Last night, Dead & Company hit the second stop of their summer tour in Camden, NJ, where the second set’s “The Wheel,” morphed into a slow and steady reggae jam that led right into Paul Simon’s ”Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes”—Dead & Co. paying homage to the legendary singer-songwriter Paul Simon, who was born in nearby Newark, NJ and is currently on his farewell tour.
But true Paul Simon fans weren’t done yet. The setlist for that night showed that set 1 was bookended with “Jack Straw,” and set 2 was bookended with “Not Fade Away.” Bookends? That couldn’t be a reference to the Simon & Garfunkel album and song Bookends, could it?
Both “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” and the bookended “Jack Straw” were handwritten on the otherwise typed setlist, adding further evidence to my suspicion that Paul Simon had a last-minute hand in this one way or another.
Well, people say I’m crazy, and I don’t have diamonds on the soles of my shoes…so they’re probably right.
