Neil Diamond - Moods (1972)

There's an old saying in show business that when you put on a show, you have a hell of an opening, coast for awhile, and have a hell of a close.  Moods, Neil Diamond's eighth album and final LP before leaving Uni Records for Columbia, seems to have been concocted on that premise.  It opens with "Song Sung Blue," an introspective expression of how a song develops and evolves, and it closes with "Morningside," an achingly beautiful elegy of an old carpenter's death whose handcrafted table is a legacy bequeathed to his ungrateful children.  Much of everything in between, however, is Neil coasting.

Moods is crafted like a song cycle, and it shows a great deal of care and ambition with some beautiful orchestral arrangements and intricate acoustic guitar riffs, but too many of the songs are burdened by simplistic lyrics and asinine subject matter.  Tunes like "Porcupine Pie," which imagines a dinner of the roadkill main course complemented by vanilla soup (a double scoop, please, and don't forget the chicken ripple ice cream!), and "Gitchy Goomy," a bit of nonsense Neil wrote for his then two-year-old son with aimless words that don't make sense but are meant to sound fun (but only do sound fun if you're a two-year-old), don't even have memorable melodies.  (And there's nothing really cute about the Native American name for Lake Superior.)  Diamond's attempts at soul and gospel are equally inept; "High Rolling Man" and "Walk On Water" don't benefit from the choirs backing Diamond's lead vocals, as the words to both ditties are thinner than the paper they were written on. Ain't it right?  I said, ain't it right? Ain't it right?  (And the less said about his bilingual "Canta Libre," the better.)

Geez, what does it say about an LP whose best cuts include a pair of brief instrumentals, "Theme" and "Prelude in E Major," the latter being the lead-in into the aforementioned "Morningside?"  It's easy to understand, after listening to Moods, while everyone thought Clive Davis was crazy to spend $4 million to bring Diamond over to Columbia.

There are two standouts in the middle of this LP.   "Captain Sunshine" takes advantage of the neo-classical music around which Moods is centered to create a dreamy ballad worthy of comparison to Rodriguez's "Sugar Man," and the much-maligned "Play Me" - forever cursed to be identified as the song about the songs she sang to him and "brang" to him - is actually a charming number that looks at the yin-yang of human relationships through the metaphor of composing music.  The music itself is an irresistible repetitive acoustic guitar riff (provided by session man Richard Bennett) supporting a beautiful string section.  If Diamond had changed the words or the verb tenses and maybe hadn't sweetened the sound so much, "Play Me" would rank as one of his greatest achievements.  Because even though Neil Diamond got and may still get derision for inventing a new past-tense word that no Delta bluesman would be given a hard time for (critics would have celebrated a blues lyric like "She done brung me a song" as profound), he's even had fans come up to him and say they wish he'd worked more on the song's words.

While Moods has its defenders, the best evidence of Neil Diamond as a pop singer-songwriter with classical flourishes can be found elsewhere.  In fact, it can be found on his follow-up album, his Columbia debut - the eponymously titled soundtrack for the movie Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which was successful as the movie itself was not, vindicating Davis' then record-setting $4 million deal with Diamond.  And despite some fine moments, Moods is still a weed in Neil Diamond's underrated and impressive career.  Bob Dylan had Self-Portrait, Elton John had Blue Moves, Neil Young had Everybody's Rockin' . . . every garden grows one.                   

(This is my last review for awhile, as there's too much going on in the world right now for me to bother with record reviews.  I just hope we're not at war with Denmark by the time you read this.)  

Music Video Of the Week - June 3, 2022

"Desirée" by Neil Diamond  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week- January 29, 2021

"Cracklin' Rosie" by Neil Diamond  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Twilight Of the Gods

You knew it was going to happen eventually.

Elton John, Paul Simon, and Neil Diamond, three of the biggest pop stars of the seventies,  are getting ready to leave the stage now that they're in their own seventies.  Elton John, who turns 71 this month, and Paul Simon, 75, have announced that their current tours will likely be their last.  Neil Diamond, 77, has announced he has Parkinson's disease, and so he's not going to be performing any more either.

Diverse though they seem to be on the surface, they all have one thing in common.  They're rooted in the singer-songwriter pop tradition, first developed by Neil Sedaka and his songwriting partner Howard Greenfield in the early sixties and expanded upon through the acoustic-based sound typified by Carole King (who started out writing songs for others with her husband Gerry Goffin), Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Jim Croce, Randy Newman, and of course, Crosby, Stills, and Nash.  Some singer-songwriter music rocked, and some of it was mellow, but all of it took songwriting to a more intimate and personal level, allowing its practitioners to tell stories, share their feelings, and even come up with some brilliant satire (Croce was especially adept at this, as is Newman).

Elton John, Paul Simon and Neil Diamond have all demonstrated the versatility of the singer-songwriter movement.  Elton and his lyrics-writing partner Bernie Taupin leaned toward pop-rock and made rock and roll more eclectic and more fun.  Simon, a folk singer who helped create folk-rock in the mid-sixties while working with Art Garfunkel, melded the personal with the socially conscious in his solo work and expanded farther beyond his coffeehouse roots, incorporating reggae, gospel, Andean folk, salsa, South African mbaqanga, and Brazilian sounds into his music.  Diamond was unapologetically in the vein of Tin Pan Alley, though even Cole Porter wouldn't have come up with something as sly as "Cracklin' Rosie" or as moody as "Song Sung Blue."  They helped make the 1970s a diverse decade musically.

I note all this about the singer-songwriters of the past because, if you've had the misfortune of hearing hit radio lately, you know you're not going to find the same variety and quality in today's singer-songwriters . . . largely because there aren't that many around to begin with.  Most songs today are written by two or three hacks and given to the top stars to record, and the songs have carefully calculated hooks and standardized words so that they sound familiar . . that is, like the most recent song to hit number one.  And what few pop singer-songwriters are around aren't exactly inspiring. Taylor Swift, despite being known for her personal style of songwriting, still relies a lot of outside hack material herself, and on the other side of the Atlantic, we have Ed Sheeran, who can't think of much better to sing about than the shape of his girlfriend's body.  True, there are younger singer-songwriters worth mentioning, like Nicole Atkins, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, and Josh Ritter, but unless you live in a metropolitan area with a college-indie radio station on the low end of the FM dial, you're not likely to hear them on the radio much.

The music business hasn't been interested in developing another Elton, Simon, or Neil - Diamond or Young - because it wants to economize in this changing music environment where entertainment companies are bigger and return on investment in new music acts is smaller. Cultivating lightweight, cookie-cutter pop stars offers a guaranteed profit.  So, while people talk about the diversity of today's performers - meaning, a lot fewer white men like the septuagenarians I've just been talking about - there's no diversity of musical style or content.  In fact, today's pop has little of either.

So, no, we're never going to see or hear the likes of Elton John, Paul Simon, or Neil Diamond ever again, but we still have the records, and - as long as 70s on 7 still keeps broadcasting on Sirius XM - the radio play.   

Elected

Once again, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted new members into its roster, and this year their list of honorees is really . . . not awful! Heavier rock is represented here by Alice Cooper, and Tom Waits and Neil Diamond represent the influence of the singer-songwriter on the form; indeed, Waits and Diamond were responsible for songs that produced some pretty good pop-rock from performers who covered them.

The idiocies, though, remain: Leon Russell, who was a recording artist in his own right with classic albums such as Leon Russell and the Shelter People, was inducted for his session work with other artists. Specifically, he was given the Rock Hall’s "Award for Recording Excellence," which, the hall says, replaces the sideman category. Funny, but the Rock Hall's official Web site still refers to Russell as an inductee in the "sidemen" category. And while the Hall of Fame found time to induct Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman and Specialty Records founder Art Rupe in the non-performer category (okay, Rupe's label did give us Little Richard and Lloyd Price), they haven't inducted Beatles manager Brian Epstein. Still. I mean, this man got the Fabs a recording contract with the Parlophone label of EMI - "the greatest recording organization in the world" - at a time when most labels, including other EMI labels, wouldn't even grant them an audition. (Decca did, of course, and on the basis of their audition tapes, I have to admit that I probably wouldn't have signed the Beatles then either. But that's another post.)

And once again, as I always do at this time, I have to re-iterate my annual grievances: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is controlled by a bunch of rock critics who induct performers based on the interest in honoring "diversity" and on the idea that America is the center of the universe, thus conflating the major defect of the American left with that of the American right. So rappers get into this "rock and roll" hall of fame, and Madonna got in after being eligible for one nanosecond, bypassing Jeff Beck, Little Anthony and the Imperials, the Hollies, and other post-Madge inductees. No induction of foreign acts like Family (because Americans have never heard of them), Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel (ditto), Rush (Canadian '70s prog-metal band that appeals to far too many white male suburbanites), Jethro Tull (British '70s prog-folk-rock band that appeals to far too many white male suburbanites), or Fairport Convention (musically like Jethro Tull but with more critical acclaim, yet have sold far too few records to people of any race, gender or residential status to be taken seriously). And Lady Gaga will get in ahead of all of them.

Wait, how did Alice get in? :-D

Expect the same rant, same time, next year. This year, I take a look at the five Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performer inductees for 2011 . . . and Leon Russell.

Alice Cooper. Among the performer inductees for 2011, Alice Cooper may not be the most deserving. But he (or they, as the name Alice Cooper originally applied to the group that the man born Vincent Furnier fronted from 1969 to 1974) is certainly the most fun. "I'm Eighteen" is one of the great teenage rock anthems, with its slyly ironic lyrics and intense, crunching guitar riffs. Late adolescence never sounded better. The humor of "School's Out" and "Elected" and the sneering anger of "No More Mr. Nice Guy" are about as rebellious as mainstream seventies rock got.

Neil Diamond. Full disclosure requires me to state that my mother is a huge Neil Diamond fan - a "Diamond Head," if you will - so I have some prejudice here in defending Diamond's induction. Not to mention the fact that my mother exposed me to his music so often, I have developed an immunity to him. :-D But, yes, while he did write "Play Me" and "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" (and remade The Jazz Singer), Diamond also wrote some of the greatest rock and roll songs of the late sixties and early seventies. Deep Purple covered "Kentucky Woman." The Monkees, with their recording of "I'm a Believer," made believers out of many listeners in the argument for Neil's rock credibility. And it's hard to make the argument against Diamond's induction into the Hall of Fame when you have his own recordings of "Cherry Cherry" and "Cracklin' Rosie," among other songs, to contend with. And fess up, folks; if not for the line about his chair not hearing him, don't you think "I Am, I Said" - a pop reworking of Descartian philosophy - would get more respect?

Dr. John. The Night Tripper of New Orleans is the most deserving of the 2011 inductees by a wide margin. What can you say about the artist legally known as Mac Rebbenack that hasn't already been said? He is more instrumental in bringing the spicy gumbo sounds of New Orleans music to a wide audience than anyone except Fats Domino. So why hadn't the Doctor been inducted sooner? I guess he was in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time. :-D

Darlene Love. She is the voice on so many great records from the early sixties and was one of those artists who kept rock and roll alive when popular music was largely stagnant and the closest we had to a rock and roll star was President Kennedy. So, yes, she belongs here.

Tom Waits. Waits's voice is no one's idea of pretty, but when you get past his heavy rasp and look at all of the songs he's responsible for, and when you consider all the notable covers they generated - records such as "Downtown Train" as recorded by Rod Stewart, "Ol' 55" as recorded by the Eagles, and "Jersey Girl" as recorded by Bruce Springsteen - well . . .. Well - it's the same thing with Neil Diamond's songs. You look at the list and think, Jesus Christ, look what he wrote! Here it is, a moment of Zen for Waits fan Jon Stewart.

And, oh yes . . .

Leon Russell. I appreciate his induction, but he should be in as a performer, not as a sideman. When you consider the distinctively sour, worldly, abrasive vocals he brought to his own songs and to covers of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and Rolling Stones tunes, you realize just how engaging and spirited Leon is as a frontman. And as a songwriter - "Delta Lady," "This Masquerade," "A Song For You," "Superstar" (with Bonnie Bramlett) - again, look at what he wrote! And that's just a list of songs famously covered by others. Need I bring up "Tightrope," "Lady Blue" (a hit for Leon in 1975) and "Home Sweet Oklahoma?"

Yes, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's directors are still foolish. But hey, as Leon might say, if it wasn't for bad, they'd be good.

And remember . . .. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was originally established to honor rock and roll pioneers but has since been expanded to include other popular styles. Yada, yada, yada . . ..