Near as I can figure it started in my parents’ purple Econoline van on road trips crisscrossing the Pacific Northwest and points East. My dad by-passed the 8-track revolution in sound and went straight for the new-fangled technology of car stereo cassette decks. Tapes purchased at Cellophane Square (the local brick & mortar) or dubbed-direct from his precious collection of vinyl served as our family soundtracks on the open road. Jim Croce and James Taylor were regulars in the rotation. Abba and (cringe) George Winston arrived a little later, but from the start the staples were always Cat Stevens and especially, Neil Diamond. I was weaned on albums like Touching Me, Touching You, Tap Root Manuscript and Hot August Night, the distances between destinations and rest stops peeling away to the strains of Neil’s acoustic guitar and the populist pathos of his often instantly hummable songs.
It’s that history and heavy sense of nostalgia that made the prospect of gratis tickets to hear & see the man in person last night an inescapable draw. Taking the Target Center stage for the second of two sold out nights, Neil turned the acoustically-cavernous 19,000-capacity arena into the Diamond Dome. Our seats were behind the stage and to Neil’s sequined and rhinestone-studded back, but surprisingly close just the same. An elaborate array of catwalks allowed him to roam the stage full-circle addressing the audience from all sides as the whim struck him and a several-story tall video screen brought him even more up close & personal. I counted fourteen pieces in the band including: three guitarists; a bassist (doubling on upright and electric); trap drummer; conguero; synth; electric piano; four-piece horn section of baritone, tenor, trumpet and trombone; and a trio of back-up singers to further sweeten the pot with a dose of Southern Soul.
Now in his mid-60s --visibly long in tooth and gray in mane-- age has caught up with him. Twin Miracle Ears™ plugged into each auditory socket and a paunch that hung in a prominent bulge over his belt further belied the mileage on his frame. But the energy and brio funneled into his numbers swiftly contravened any seeming frailty or impending enervation. The hits spooled out in steady succession. A booting version of “Cherry,” an alternately tender and ballsy reading of “Play Me,” and sassy and stripped down take on “Love on the Rocks.” Neil gripped his wireless mic and purposefully strode the stage, dramatic sweeps of his free hand engendering roaring applause and shouts of adulation from the sea of humanity around him. At one point he even stopped the momentum, pausing to issue the declaration: “I want you to turn to the person on your right, whoever they may be, and tell them “I love you.”” Then a surprise twist as the video screen started scrolling through a montage of still photographs of 19th century immigrants, a telltale sign that what is normally a show-stopping finale would come early. The cheesy keyboard line flanked by horns, the iconic image of a soaring bald eagle and suddenly Neil was waist deep in a grandstanding ebullient “America,” the crowds swept up in the jingoistic kitsch (myself included) shouting the lyrics and grinning at the naïve irony of it all.
“Home, to a new and a shiny place
Make our bed, and we'll say our grace
Freedom's light burning warm
Freedom's light burning warm…”
The band missed nary a beat in all the bombast, functioning as a well-greased and highly polished juggernaut even when parsed by a hydraulically-equipped stage apparatus that deposited its members at fluctuating elevations. Neil switched gears again moving from a funky “Forever in Blue Jeans” replete with swiveling geriatric hips to a sentimental “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” in duet with one of the back-up singers that couldn’t help but elicit a resounding “where the hell is Barbara when you need her?” from my gay friends. Another Neil misstep came with the ambitious, but ultimately foolhardy attempt to interpret a segment of his Jonathan Livingston Seagull suite to the arena concert milieu. Visuals of a color-saturated sunrise and a lone gull riding the crosswind currents of a white-cap frosted coastline accompanied the treacly metaphysics-saddled lyrics and the whole exercise deflated into a gassy debacle.
Fortunately, the damage wasn’t unrepairable and Neil was soon back on track with a string of blockbusters including: “Holy, Holy,” “Sweet Caroline,” which spawned an ecstatic audience response on par with the earlier “America,” and a reach way back into the song satchel for “I’m a Believer.” Swiches flipped on the band platforms, all but a handful descended out of view into the bowels beneath the stage and Neil took the next few tunes with minimal support, shouldering his trusty acoustic and starting the mini-‘unplugged’ set with a ruminative “Glory Road” reflecting back on the turbulent 60s as a time when he blossomed into a songwriter and decided on the path that would take him to his present iconic status. The remainder of the show rounded the final stretch with another liberal dose of classics as “Shiloh,” “Soolaiman,” I Am, I Said” and “Cracklin’ Rosie” rolled out to ever increasing audience sycophancy and excitement.
Seemingly absent were new tunes penned by Neil for his upcoming album produced Rick Rubin. If they were buried in the set, I missed them. But the influx of new material almost seems like a sacrilege given the weight and worth of what precedes it. The line between self-caricature and self-exaltation is a fine one, sometimes monofilament thin, just ask Tom Jones. Neil Diamond walks the tightrope with an expert step. In all the pomp and circumstance of his career there’s so much room for sanctimonious critique, from the self-professed fifty-something Diamond-heads who come to supplicate at the altar of Neil dressed in sweater vests and khaki Dockers™ to the merch table overflowing with all manner of Neilobilia. But Neil Diamond is of that special pop star ilk blessed with an impervious reflexive shield that bends any critical pointed finger back upon its owner. He’s achieved such a stature and scope that any negative ink might as well be invisible. Slings and arrows continue to bounce harmlessly off his persona, and the millions of dollars in concert revenues that serve as tithes each year offer all the proof necessary that his precious stone continues to shine.
Posted by derek on September 2, 2005 3:11 PM[derek] "But the influx of new material almost seems like a sacrilege given the weight and worth of what precedes it. The line between self-caricature and self-exaltation is a fine one, sometimes monofilament thin, just ask Tom Jones. Neil Diamond walks the tightrope with an expert step."
really sharp observation. tom jones did the tight-rope walkin' pretty good too. the true avant-guarde has its socially conscious art roots in the juxtaposition of hi-brow and low-brow. without that balance perhaps it's merely elitism in one form or another. without balance either or would seem riduclous and become tedious and regressive affecting the mind in a pretty negative way. at the very least one's ears would probably grow dull and immune. excess has the same effect. the naturally eager to evolve self has been pretty ingeneous in creating that which it needs. that's one way to explain it.
to make certain all is clear, classifying neil diamond or any artist low-brow is no value judgement or reflection on the quality of work and is by no means meant to undermine (this interjection sounds much like a standard disclaimer). the distinction would be one of mass market culture, and then on the other side of that, more obscure forms of music. aesthetically the distinction (again as i would take a crack at defining it) would be, in the case of mass popular culture: orchestrations, arrangements, lyrics and showmanship that does not deviate too far outside a 'traditional' established form. mass culturists for the most part do not like change and seem to only do so when large numbers appear. this site is great because it is fearless in its inclusivity.
Posted by: merry fortune at September 3, 2005 2:31 AMDerek, you have my sincerest sympathies.
Posted by: djll at September 6, 2005 6:11 PMOkay, Tom. I'll bite. Sincerest sympathies for what?
Posted by: derek at September 6, 2005 9:49 PMDerek, my sympathies are extended to you for being subjected, at a vulnerable time in your life, to your parent's musical tastes -- as you report them. I salute your ability to find something of value in the morass of musical molasses that is Neil Diamond. I have thus far been unable to do so, neither for him nor for my parent's equivalent sonic torturer, Perry Como.
Djll, absolutely unashamed to be a cultural elitist. (I have my own guilty pleasures, of course -- who doesn't? Don't get me started on Patsy Cline!)
Posted by: djll at September 7, 2005 8:56 AMI make my kids listen to the Shaggs. They're already starting to hate me.
Posted by: walto at September 7, 2005 8:58 AMSounds better than the Jandek show I attended last night...
Posted by: Phil at September 7, 2005 9:38 AMTom, it must be awfully lonely in that Ivory Improv Tower ;)
As Merry notes above, a healthy taste for the plebeian protects the palate from pococurantism.
"morass of musical molasses that is Neil Diamond." I love this! Make mine blackstrap!
Semi-seriously though, aside from the obvious nostalgia factor the facet I admire most about Neil, as stated above, is his airtight sincerity & heart-on-sleeve embrace of his own hype. It's evident in every exaggerated body gesture & saccharine anecdote. That sort of cult of personality, whether real or imagined, is fascinating to witness.
I want a personal essay from you positing the pleasures of Patsy within a fortnight's time.
Posted by: derek at September 7, 2005 9:46 AMWalt, the only downside to a steady diet of The Shaggs as I see it is their extremely finite discography. “My Pal Foot Foot” would probably drive me batty by the 40th spin too. On that note I think I’m going to cue up “Who Are Parents?” in honor of ol’ mom & pop right now.
Posted by: derek at September 7, 2005 9:52 AMBlackstrap has a lot of valuable minerals and Diamond might not be that nutritious... Perhaps he is closer to brown sugar (i.e. white sugar with coloring)...
Actually, I sense that Neil Diamond would be up my alley, except I have been turned off of checking some out because of the Music Machine (easily one of the ten greatest bands of the 60s) cover of Diamond's "Cherry Cherry" or something like that, which is, well, aesthetically problematic (a euphemism for "frankly disturbing") in that context even with Sean Bonniwell's tremendous vocal abilities.
I am convinced and delighted by Derek's radical postmodern conceptualism here, but I object to the dissing of George Winston, an excellent candidate for some post-Cage strategies of perceptual relativism.
Hey, what's out is in. Etc.
Posted by: walto at September 7, 2005 8:25 PMTell us about Jandek, Phil. I'm still to understand all the fuss about him.
Posted by: Dan Warburton at September 7, 2005 10:33 PMJandek fuss: Er... he's still around, forty-something albums later?
Posted by: djll at September 8, 2005 8:32 AMAlso, re Jandek; never underestimate the power of introversion. The Improv Ivory Tower is built from such spongy bricks. Ah, the air is so clean and pure up here!
Posted by: djll at September 8, 2005 8:34 AM"Just feed me black strap molasses and wheat germ bread / makes you live so long you wish you were dead." ---- (Danny Kaye)
5 yea for black strap molasses curing Anemia, 0 Nay
2 yea for black strap molasses curing Constipation, 0 Nay
1 yea for black strap molasses controlling Diabetes, 0 Nay
2 yea for black strap molasses growing Nails, 0 Nay
1 yea for black strap molasses curing Tumors in dogs, 0 Nay
1 yea for black strap molasses curing Arthritis in 2 weeks, 0 Nay
1 yea for black strap molasses curing Acne, 0 Nay
[Derek] "Semi-seriously though, aside from the obvious nostalgia factor the facet I admire most about Neil, as stated above, is his airtight sincerity & heart-on-sleeve embrace of his own hype. It's evident in every exaggerated body gesture & saccharine anecdote. That sort of cult of personality, whether real or imagined, is fascinating to witness."
Yes!! I'm kinda sick of the fame thing though; there's too much tied up in the fame thing. I've been speaking as of late about the glamour of the smaller venue. Now if we could only go (back or ahead) to a more humane version of all that.. But in reference to ND's air-tight sincerity and embracing his own hype, at face value it seems like the ultimate love of self. Unfortunatley this often unravels to reveal...
For Dan, when I first discovered Jandek (Irwin Chusid's WFMU show) I could not get over his existence. What tenacity! Boys like himself and girls like the Shagg’s are a necessary phenomena up there with infinity. It’s that essential contrast – the stuff that breaks up what seems to be the predominate aesthetic. It's just natural law and somewhere everything exists in terms of balance and shifts. Enough of one thing and a long will come that hundreth monkey and one doesn’t have to be getting sick from eating a potato, or Jules & Jim, and one doesn’t even have to be a monkey.
That the bones of all song structures are comparable is a great thing. It isn't feasible for me to consider Jandek a song writer. Is there a discussion here? I have one of his recordings and took strange pleasure in listening and knowing I may very well have been observed doing so..
I was also happy to have Neil Diamond in common with my mother. re: artists in general (Perry Como included) I have great respect for the part of anyone who makes an attempt to express themselves, particularly in public, putting it out there, self and soul on the line, etc. Of course this is often restricted to the theoretical and when applied has as many limitations as imagine I do.
I meant avant-'garde'.
Posted by: Merry at September 8, 2005 12:21 PMI too was raised on Neil Diamond, and I have come to believe that all 'Neil kids' have in common
a real tolerance, however willfully obscured, for things that might pejoratively be called "maudlin" or perhaps, with a little less diplomacy, "hopelessly overwrought" or "emotionally incontinent". (Without Neil, the thread of "Born To Run" would be inscrutable to us, too thick with the mundane; Nilsson's "Without You" would be so much syrupy ague.) Neil, if you will, the John Donne of contemporary songwriting, introduced me to existentialism via "I Am, I Said"; "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" was the intimate geography of pure devastation; when, years later at age 10, I saw pictures of the hurricane-ravaged town of Homestead, only then could I hold up an image that represented the total destruction of Neil's heart. "Sweet Caroline" was more of a mood piece; crouched over my patent-leather shoes, absorbed by the "dust bunnies" under my dad's recliner, I understood that the song, sloughed of all its particularities, was Neil standing before the very altar of the fulsomeness of love itself, supplicating; the invocation of the muse that once precluded the great works. "Caroline" introduced me to that most potent device of metonymy: "Warm, touchin' warm..."; the inclinations of the Romanticist poets ("hurtin' runs off my shoulders..." -- in itself a gentle introduction to the strange medicine of Locke's contentious physics)... the whole piece seemed almost supersensual to me. "Cracklin' Rosie" was the feeling of perpetual motion, the first sensation that a piece of music could "propel" one in an almost physical sense; the train imagery in conjunction with Neil's buoyant vocal and the real 'kinesis' of the song set the parameters for my first encounter with U2 a few years later, and, even later, Can.
Perhaps this post abuses this board's tacit notion of propriety; I will be the first to admit that its content tends toward sublime ridiculousness; but, like it or not, the man has been perhaps the formative agent of my conceptual framework, given that his near-constant presence for the first six years of my life absolutely dwarfed the possible contributions of any other figure like "Oprah" or "Pat The Bunny" or "King Arthur". So, yes, Derek, I understand; and no, I don't believe we can really expect anyone else to.
Theresa, I've yet to hear big Neil, but some of what you're saying captures exactly my special feelings for The Partridge Family, who I never really heard to speak of until I sought them out as an adult to fulfill a unconscious craving. The edible archetypes of music spilt all over the ground. Which to eat first? And how to wipe off the dirt? They go moldy within the hour.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at September 11, 2005 11:32 AMNeil, if you will, the John Donne of contemporary songwriting, introduced me to existentialism via "I Am, I Said"; "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" was the intimate geography of pure devastation; when, years later at age 10, I saw pictures of the hurricane-ravaged town of Homestead, only then could I hold up an image that represented the total destruction of Neil's heart. "Sweet Caroline" was more of a mood piece; crouched over my patent-leather shoes, absorbed by the "dust bunnies" under my dad's recliner, I understood that the song, sloughed of all its particularities, was Neil standing before the very altar of the fulsomeness of love itself, supplicating; the invocation of the muse that once precluded the great works.
Holy magoly! (Most of us were probably at least nine before being introduced to existentialism!)
Posted by: walto at September 11, 2005 5:25 PMBeautiful post, Theresa, and one that's set my cockles to blazing. Anyone who can write about Neil with such alacrity has my utmost admiration.
Please know there's a place in the Bags bullpen with your name on it if you're ever so inclined.
Posted by: derek at September 12, 2005 9:13 PMThanks, Derek, it's very surprising to know that my adjectival wrangling, appeals to specious authority (generally, any proper noun), and absolute refusal to justify contentious statements, has inclined anyone towards charity. The post about Neil, for its outward absurdity, is helplessly sincere -- although I have done my best to cloak this sincerity in a veneer of outlandishness and visible posturing so thick that one is virtually forced to interpret its content as intensely sardonic, rather than accept the apparently immense foolishness of its author.
Oh yeah, and Barry too. By '85, my parents didn't have a record player anymore, and were really slow to catch on to CD's, so they only had 4 or 5 of them -- Neil, Barry, and Mannheim Steamroller. I am pretty sure that my hapless introversion can somehow be explained in terms of this combination.
I love neil, but i don't love all of it.
And i use a taste for football to keep me from imploding from elitism. (Even though sports continue to make the wrong people happy every day.)
going into my mid 40's i was raised on neil diamond. i found him enjoyable as a kid and now being the age i am i still enjoy his talent.when he tours florida i grab up siblings and follow him around the state having a party in each location......jus' wish the day after didn't last now two to three days. i enjoy growing older with neil diamond still being part of me.
"i am i said"
Thanks for bringing this old thread to the fore again, Dennis. “I am I said” indeed. My folks are coming to town next week (their first trip out here together in my nearly nine years as a mid-westerner) & I’m seriously taking them to the Hot August Night Neil Diamond tribute at a local watering hole. Several Diamonds in the rough are sure to be performing the classics.
Posted by: derek at August 16, 2007 6:41 AM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................
