Art Garfunkel is back, playing a series of small shows, trying to rebuild his voice that has been out-of-order for almost three years.
Unfortunately, Garfunkel’s enthusiasm over this major event in his career was not shared by a local official with a cell phone.
Art stopped a show and walked off stage at a show at the Great Neck Art Center on Long Island when he noticed a man in the front row fiddling with his cell phone. That man happened to be Jon Kaiman, supervisor of the town of North Hampton who, hopefully, was dealing with a sewer backup or some such municipal emergency and wasn’t discussing the dinner menu with his spouse.
After a bit of a public shaming, Kaiman apologized to Garfunkel who returned to the stage ten minutes later to complete his show.
Art pulled out of a 2010 Simon and Garfunkel tour after having problems with his normally sterling voice. It was eventually diagnosed as vocal cord paresis, which is the paralysing of one of the vocal cords, leading to hoarseness, reduction in volume, pain while speaking or singing, coughing and vocal fatigue.