Another guest spot - from SitarSwami this time. Keep 'em coming!
What's there left to say about Neil Diamond? [enquires SitarSwami] Love him or hate him (and if you're a true fan you can simultaneously do both).
A very young Neil
He learned his Brill Building lessons well. For a practical demonstration of N.Diamond songwriter, revel above & below the early 1960's into the mid 70's covers -- plus one fluffy pillow co-write with Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich recorded in the 90's.
Ace records released a similar single disc collection a number of years ago and you'll find 23 of those tracks here. Which leaves 33 unduly neglected gems begging to be heard.
Almost half of these were not recorded, or at least not released, by Neil and some of the highlights are those songs: My Babe, Sunday & Me, The Boy With the Green Eyes, Don't Go Away Mad (an exclusive UK release by Bobby Vinton) and my favorite, It Comes & Goes (which is so Spectorishly sensational that Mercury records issued it twice in October 1965 as by Sadina on it's subsidiary label Smash, and under Sadina's real name, Priscilla Mitchell, on Mercury.
Many of these 45's are big ticket items and for the price of a download you, dear listener, can hear them all.
[Somebody will be along soon to provide a link to Mr Swami's N.Diamond collection. In the meantime, please avail yourself of the HOLE's well-stocked bar (CASH ONLY) and its snack vending machines.]
Many thanks to SitarSwami for the links!
ReplyDeleteLove to Love: A Neil Diamond companion
disc 1: https://www37.zippyshare.com/v/KsRALJ4z/file.html
disc 2: https://www37.zippyshare.com/v/wtdFoTCK/file.html
I'll give it a spin.
ReplyDeleteThanks, SitarSwami!
Memory is a funny thing. I saw Neil Diamond in the mid-70s. I can date it to 1976, and my memory says it was spring...because at the time I was dating Carolyn D., and I was taking her to shows like Roxy Music and David Bowie, and she was taking me to Neil Diamond and Cat Stevens. Needless to say we were hopelessly incompatible (but remained friends to this day).
ReplyDeleteCarolyn and I broke up in the summer, but the Internet tells me the show took place in October, which makes no sense in terms of our dating timeline.
Even weirder is that I saw Blue Oyster Cult and Neil Diamond within a few weeks of each other, which is weird.
Anyway....thanks for the Neil Diamond reminder, and I'm going to give Carolyn a call later today. We haven't talked in over a year and you've reminded me I'm overdue to say "howdy."
That's very cool, draftervoi!
ReplyDeleteI forgot about Bobby Womack's cover of 'Sweet Caroline'. I had the 45, the flip side was 'Harry Hippie'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mwnev2pjCQ&ab_channel=BobbyWomack-Topic
Huh. "Video not available" it says here, but you're right, "Hairy Hippie" is a great tune.
DeleteAh, Neil, the old cheesemeister. Love and hate him at the same time is exactly right, because who can go from genuinely good to upsetting your stomach within two songs? It takes real skill to juggle the good and the atrocious like that.
ReplyDeleteThe two albums he cut with Rick Rubin are really good all the way through, though.
Q: Who can go from genuinely good to upsetting your stomach within two songs?
ReplyDeleteA: Three quarters of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Yeah, let us not forget Rod Stewart, although my opinion on the late 70s and 80s albums is not as negative as at the time. Rod had exemplified a certain kind of sloppy, boozy, lads-night-out rock n' roll but seemed to have turned his back by the disco era. I thought the Rolling Stones pulled off "Miss You" but "Do You Think I'm Sexy" didn't work for me.
ReplyDeleteFor Neil Diamond...the schmaltz was there from the start, so my standards are lower. Maybe it's that I didn't think that ANY of the Brill Building writers represented some form of "outsider" taste? By the time I saw Diamond, I had already lived through the Jonathan Livingston Seagull era: a bad book made into an even worse movie didn't bode well for the Original Sound Track.
Ah yes, the simpleton wisdom of Jonathan Livingston Seagull:
Delete“Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.”
People just love, easy answers and empty slogans that seem to reign everywhere, then as now. Just ask that other author of animal parables, George Orwell.
And then there's Neil's:
"Be! As a page that aches for a word which speaks on a theme that is timeless!”
The first few Rod Stewart albums had a sound all of their own - acoustic 12 string, sloppy (in a good way) guitar and drums from Wood and Jones, throaty bass and touches of fiddle and mandolin. RS also had a good ear for a suitable cover song. As soon as he abandoned the "Faces" based sound, he didn't interest me too much.
ReplyDeleteI'm listening to "Cut Across Shorty" right now and it's really very, very bloody good.
Here's the mandolin player from Maggie May celebrating his 70th birthday a few years ago, I think they do a preety good version of it.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjOQAprvRj8
His name, oh yes just check out the credit on Every Picture Tells A Story : "The mandolin was played by the mandolin player in Lindisfarne. The name slips my mind."
Full story here :
https://www.mandolincafe.com/news/publish/mandolins_00938.shtml
Jacka rocked a very fine moustache!
DeleteJohn Peel mimed the mandolin on TOTP.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEoc13bwCw0&t=4s
Ah yes, the sartorial elegance of Lindisfarne was a wonder to behold, although Jacka did look pretty good, compared to the rest of them.
DeleteI've been rediscovering the Mk1 Lindisfarne this past week, it has been the equivalent of comfort food! The Clear White Light is guiding me on, and I may well bore your readers with some screed in the not too distant.
Jacka first picked up the mandolin because his parents had met each other in Italy in WWII and had some Italian records featuring mandolin. He then credits seeing the mandolin being played on Billy J Kramer's Trains & Boats and Planes as linking the sound he had heard on his parents records with the actual instrument and asked them to bring him one back from Italy.
DeleteHis mouth organ playing came before that as he found one in a drawer and just started playing it. At twelve he was reluctantly put into a talent contest at Butlins and won.
His grandfather taught him all the old geordie folk songs and add in his seeing Sonny Boy Williamson and Little Walter at the Club AGoGo, together with discovering Woody Guthrie on record backed by Sonny Terry on harmonica and Cisco Houston on mandelin, part of the sound of Lindisfarne was born.
All that was then needed was the songs of Alan Hull, the great bass and fiddle playing of Rod Clements and the hard northern "sour cream" harmonies of Jacka, Alan and multi instrumentalist Si Cowe, not forgetting Ray Laidlaw on drums.
My screed if I can get round to it will be about the Lindisfarne Christmas Shows at Newcastle City Hall, one in particular in 1976, so as Jimmy Carter famously said in his visit to Newcastle that year "Howay The Lads"
Seems a shame that Rod could write a song like "Mandolin Wind" but couldn't be bothered to remember the player's name, or to ask for it. He also "forgot" about hearing Jorge Ben Jor's "Taj Mahal" -- another case settled out of court.
DeleteJorge Ben Jor's "Taj Mahal" was on the only Ben record released in the UK up to now; came out on Island thanks to Richard Williams. Hi everybody.
DeleteMany thanks for an interesting compilation, SitarSwami. I dimly recall hearing "Solitary Man" by ND and then associating that with the same guy who seemed to be cropping up with songs for other people, like Lulu and the Monkees.I imagine I first heard him on Radio Luxembourg which sometimes featured US hits. Perhaps it was the covers that raised (limited) UK interest in "Solitary Man".
ReplyDelete