Blu-ray Live Concert Review: Carly Simon "Live At Grand Central 1995"

[Bob Rapoport]

Click on the Jacket to Watch "Coming Around Again"



Concert:
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Carly Simon turned 83 this summer. Three days ago, she released Comes in Waves, her first album of original material since 2008, arriving after disclosures that she is living with Parkinson’s disease and recently underwent surgery for basal cell carcinoma. Yet the new music makes one thing clear: the writer is still there. The intelligence, wit, candor, and unmistakable Carly Simon point of view have survived the decades.

That makes this an especially good moment to revisit Live at Grand Central, the remarkable 1995 concert now available on Blu-ray. Not simply as nostalgia, and not merely as an archival document, but as a chance to remember Carly Simon in full command of her gifts — one of the defining American female singer-songwriters of the 20th century, surrounded by first-rate musicians and production people, performing in one of the most extraordinary venues imaginable.

An Extraordinary Beginning​

Carly Simon came from an unusually rich cultural environment. Her father, Richard Simon, co-founded the publishing house Simon & Schuster. Her mother, Andrea, was a singer and community activist, and music was woven deeply into family life. Carly’s sisters Lucy and Joanna also became accomplished musicians, Joanna pursuing opera and Lucy songwriting and performance.

The Simon household was not merely affluent; it was intellectually and culturally alive.

One revealing chapter involved Jackie and Rachel Robinson. When discriminatory housing practices made it difficult for the Robinson family to establish themselves in Stamford, Connecticut, Andrea Simon helped Rachel Robinson search for property. While the Robinsons’ house was being built, the two families lived together for roughly 18 months. Carly grew close to Jackie Robinson, attended Dodgers games and remembered him teaching the Simon children baseball.

It was the sort of upbringing in which music, literature, prominent cultural figures and social responsibility were not abstractions. They were part of everyday life.

Out of that environment emerged an artist of unusual emotional intelligence. Simon’s best songs rarely settle for simple answers. Love, disappointment, anticipation, independence, family, sexuality, regret and memory coexist in them. Her songs sound personal because they're observant.

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Grand Central Terminal, April 1995​

On April 2, 1995, commuters walking through New York’s Grand Central Terminal encountered something extraordinary: Carly Simon and her band performing an unannounced full concert in the middle of the terminal.

It was her first full concert performance in 14 years.

Think about the audacity of that setting.

This wasn't an acoustically controlled concert hall populated entirely by ticket holders who arrived prepared to applaud. Grand Central was functioning as Grand Central. Travelers were moving through it. Commuters were catching trains, meeting friends, going home from work — and suddenly there was Carly Simon.

The audience formed around the event.

That spontaneity is still visible in the performance. The terminal itself becomes a character in the production. Its enormous architectural volume, the shifting crowd and the sense of New York continuing to exist around the stage create an atmosphere no conventional theater could reproduce.

And Simon owns the room.

Much has been written about her history of stage fright, but that's not the woman we see here. At Grand Central she appears mature, relaxed and completely in command: playful when she wants to be, emotionally exposed when a song requires it, and always in control of the performance.

This is Carly Simon after decades of living with the songs rather than a young artist trying to prove herself.

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A Stereo Soundtrack That Needs No Apology​

The 2023 Blu-ray deserves particular attention because the restoration was done properly. The original video was digitized, converted to HD and re-edited, while multi-Grammy-winning engineer and producer Frank Filipetti remixed the audio. The Blu-ray presents that soundtrack in uncompressed LPCM stereo.

Some home-theater enthusiasts may see “stereo” and wonder why there's no 5.1 or Atmos mix.

After hearing it, I don't.

The two-channel soundtrack is one of this release's strengths.

Grand Central has an enormous and unmistakable acoustic signature, and the recording lets us hear it. There is air around the performance. There is an enveloping sense of the terminal's scale, the crowd, and the live environment. But Filipetti never allows those reflections to obscure the music.

The result is remarkably clean and pristine.

Adding more surround information simply for the sake of more channels could easily have produced more reflected sound without producing more musical information. Here, clarity wins over echo.

Carly's voice stays anchored. Individual instruments remain distinct. The venue is audible without swallowing the band.

There's plenty of dynamic range as well. Give the recording some amplifier power and the privacy to turn it up and it will play at serious SPL without becoming congested. Bass is full but tight. The kick drum has weight and definition. Transients remain intact. What repeatedly surprises me is how close the overall presentation comes to studio-quality sound inside a genuinely live space.

That's difficult to achieve.

This is one of those recordings that reminds us that channel count and sound quality are not synonyms.

Carly and the Songs​

The program also benefits from refusing to behave like an obvious greatest-hits package.

The restored 2023 version contains 15 songs:

1. Touched By The Sun
2. Anticipation
3. I’ve Got To Have You
4. We Have No Secrets
5. Haven’t Got Time For The Pain
6. Jesse
7. That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be
8. Letters Never Sent
9. Legend In Your Own Time
10. De Bat (Fly In My Face)
11. Davy
12. Halfway Around The World
13. Like A River
14. Coming Around Again
15. Let The River Run

The release also restored “Like A River,” which had not previously been released as part of the live program.

Notice what is missing: there is no “You’re So Vain,” and no attempt to turn the event into a jukebox of the most commercially obvious songs.

That works in its favor.

Instead, we get something closer to a portrait of the artist she had become by 1995, mixing familiar classics with newer material from Letters Never Sent.

“Anticipation” still carries the spark of the young songwriter who wrote it. “That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” remains astonishing in its emotional maturity. “Haven’t Got Time For The Pain,” “Jesse,” and “Legend In Your Own Time” remind us just how deep the catalog is.

And then there's “Coming Around Again.”

For those of us who remember the period in which it first appeared, the song carries memories of its time. Yet it doesn't feel trapped there. Its themes of repetition, domestic life, love, exhaustion and renewal are as recognizable now as they were then.

At Grand Central, performed by an older and more experienced Carly Simon, the title almost feels prophetic.

Things do come around again.

Why This Concert Matters Now​

Simon was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022, recognition that formally placed her among the defining popular artists of her era.

Now, at 83, she has surprised us again with Comes in Waves. The album was released August 14, 2026, and is her first collection of new original material in nearly two decades. Critics have noted that the familiar qualities remain: autobiographical writing, emotional candor, humor and a willingness to examine relationships without pretending life is tidy. “Howl,” which opens the album, carries that quality immediately.

Her health makes the timing of this Blu-ray revisit particularly poignant. We should not presume to know whether Carly Simon will ever give another full concert. What we do know is that Live at Grand Central preserves something exceedingly rare: one of America's most important singer-songwriters giving a complete live performance at full maturity, backed by excellent musicians, captured by first-class production people, in a setting unlike any other.

She did not spend her career endlessly touring and accumulating thousands of interchangeable concert recordings. That makes this concert more valuable, not less.

We have Carly Simon here in 1995: confident, attractive, funny, musically assured, intellectually engaged with her songs and apparently delighted by the strange theater unfolding around her.

The commuters came through Grand Central expecting trains.

They got Carly Simon.

The Blu-ray​

The visuals are certainly part of the attraction. We get close-ups of Carly, the musicians, the stage and the constantly evolving audience around them. But for me, the sound is what elevates this release.

There is an immediacy to it that belies its age.

Good recordings preserve music.

Great recordings preserve a moment in time.

Live at Grand Central preserves the room, the crowd, the musicians, the city and Carly Simon herself at a particular point in time when everything seemed to come together.

In 2026, with Carly Simon once again giving us new songs, that moment feels worth celebrating.

Highly recommended.

Specifications:

Video:
Codec: None
Resolution: 1080p

Audio
English: Uncompressed LPCM 2.0

Subtitles
None

Discs
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)

Playback
2K Blu-ray: Region A, B, C

"I Haven't Got Room For The Pain"