Sometimes you look back at the music you loved as a kid and you think, "you know what, it was really not so bad" and sometimes you look back at the music you loved as a kid and you think "what drugs was I on?. And then there is Neil Diamond's over wrought passion play, where, not unlike Queen, you note that you responded to the extreme purple passion of it: like reading "Peyton Place" or, more accurately, "The Carpetbaggers", for the first time.This live double, recorded at Hollywood's Greek Theater in August 1972 and released in December of the same year, it was the end of Neil's "I Am… I Said" dichotomy. From shy Brooklyn Tin Pan Alley tunesmith to wild hair, gypsy garbed, orchestra leading Los Angeles rock and roll superstar in a decade.
And in his new role, riding roughshod after his 1970 Gold greatest hits live album, Diamond over did everything in sight. Listening to it, the album is equal parts amazing and embarrassing. Even on Hymnals and epitaphs and soap operas and confessionals, every single song, has a great melody. Try as he might to destroy his gifts, layer them in hairspray and sanctimony, he can't do it.
It is not simply that these songs are terribly played, it is way beyond that. Neil goes up to every single song and wrestles it to the ground while the audience goes berserk, it is opera for people who don't like opera, pop for people who don't like pop. An overeager smack in the ears, that makes you ashamed for giving into it.
Imagine, if you will, that you are a twenty something woman getting drunk at a bar with your college room mate and pleasantly buzzed, when this tall swarthy Italian with gold chains and hair chest tries to pick you up. And you aren't really interested but the intensity of his approach, mixed with your buzzedness and horniness and you can't resist it. You know he is a creep but next thing you know you're in the back of his Benz with your panties round your ankles. That's exactly what Neil Diamond does to you on Hot August Night, his come on is so hard and steamy it is exhausting but it wears you down. You can resist "Crunchy Granola Suite" and you realize "Cherry Cherry" and "Sweet Caroline" are lessened by full on rock band and Diamond's histrionics, you hate the opening of "Cherry Cherry" so much, you think the man has lost his mind. Yet, by the time he starts warning "I'm going to do a love song for you", "You are the sun, I am the moon…" you are all in.
I always thought the album was much bigger than it turned out to be. It only reached # 5 in the States, #21 in the UK. Let's just say, it is a big for Diamond album, it made him into the Diamond we know and… we, feel for.
The remastered 40th anniversary re-issue adds some songs, "And The Grass Won't Pay No Mind", "You're So Sweet", a coupla of intros and outros, as well as the songs from the 2000 reissue, most notably "Kentucky Woman".
I find it a hard album to dismiss, though I can hear how terrible it is. I loved it for so long, I find it difficult to dismiss as simply trash and the reason is that Neil diamond is a great melodist, and however crappy the version is, however overblown the lyric, the song itself is brilliant.
Grade: B+