I’m listening to the new Neil Diamond record “Home Before Dark” right now. You can listen to a stream of the entire record at Spinner.
Neil Diamond, I wasn’t a big fan when I was growing up. When I was a teenager, in the ’70s, Neil was still making hit records but, I kind of thought of him as the musical equivalent of the middle aged guy that drove a Firebird and showed up at the party with booze and trying to score with chicks that were just getting out of high school.
Then, I went to see “The Last Waltz” at the Tivoli on Delmar in St. Louis. The movie had been out for a while and it was on a double bill with the dreadful “No Nukes” concert film. “No Nukes” was first and the place was filled with aging hippies who were smoking pot and drinking Boone’s Farm. They were loud and boisterous and cheering like they were at the actual “No Nukes” concert. Pretty harmless stuff.
“The Last Waltz” came on and it was the main event. So, this crowd was partying pretty good by that time and the atmosphere was kind of contagious. I had not been to more than a few concerts in my life, at this point but, this movie theater really was taking on the concert vibe. It was pretty raucous, like a club.
Then, Neil Diamond came out to sing “Dry Your Eyes” and the crowd turned. They started booing and throwing F bombs around; they were heckling! At a movie! At first, it was kind of funny but, as the song went on, it seemed ridiculous that people would be verbally insulting a guy in a movie. It wasn’t a bad song and it wasn’t a bad performance. I’ll tell you this, I just sat through the whole “No Nukes” debacle and what Neil Diamond was certainly not as bad as a lot of that jive. So, I started silently rooting for old Neil. I mean, if all those people hated him, he couldn’t be that bad, right?
I’m not saying it made me a Neil Diamond fan but, after that movie, I didn’t just dismiss him anymore. If I’m driving down the road and “Cherry, Cherry” comes on, I turn it up, you know?
Anyway, I’m listening to “Home Before Dark” right now, first time through as I’m writing. So, I’m not going to get into analyzing the songwriting because, I have to listen to something several times before I’m in that mode. The first time through, I’m listening more to performance and production.
The producer, of course, is Rick Rubin. Now, there aren’t a whole lot of producers around, who I’m going to go out of my way to check out but, Rubin is one. I’m always interested in hearing what he is up to. He is a master of compression. He makes things sound big by resisting the temptation to add layers of effects and arrangement. No doubling of acoustic guitar parts and big reverb on vocals, it sounds bigger without it. That’s one reason for the success of “Hurt”. It was a simple arrangement but, it held it’s ground on the radio with all the hyper-mastered stuff. The trick is in getting the good performance, a solid signal and compression. And the trick works with Neil Diamond the same way it did with Cash. It puts the listener up close and personal with the voice.
“Another Day (That Time Forgot)” is a duet with Natalie Maines. Natalie comes in on the second verse and I swear it’s the best her voice has ever sounded. Rubin has the touch. This song should be a radio hit.
And, Diamond is out working the record too. He did the big American Idol thing last week and next he’s doing a MySpace concert (Brooklyn Vegan has details here).
Neil gets a bit rhymy from time to time and he cops the melody from “Tom Dooley” on the bridge of “If I don’t See You Again” but, like I said, I’m going to withhold judgment on the songwriting during the first run through. Sometimes the stuff that sounds trite the first time, seems brilliant later on and, the opposite can be true as well.
All in all, I’ve enjoyed listening on a humid spring night. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.
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Tags: "Home Before Dark", acoustic guitar, cherry cherry, Guitar, Music, neil diamond, Rick Rubin, songwriting
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com wrote,
I guess it matters very much the point of view and the moment. It’s like that wrong person in the wrong place thing. If you have the mood and the atmosphere, you may like a lot of stuff that you don’t actually enjoy too much. This is how I started listening rock music even if when I was about 15 I totally rejected it!!! Damn!
Ovidiu - GuitarFlame.com’s last blog post..Why I love my guitar
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 4:23 am
Sans Direction wrote,
Rubinize: (verb) to re-establish an established and older artist with the younger and hipper audience.
Rubin’s not the only one to rubinize people. Jack White rubinized Loretta Lynn with Van Lear Rose, and Marty Stuart was starting to rubinize Porter Waggoner when he died. I still need to get Wagonmaster.
Was “Walk This Way” Rubin’s first rubinization?
It’s my understanding that, when Last Waltz came around, Robbie Robertson was Neil’s producer and trying to rubinize him. Obviously, that attempt failed.
Personally, I like Neil Diamond. To my ears, he’s like a Bob Dylan who went to the Brill Building instead of the East Village, so there’s always a pop influence that Zimmy never had. Part of the appeal of Dylan was that he’s rock’n'roll like I said yesterday: below a certain age, you don’t get it, and above a certain age he’s too loud. And sometimes you didn’t get it. Neil Diamond is not rock’n'roll because he’s mostly accessable by all ages, so the hippies thought he was wack. Or whatever word hippies had for wack.
I’m the Dad in a family of five. Non-voting members are 13, 10 and 6, and everyone else absolutely loved Neil Diamond. I just kinda like him.
Evidently, Neil said to Zimmy something like “They’re my audience. I own them!” when he got off the stage. Nobody really believed it, not even Mike D’s uncle (really!), but I like that attitude. “There’s something happening here and you don’t get it. Do you, Mr. Dylan?” I gotta say that, of all his song, why did he ever choose “Dry Your Eyes”? Not his solid gold hit.
And, was that in the Tivoli? (I think.) I believe that’s where I saw Stop Making Sense about 10 years later.
Sans Direction’s last blog post..He Likes To Make A Livin’ Runnin’ ‘Round
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Pribek wrote,
“I guess it matters very much the point of view and the moment.” Yeah, I get that Ovidiu, one moment in time, can be responsible a lifelong opinion.
“why did he ever choose “Dry Your Eyes”?” I believe it was from the record that Robertson produced which was fairly current at the time.
I vaguely remember that there was some media attention (probably Rolling Stone mag.) devoted to conflict about Diamond’s appearance in the film and, it must have colored my reaction because it seemed clear that the audience was buying in to that hype.
“Rubinize: (verb) to re-establish an established and older artist with the younger and hipper audience.” I don’t know..is the goal to establish an older artist with the younger and hipper audience or, try to make a proper record and the younger, hipper audience is a result of doing it right?
I can see the connection between Rubin’s success with Cash and the Loretta and Porter records following in the wake. I got to listen to the records more thoroughly to continue down that path, I think as I think about it.
The Tivoli-I haven’t been to that area in quite a while. It was on Delmar and, I believe in U. City. There were a couple of used record stores on the same block, Vintage Vinyl and Wuxtry’s, and a Peaches store too. Great place to find music.
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Gary Grainger wrote,
Damn! I just got home to find this Neil Diamond CD on the mat. Push it into the player, time to check a few blogs. Lo and behold, you’re listening to the same thing too! I’ll save my deepest thoughts for the review that’ll appear on my site, but I agreed to review it because Rick Rubin is involved as well as Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers. I’ve never been a great Neil Diamond fan - but I am liking this disc upon first hearing - Another Day has just finished and it is a beautiful thing!
Gary Grainger’s last blog post..Poster Art
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 7:04 am
Sans Direction wrote,
I was a freshman in high school and got dropped off and picked up by Mom when I went, so I really don’t know what else was there. I was a Lindbergh kid, between Tesson Ferry and LeMay Ferry roads, if that places four years of my life in your mind.
I get where you’re going with the “proper album”, but to accept that, you’d have to convince me that Blood, Sweat and Tears and Folsom Prison are not “proper albums”. They’re not Rock albums, sure, but I find it hard to accept that as a ding against them. You’d also have to convince me that Johnny toured on American Recordings, rather than just playing the show in 1994 that he would’ve done in 1992 before meeting Rick Rubin. Everything I’ve heard says, besides a gig or two in the Viper Room, this isn’t true.
I love the American CDs. I like Van Lear Rose. I thought June Carter Cash’s last CD, Wildwood Flower, was painful to listen to because she just couldn’t find the notes, but I’m glad that Randy Scruggs made the effort. But I can tell that they were more than anything else crossover attempts.
Sans Direction’s last blog post..He Likes To Make A Livin’ Runnin’ ‘Round
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Sans Direction wrote,
Gary, there’s nothing that doesn’t become ten times better the moment Mike and Benmont step in the studio. Metal Machine Music would jump to #1 on the Billboard charts with Tench and Campbell.
OK, maybe not that far…..
Sans Direction’s last blog post..He Likes To Make A Livin’ Runnin’ ‘Round
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Pribek wrote,
Looking forward to hearing your take on it Gary.
Sans, I’m not going to try and convince you that “Blood, Sweat and Tears” and “Folsom Prison” weren’t proper records because I don’t feel that way. I’m not trying to dismiss any earlier work.
The record I’m most familiar with from the American Recordings series is “The Man Comes Around”. I don’t think of it as a rock record.
I recognized some similar recording techniques on the Neil Diamond set with a cursory listening.
There is no set of rules for a producer-artist relationship and, unless you are in the room there is no way to know how much input comes from either side. But, you can, sometimes over a body of work, recognize some similar ideas, a lot of times technical things, and get some notion of how a producer functions.
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Sans Direction wrote,
If you were my friend and you thought that, with a little prodding, I might like an artist, even if that artist isn’t exactly my style, wouldn’t you try to find the songs that would appeal to me and try to steer away from the things I might like?
Rick Rubin’s my friend, is all, and he spent five albums trying to reintroduce me to Johnny Cash. I have no problem with that. I don’t consider it “selling out” or anything like that.
Considering the art direction, the label, the choice of venue, the addition of a Danzig song to Johnny’s playlist, I think it’s clear that it was Rick’s desire to bring Johnny to a young, hip and affluent audience. The old, square and poor had known all about the Man in Black for years, and the Nashville labels dropped him because of it. I don’t consider it a bad thing that Rick was telling Gen X. My friend Rick got me into Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Jayhawks before that. He’s a friend with good taste. I don’t know that I would’ve ever gone back and got the Folsom and San Quentin discs or heard the Blood, Sweat and Tears recording without the prompting of American Recordings.
Part of the problem is the repackaging of inferior versions of earlier hits. Much of what you’d see in the stores under his name are lame hits packages and not proper albums. Proper albums were a part of it. But without the rest of it, without an extreme revision of the sound, without a strong and striking design, and without the money to get ads in Spin and Stone and MTV, without bringing in the people who buy records, it wouldn’t have worked.
And wouldn’t you know, Man Comes Around is the one American Cash disc I don’t have on my computer right now. But I recall the flow of fast songs and slow songs to work more like a rock album. C’est la vie.
(Why am I listening to the Residents right now?)
Sans Direction’s last blog post..He Likes To Make A Livin’ Runnin’ ‘Round
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Gary Grainger wrote,
If you’re listening to Eskimo I hope you’re well wrapped up!
Gary Grainger’s last blog post..Poster Art
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Don Knots and the Cat-Scene-Investigators wrote,
Re: Signatures added in recordings by those present — i.e. rubinizations… which in my following examples could be called Deesifications, and Jackson-factions….
I feel like I can say this now that we are all grown up: Pribek has a signature that appears in all his pickin’. I knew if I ever said anything he might get too mindful of it and have a brain cramp when he hears himself doing it… because as it has been over the years before, it comes off like he doesn’t realize he does it — using the reverbnation tracks and time signatures in sidebar:
1:29 and 4:08 “Trouble Ain’t Over…”
3:15, 3:26 and sort of ends on one at 5:24 “MUNK” (occurring right after Wurlitzer solo)
2:18, “Rule of Seven”
In a music composition that you guys do, I say the signature is a link in a chain-drive capable of reverse and forward. That signature “lick, chop, pluck, run” is not necessarily a weak link. But it can be if it is not done properly.
I never know who writes the songs, because it is not my interest to find out. Therefore in my subjectivity, some songs by Neil Diamond are outstanding, and works with Diamond’s raspy baritone to a tine, like a Hasidic diamond cutter on the job. But when a song is not of that cut, well I have to turn the damn thing off, quickly.
This one little funk triad of Pribek’s seems to link up everything for me, but I am prejudiced. Here follow more examples of Jack’s wainscot lick –
0:49, 1:38, “Cannonball”
3:01 and 4:50 on the fade out NOTE: “Country Mile” will give a listener a source of where it might have started… truncated wrist deadened chords [I forget what we used to call it]
0:37 [not truncated], then like at 1:35 and throughout “Soul Searchin’” I think this is a whammy version introduces background singers upbeat and to downbeat of syncopated lead singer
I’ll end here…. Any questions — no?
Survey:
This information….
____Made me wretch and hurl
____I would have rather been hugging my guitar than reading it
____is girl stuff [for you Jayne]
____was very informing and I look forward to the apocalypse
Don Knots and the Cat-Scene-Investigators’s last blog post..Slumber itis
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Pribek wrote,
OK Sans, your point is well taken. Surely, some of Rubin’s value as a producer is the fact that he has the ability to deliver an audience. “Man Came Around” was a record that I studied in some depth, over a period of several days not long after it’s release. At the time, I was in the talking stage of working on a record and the discussion at one point was about the idea of doing a similar “stripped down” sort of treatment. So, I listened pretty closely to how Rubin used compressors and how things lay in the stereo field. Listening on studio monitors at home and I even took into the studio and listened to it there. When I’m listening that way the work stands separate from the marketing and, I thought that what Rubin did there was a hell of a good job. It would have been a hell of a good piece of work on a technical level but, the performance was brilliant as well and I have to think that the care Rubin took to make it that right had an impact on the performance.
Speaking of picking a record apart and regarding 1:29 and 4:08, 3:15, 3:26 etc…those little pick scrapes and such well…I guess I do more of that than I’m aware of PD. A lot of times those things don’t work well when recording but, a producer like Lou Whitney has a good hang on mic. placement, pre amps and compression as well-you can’t eq those things to make them sound good and you can’t eq them out.
Link | May 7th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Sans Direction wrote,
Of course I agree on the technical aspects, to the extent I’m not merely bowing to your greater experience with recording.
Sans Direction’s last blog post..He Likes To Make A Livin’ Runnin’ ‘Round
Link | May 8th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Pat Darnell and Friends wrote,
Let me see if I can make this Amicable to all you’se
Commentary Part I
And Sans I bow to the violin, let me explain my-seeelf:
There were these tenuous nights in my past, and I was between marriages, when I had made the decision to subsist for one year on alcoholic beverages and carrots, living in a totally quiet small town, way off the beaten path. Then after a year, I would return to my new love interest and wed her, Lord willin’ ,as I certainly was willin’. Isn’t that romantic?
Well, after meeting Pribek he learned that there was always a twenty-four pack in my fridge, so he would happen by and leave a post-it that he had been over. And he is courteous, so there were always two beers and all the carrots left in there for me after work.
The reason of this clip is not about alcohol, because I gave it up after my year and Pribek so too has swept out all solvents, as I catch up with him twelve years later. The point is his courteous nature.
He had this blues band called the Fugitives [because "Sax and Violins" was taken], that doubled for country when Bill the Hat was available. Five piece band, reliable folks, could play anything, true musicians all. Guitarist Ron [names escape me] played lots of pedal stuff, and could roll into jazzy space cowboy solos that defy description and gravity, while Jack and bassist lay back. Normal stuff, except Ron could really augment… one time I clapped loudly after Ron gave up the ghost on one solo, as he nodded back to the singer. Then Ron looked at me with the most puzzled expression, no one had ever applauded his effort?
So that is the courtesy factor in band situations, that is so missing throughout music culture today: hangin’ back, applauding the soloist, and nodding to the audience. It is a year I learned to listen better, because Jack would follow Ron and introduce the next layer with one of those “pick scrapes” I call triads. So what? Hey, that was an education for me who learned music as a stage band clarinet dude. Our conductor always clicked the music stand three times to get our attention. So it got my attention, eh.
The pick scrape of Pribek is a percussion, like a cymbal crash that introduces his Tele version of what Ron just said, and he is coming despite all you’se unappreciative skuffling, waitress grabbing doo-wops — who should be clapping for my brother in arms, Ron…!! When you gonna wake up? See why I am happy to hear some of those credential pick scrapes on the album?
“I hate that…” once said Jack. He sat in with a group of old swing band cowboys with Martins, and as he pushed their envelope… he did one of those pick scrapes leading into shuckster licks, and well the old guys started following him like sheep “walkin’ on their hind legs,” while Jack was wanting them to just do their thing, and let him rest a while from leading. Jack, don’t be so humble, they aren’t scrapes, they are three distinct notes.
Commentary Part II
Leadership courtesy is what I am preaching today. Call me Poindexter, but this is Mothers’ Day Weekend and I would like to remind you reading this– if you have leadership qualities and are courteous, it is probably due your God-sent mothers. [you guessed it; I am correlating pick scrapes to Mothers' Day] Pick up that phone and let her know it’s getting done! My Mother led me to music, God bless her octogenarian self.
Yes, I appeal today that Heaven-sent are all parents, and have dealt with us on earth as best they are able. As parents your selves, you must surely be aware of this volunteer-ism known as Mom and Dad. I wish all within earshot to hear a Pick Scrape Triad right now prompting everyone — applaud all the Mammies this weekend!! Nuff said, “’nuff.”
Love and hugs to all, Pat Darnell and friends, and all left feet.
Pat Darnell and Friends’s last blog post..How can I Safely and Effectively….
Link | May 9th, 2008 at 9:58 am
Sans Direction wrote,
“M is for the mudflaps I put on my pickup truck
O is for the oil I put on my hair
T is for T-bird
H is for Hen
E is for Einstein’s theory of Relativity, and
R is for Redneck Mother!”
Sans Direction’s last blog post..He Likes To Make A Livin’ Runnin’ ‘Round
Link | May 9th, 2008 at 11:52 am