I don’t know if it’s true, because I’m not really old enough to remember the early, early 70s, but I’ve heard tell that a brief fad – post hula hoop; pre pet rock – was bumper stickers that said WAGNER ROCKS. I don’t know what that was about, ‘cause Wagner, as everybody knows, was a big c-cksucker, and I don’t mean that in the nice friendly gay sense of the word. One suspects that the WAGNER ROCKS movement was part of some pre-PMRC propaganda meant to turn the young hippie kids away from the sex and drugs culture embodied in the Bay City Rollers, Three Dog Night and The Osmonds, and on to something a little more culturally edifying, like the soundtrack to Nazi domination.

Whatever the meaning of all this WAGNER ROCKS nonsense, those bumper sticker folk were on to something, I think. They just had the wrong subject. And I’d like to find those people and let ‘em know that it’s time to try again, using the same public relations logic and effort, to turn on the masses to ... Neil Diamond. ‘Cause Diamond rocks, there’s no denying it.

Unfortunately, the double-cd HOT AUGUST NIGHT doesn’t really show off the myriad ways in which Diamond Rocks, because it’s a live album, and while Neil is a famously electric live performer, that sultry tenor-baritone of his really needs a good studio to shine.

But what this album lacks in production values it more than makes up for as a broad survey the many musical styles that Diamond has mastered, as well as it’s adept handling of the rather sensitive issue of masturbation. That’s right, masturbation. While other singer-songwriters of the era (Cat Stevens, Carly Simon, Carole King, James Taylor, Janis Ian) dealt mostly with themes like the bittersweet loss of love and innocence that mirrored the bittersweet climate of lost innocence in the political arena, Neil Diamond unabashedly came to the defense of the one activity in American life where a disheartened public could find solace: Slingin’ Jelly.

In a lot of ways, Diamond’s Hot August Nights, like The Who’s Tommy and Quadrephenia and Pink Floyd’s The Wall, was a concept album. And that concept is no more evident than right on the album cover, which depicts Diamond, on stage, engaged in a mock session of “Pat the Robertson.” (See, http://www.underwateramsterdam.com/Music.html#neil ). His favored term for self abuse -- “playing it” – is cleverly strewn about the entire album: Play me, play it now, you always came, and we’d play.” It’s freakin’ jerk-fest kids.

Bet Neil Diamond is also just about the music, man. So I’ll try to avoid comment on every one of his masturbation references on this album, even though almost every song addresses the subject in some way, even in just it’s title.

“Done Too Soon” (look, no comment) is Diamond’s contribution to the “string-o’-pop-culture-references-and/or-disjointed-rhymes” genre, originated by Bob Dylan (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”) and later popularized by SUPERTRAMP (“The Logical Song”), REM (“It’s The End Of The World as We Know It”) BILLY JOEL (“We Didn’t Start The Fire”) and INXS (“Mediate”):

Jesus Christ, Fanny Brice, Wolfie Mozart and Humphrey Bogart andGenghis Khan and On to H. G. Wells.

Ho Chi Minh, Gunga Din, Henry Luce and John Wilkes Booth
And Alexanders King and Graham Bell.

Ramar Krishna, Mama Whistler, Patrice Lumumba and Russ Colombo,
Karl and Chico Marx, Albert Camus.

E. A. Poe, Henri Rousseau, Sholom Aleichem and Caryl Chessman,
Alan Freed and Buster Keaton too

Wolfie Mozart. That one kills me. And I didn’t think anyone threw out the name Gunga Din, except my grandmother, when she’s saying things like “turn out the light; who do ya think ya are, Gunga Din? Which, I never really understood what that meant anyway.

With “Solitary Man” (wink) this album really gets goin’, as it should, since “Solitary Man” was Diamond’s first hit, way back in 1966. It’s a forlorn tale of faux-proud isolation befitting a man whose middle name is Leslie. Beautifully arranged and performed, both on the studio version and the concert version.

Emeril-like, Neil kicks it up a notch with the next song, “Cherry Cherry”, a relic from his years as a songwriter for THE MONKEES (for whom he drafted “I’m a Believer”), and it shows, with it’s youthful exuberance and poppy hooks. You can almost picture the concert audience either wagging their heads from side to side or bobbing up and down on bended knee (but not both).

Next, he carts out karaoke workhorse “Sweet Caroline”, Diamonds biggest hit, having reached number 4 on the charts back in 1969. And it must have been considered a pretty risque song at the time, what with references to “warm ... touching warm” a clear precursor to the 90s slang term “bumpin’ fuzzies.” For me, this song is meaningful for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that my karaoke mastery of it has nearly gotten me laid on several occasions. But equally important is that it is one of the three Neil Diamond songs that I have convinced others is really about masturbation.

“Porcupine Pie” frightens me, if only because of it's misogynistic subtext, but you are entitled to know that it’s the next song on the album.

“Red Red Wine,” you may be shocked to learn, was not written by UB40. But it was perfected by them. Nevertheless, Neil sings a non-Raggae version of the song, and it’s right there on the Hot August Nights album.

“Shilo” is perhaps the finest love song ever written to a dead puppy dog.

Shilo when I was young
I used to call your name
When no-one else would come
Shilo you always came
And we’d play

Makes you wanna cry.

The final song on disc one, “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” shows Diamond’s prescience, in that he clearly foresaw that, 20-odd years in the future, the soundtrack to PULP FICTION would really need one solid, morose ditty to hold together the otherwise haphazardly thrown together collection of 70's funk and late 60's guitar-driven surf music. Unfortunately, the version of “You’ll be a Woman” on this album is so abbreviated as to be almost non-existent.

Disc number two begins with part two of the Diamond triptych ode to jerking off: “Play Me.” This one, a slow ballad compared to “Sweet Caroline” is sung from the perspective of the lonely morning wood, cajoling, flattering and guilting its owner into a game of Assault on a Deadly Weapon:

She was morning
And I was night time
I one day woke up
To find her lying
Beside my bed
I softly said
Come take me
For I've been lonely
In need of someone
As though I'd done
Someone wrong somewhere
I don't know where
Come lately[?]
You are the sun
I am the moon
You are the words
I am the tune
Play me
Song she sang to me
Song she brang to me
Words that rang in me
Rhyme that sprang from me
Warmed the night
And what was right
Became me
You are the sun
I am the moon
You are the words
I am the tune
Play me

“Song Sung Blue” was a huge hit, but is exceedingly lame and patronizing. Those key characteristics are never more evident than on this album, where Diamond takes free reign of the concert album format to insult his audience with retarded banter about the power of song or something. Skip it.

“Cracklin’ Rosie” is Diamond’s final effort in the three-part Dishonorable Discharge Suite. Having addressed the subject from the perspective of the abusee, here Diamond rather ham-handedly addresses the subject from the abusers perspective. The title is a clear reference to “Rosie Palm and Her Five Sister”, but given the lyrics, and the absurd, overblown crescendo at the moment of truth, did we really need to have the theme spelled out for us.

Cracklin' Rosie, get on board
We're gonna ride till there ain't no more to go
Taking it slow
Lord, don't you know

Have me a time with a poor man's lady
Hitchin' on a twilight train
Ain't nothing there that I care to take along
Maybe a song
To sing when I want

Don't need to say please to no man for a happy tune
Oh, I love my Rosie child
She got the way to make me happy
You and me, we go in style

Cracklin' Rosie you're a store-bought woman
You make me sing like a guitar hummin'
So hang on to me, girl
Our song keeps runnin' on
Play it now Play it now Play it now, my baby

Cracklin' Rosie, make me a smile
God if it lasts for an hour, that's all right
We got all night
To set the world right

You got the way to make me happy
You and me, we go in style.

In conclusion, Neil Diamond’s Hot August Nights is an important album, addressing important issues with nuanced poetry, kick-a-s-s guitar licks and unrivaled vocal brillince.

Recommended: Yes