as a backdrop for the concert. In addition, Simon tells viewers that she considerably shortened the concert for the first evening due to the cold, but performed the concert in its entirety the following evening. One of the missing songs can be found on both releases of the DVD as bonus footage. The concert was first released on

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, and stylized as the Greek letter Beta, β in its logo) is a discontinued consumer analog Videotape, video cassette recording format developed by Sony. It was one of the main competitors in the videotape format war ag ...

, and

Laserdisc LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. It was developed by Philips, Pioneer Corporation, Pioneer, and the movie studio MCA Inc., MCA. The format was initially marketed in the United State ...

in 1988, all three editions are now out of print. A Region 1

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

version was released on March 9, 2004 by Grandstand Entertainment, which quickly went out of print. Simon reissued the concert on May 11, 2010 under the Iris Records label as a Region All DVD, with no changes to the original cover art. This release also carried over the special features from the previous release.

Track listing

All tracks composed by Carly Simon; except where indicated. # "

Give Me All Night "Give Me All Night" is the second single from Carly Simon's 13th studio album ''Coming Around Again (album), Coming Around Again'' (1987). The song was co-written by Simon with Gerard McMahon and produced by Paul Samwell-Smith. An accompanying mus ...

" (Simon,

Gerard McMahon Gerard Thomas McMahon, also known as Gerard McMann and G Tom Mac, is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer who specialises in creating music for films and TV. His gothic rock anthem "Cry Little Sister" was recorded i ...

) # "

" # "You Have to Hurt" (

Frank Musker Frank John Musker (born 1951) is a British songwriter and composer. Most prolific in the 1980s and 1990s, he worked with artists such as Sheena Easton, the Babys, Robert Miles, Jennifer Rush, Bucks Fizz, Air Supply, Lucio Battisti, Zucchero, L ...

, Dominic King) # "

" # "Do the Walls Come Down" (Simon,

Paul Samwell-Smith Paul Granville Samwell-Smith (born Paul G. Smith, 8 May 1943, in Brentford, West London, England) is an English musician and record producer. He was a founding member and the bassist of the 1960s English rock band the Yardbirds, which launched ...

) # "Two Hot Girls (On a Hot Summer Night)" # "It Happens Everyday" # "

" (

Carole Bayer Sager Carole Bayer Sager (born Carol Bayer on March 8, 1944) is an American lyricist, singer, songwriter, and painter. Early life and career Carole Bayer was born in New York City, to Anita Nathan Bayer and Eli Bayer. Her family was Jewish. She gradu ...

Marvin Hamlisch Marvin Frederick Hamlisch (June 2, 1944 – August 6, 2012) was an American composer and conductor. He is one of a handful of people to win Emmy Awards, Emmy, Grammy Awards, Grammy, Academy Awards, Oscar, and Tony Awards, Tony awards, a feat ...

) # " All I Want Is You" (Andy Goldmark, Simon) # " The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" # " You Belong to Me" (Simon, Michael McDonald) # " Coming Around Again/Itsy Bitsy Spider" # "Never Been Gone" (Simon,

Jacob Brackman Jacob Brackman (born 1943) is an American writer, journalist, and musical lyricist. After graduating from Harvard University in 1965, he went to work for ''Newsweek'' as a journalist. He remained there for six months and was then hired by ''The ...

) * Bonus track on CD soundtrack and DVD release, "

The Right Thing to Do "The Right Thing to Do" is a song written and performed by Carly Simon that first appeared on her 1972 album '' No Secrets''. The song was recorded at Trident Studios in London's Soho. It was released as the second single to the album, following " ...

Awards

Live album

Shortly after the concert aired, Arista released '' Greatest Hits Live'', Simon's first live album. Gathered are 11 songs from the concert, out of the 14 performed, with a different running order. Omitted from the album are the tracks "

", "You Have to Hurt", and " The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of", while "

", which didn't make it into the final televised cut of the concert, appears on the album. The audio was recorded by Michael Scott and David Hewitt on the Remote Recording Services' Black Truck. The album was a great commercial success, quickly going

Gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

, before being certified

Platinum Platinum is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a density, dense, malleable, ductility, ductile, highly unreactive, precious metal, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name origina ...

in 1996 for sales of over one million copies.

References

External links

Carly Simon's official website

Iris Records.com
{{Carly Simon 1988 live albums 1980s live video albums 1988 video albums 2004 video albums 2010 video albums Carly Simon live albums Martha's Vineyard