I got on a Neil Diamond kick.<\/p>\n
Reading about his fantastic live business my synapses fired, I needed to hear him RIGHT NOW!<\/p>\n
Turns out I only had "Cherry, Cherry" in my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 I distinctly remember downloading all his hits, where WERE they?\u00c2\u00a0 Must have been when I rebuilt my hard drive three times in a week back in 2000.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t figure out the error messages.\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately turns out it was a bad RAM chip.\u00c2\u00a0 But I wasn’t worried about trashing my hard drive, I could just go back onto Napster and get the MP3s I lost almost INSTANTLY!<\/p>\n
Napster was a club.\u00c2\u00a0 Made up of everybody who loved music.\u00c2\u00a0 Pre-teens to grandparents.\u00c2\u00a0 Anybody who wasn’t afraid of technology, who could use a computer.\u00c2\u00a0 I found obscure stuff on the service that I haven’t been able to locate since.\u00c2\u00a0 Tracks that were never released on CD, that I’d worn out the vinyl of.<\/p>\n
Nothing as good exists today.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, BitTorrent’s fine if you want something new or big or both.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’re a fan, a BELIEVER, you’re frustrated.\u00c2\u00a0 Stuff like Danny Wilde’s "The Boyfriend" isn’t on iTunes.\u00c2\u00a0 But Neil Diamond, you can get Neil Diamond.\u00c2\u00a0 It comes down almost INSTANTLY P2P!<\/p>\n
Of course I needed "Sweet Caroline".\u00c2\u00a0 But since it was all free, I took all the hits.\u00c2\u00a0 I cross-referenced with Amazon.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I remembered some of the hits, like "Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show", but I needed the Website to jog my memory of "Holly Holy".<\/p>\n
You see Neil Diamond started off as a rocker.\u00c2\u00a0 All energy.\u00c2\u00a0 Listen to "Cherry, Cherry" and your body starts to pop.\u00c2\u00a0 What came after…was slowed down and bloated.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era where FM was taking over, Neil Diamond was someone you heard on AM.\u00c2\u00a0 And, since you didn’t have an FM radio in your car in 1969, you knew his tunes well.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s how I discovered "Sweet Caroline".<\/p>\n
Actually, before that came the aforementioned "Brother Love", in the spring of ’69.\u00c2\u00a0 I taped that from the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 WDRC in Hartford.\u00c2\u00a0 I had my Norelco plugged into the back of my Columbia all-in-one stereo.\u00c2\u00a0 A reverse Y-adapter.\u00c2\u00a0 Turning stereo into mono.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a ritual, I’d sit in front of the box and when something came on I wanted I pushed record.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, I didn’t get the whole song, and that’s how I remember it, with the intro cut off.\u00c2\u00a0 But, listening to my newly-downloaded copy, I was stunned to hear the introductory lines…<\/p>\n
Hot August night So, THAT’S why the legendary live album is entitled "Hot August Night"!\u00c2\u00a0 WHO KNEW!\u00c2\u00a0 See, even we people who LIVED through the era can discover things.<\/p>\n And "Brother Love" was good, but not transcendent.\u00c2\u00a0 There was this certain vocal inflection.\u00c2\u00a0 And the raucousness of the vocal.\u00c2\u00a0 But it wasn’t in the league of what came after, "Sweet Caroline".\u00c2\u00a0 It was the intro.\u00c2\u00a0 The anticipation.\u00c2\u00a0 With the all the hope, the OPTIMISM of the sixties.<\/p>\n That’s when you know you’re a true music fan.\u00c2\u00a0 When you can love something as sappy as "Sweet Caroline".\u00c2\u00a0 Something on paper that’s too ordinary, too bloated, too mainstream, yet sounds so GREAT!\u00c2\u00a0 You couldn’t hear it without singing along with the chorus.\u00c2\u00a0 The English rockers might have ruled the FM airwaves and concert venues, but "Sweet Caroline" was a king on AM, Mariah Carey’s "We Belong Together", but bigger, and better.<\/p>\n Then, "Sweet Caroline" was followed up by "Holly Holy".\u00c2\u00a0 A denouement in tempo and quality.\u00c2\u00a0 A bombastic, over the top slow-burner that one could like, but not love.\u00c2\u00a0 But listen today.\u00c2\u00a0 Listen today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s shocking.<\/p>\n Taken out of context, removed from that revolutionary era, "Holly Holy" is a revelation.<\/p>\n You can see the recording session.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody in one big room.\u00c2\u00a0 The piano player.\u00c2\u00a0 The bass player.\u00c2\u00a0 The plethora of backup singers.\u00c2\u00a0 And, in the middle, Neil himself.<\/p>\n Oh, the tune starts with one of those guitar figures off a Glen Campbell record, laconic yet meaningful.\u00c2\u00a0 And, underneath it, a bass so rich and fat it’s as if the musician is plucking Pavarotti.\u00c2\u00a0 Like there’s a fat man with a deep bass voice resonating.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, as if he’s a male Aretha Franklin, Neil starts to croon like he’s in church, like his soul depends on it.\u00c2\u00a0 And then the piano enters, ACCENTING the bass figure.\u00c2\u00a0 And the great morass of backup singers, culled from far and wide to sing on this track, straight from the gig exercising their pipes on "Oh Happy Day", they sway back and forth and sing in voices just a tad above whisper, but there are so damn MANY of them that it resembles an army, a musical army, one that doesn’t kill, but makes people COME ALIVE with its music.<\/p>\n And then they do come alive.\u00c2\u00a0 They amp it up, they start to expend the energy in their souls.\u00c2\u00a0 And then come the STRINGS!\u00c2\u00a0 REAL strings, not the canned type.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, they’re singing like sopranos.\u00c2\u00a0 Way up in the upper register.\u00c2\u00a0 And now, EVERYBODY’S AT NINE!<\/p>\n No, not ten.\u00c2\u00a0 You know they’ve got a little bit left.\u00c2\u00a0 That they can turn on if they want to.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not Mariah Carey giving it her all, rather real people singing the SONG, not trying to blow you away with their power but the MEANING, the PURE JOY of what they’re part of, what they’re creating.<\/p>\n Sing a song YEAH!!!!<\/em><\/p>\n It’s the "yeah".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s kind of like Don Henley’s "Are you with me SO far?" in "Life In The Fast Lane".\u00c2\u00a0 It reaches OUTSIDE the song.\u00c2\u00a0 To YOU, in the AUDIENCE!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s pure EXUBERANCE!!\u00c2\u00a0 You can no longer stay seated, you jump up now too, you’ve got to PARTICIPATE!<\/p>\n In the best part of the record…<\/p>\n Call the sun in the dead of the night Right in front of your very eyes, Neil’s POSSESSED!\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got God in him in a way no pontificating politician ever could.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s writhing, what comes out of his body is pure emotion.<\/p>\n Then they retreat, and do it again.<\/p>\n And finally, almost three minutes and fifty seconds into the song, a kettle drum erupts and everybody finally goes to 10, 11!\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody’s at full force, full volume.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s astounding.<\/p>\n Now, back in the day, we had to stay tuned to the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Waiting to hear something again.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, with the blessing of digital media, we can go straight back to the top, and play a song again.\u00c2\u00a0 Go from slow to fast, from 0-60, all in under five minutes.<\/p>\n AM had terrible sound.\u00c2\u00a0 But, our car stereos were even worse.\u00c2\u00a0 We never heard these songs the way we were supposed to, the way they were cut.<\/p>\n Oh, we bought "Abbey Road" and component stereos.\u00c2\u00a0 Got infatuated with turntables and cartridges.\u00c2\u00a0 Bathed in quality sound.\u00c2\u00a0 But, we didn’t buy Neil Diamond albums.\u00c2\u00a0 At most, we had 45s, which were dirty and scratched up after being beaten to hell on our little record players.\u00c2\u00a0 But now blemish-free, with subwoofers, even at a low rip rate, the true GENIUS emerges.<\/p>\n Oh, it’s not about the lyrics.\u00c2\u00a0 The music says more than words ever could.\u00c2\u00a0 And, it’s not an intellectual experience anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s emotional.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s happening deep in your heart.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I got on a Neil Diamond kick. Reading about his fantastic live business my synapses fired, I needed to hear him RIGHT NOW! Turns out I only had "Cherry, Cherry" in my iTunes library.\u00c2\u00a0 I distinctly remember downloading all his hits, where WERE they?\u00c2\u00a0 Must have been when I rebuilt my hard drive three times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-24","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
And the leaves hanging down
And the grass on the ground smelling sweet<\/em><\/p>\n
Sing a song of songs
Sing it out
Sing it strong<\/em><\/p>\n
And the sun’s gonna rise in the sky
Touch a man who can’t walk upright
And that lame man, he’s gonna fly
And I fly
And I fly<\/em><\/p>\n