Carly Simon

"This is the best show I've done in 14 years!" Carly Simon declared at the close Friday night of her Galaxy Concert Theatre performance. That statement didn't venture much, since it was also nearly her only performance in as many years. The show, however, merited praise by any measure. Even in Simon's hit heyday in the '70s, she rarely took to the concert stage, a victim of one of the music industry's more legendary cases of stage fright.

Carly Simon "Never Been Gone" Iris Records Artists who re-record touchstone songs from their catalogs, as Carly Simon does on her latest full-length collection, take on the burden of coming up with something different enough to make that material newly relevant. Perhaps not surprisingly, her tour through her nearly four-decade catalog succeeds best when she mixes things up the most. The opening reading of "The Right Thing to Do" is pleasant, but it seems eerily close to what the song might have sounded like in the hands of her ex, James Taylor -- the presence here of their musician son, Ben, could have something to do with that.

If you didn't know whose words make up the introduction to the booklet that comes with this three-disc set, you might guess the discussion of songwriting was by a classic pop craftsman and perfectionist . . . a Paul Simon, Randy Newman or Joni Mitchell. "I've always wondered what would happen if I held on to one song long enough to make it perfect by my standards," the introduction begins.

Singer Carly Simon is suing Starbucks Corp., saying the coffee company's now-defunct music venture didn't adequately promote her 2008 album, dooming the record before it was even released. The singer, whose biggest success came during the 1970s and '80s with hits like "You're So Vain" and "Anticipation," is seeking unspecified damages related to the release of the 14-track "This Kind of Love" in April 2008. In a lawsuit filed Friday in L.A. County Superior Court, Simon and her attorneys said the album wasn't available in "a substantial number" of Starbucks stores during the key early months after its release.

CARLY SIMON isn't the first name you'd expect to find on a list of classic-rock superstars who keep tabs on "American Idol." "I tune in whenever I get a chance," she says in that signature dusky voice. "How could I not, when this season Brooke White sang 'You're So Vain' and did such a nice job on it, and Carly [Smithson] was named after me?"

Carly Simon: An article about Carly Simon last Sunday misidentified Gene Rumsey as the Concord Music Group's senior vice president of marketing. He is the company's general manager.

Carly Simon, "Letters Never Sent," (**) Arista. The voice still shimmers and the tunes often hum along smoothly, but Simon's stab at high concept--the songs are letters written through the years but never mailed--falls victim to distracting interludes and recurring musical themes used in a misguided attempt at cohesion. New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).

Re "Doug Weston, Troubadour Founder, Dies," Feb. 15: It was a cataclysmic time, the late '60s and early '70s, and I was a Godforsaken teenager. Yet, in my broken memory, the few cherished experiences I had often were at Doug Weston's Troubadour. From my first awkward date with Anna Sanchez to see the magnificent Phil Ochs sing, to evenings with my friend Carmen Perez as we first heard John Denver and Carly Simon, I treasure those extraordinary nights. I never had the chance to thank Weston for making a place for some of the greatest musical moments in my life, but I know he saw us in the audience.

NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol evidently is so rich that he, and he alone, will find out who was so vain in Carly Simon's 1972 hit single. Ebersol has ponied up $50,000 for the information in a celebrity auction raising money for Martha's Vineyard Community Services.

* * * 1/2 "COMING AROUND AGAIN," Carly Simon, Arista. Given the fact that this album employed nine producers, it could easily have sounded labored. But it doesn't. It's a warm, lighthearted, friendly album, and easily Simon's best since "No Secrets" made her a star 15 years ago. The best song is the wistful title track, which Simon wrote for the movie "Heartburn."

Carly Simon: An article about Carly Simon last Sunday misidentified Gene Rumsey as the Concord Music Group's senior vice president of marketing. He is the company's general manager.

CARLY SIMON isn't the first name you'd expect to find on a list of classic-rock superstars who keep tabs on "American Idol." "I tune in whenever I get a chance," she says in that signature dusky voice. "How could I not, when this season Brooke White sang 'You're So Vain' and did such a nice job on it, and Carly [Smithson] was named after me?"

Sisterhood -- in the family and body politic -- can be a beautiful abstraction and a real pain in the neck. It's an evanescent ideal that sometimes takes shape in historic movements. And it's the cosmic force behind Sheila Weller as she tries to link the lives of three very different artists to "the rich composite story of a whole generation of women born middle-class in the early to mid 1940s and coming of age in the middle to late 1960s."

NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol evidently is so rich that he, and he alone, will find out who was so vain in Carly Simon's 1972 hit single. Ebersol has ponied up $50,000 for the information in a celebrity auction raising money for Martha's Vineyard Community Services.

Re "Doug Weston, Troubadour Founder, Dies," Feb. 15: It was a cataclysmic time, the late '60s and early '70s, and I was a Godforsaken teenager. Yet, in my broken memory, the few cherished experiences I had often were at Doug Weston's Troubadour. From my first awkward date with Anna Sanchez to see the magnificent Phil Ochs sing, to evenings with my friend Carmen Perez as we first heard John Denver and Carly Simon, I treasure those extraordinary nights. I never had the chance to thank Weston for making a place for some of the greatest musical moments in my life, but I know he saw us in the audience.

Sunday "Baby, That's Rock 'n' Roll" / 5 and 9 p.m. Bravo From "On Broadway" to "Hound Dog" and "Stand by Me," the songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller have created many of pop music's timeless tunes. This two-hour tribute features an interview with the dynamic duo (Jimmy Weatherspoon recorded their first song, "Real Ugly Woman," in 1950), performances of their most popular compositions and comments from the artists who made them famous.

Surely no one would mistake Simon's whiny, overwrought delivery for that of a chanteuse--no one, that is, except Simon herself, whose third misguided collection of standards includes songs taken from and evocative of film noir. The orchestrations are tastefully lush, but hearing Simon rip into such torchy classics as "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" and "Don't Smoke in Bed" is like watching a great old movie colorized with crayons.