Wednesday, November 23, 2005
a few morsels before the feast: number one.
Neil Diamond: "Hell Yeah"
The Statue of Liberty's 100th birthday celebration was the greatest television show of all time. It was better than The Pitts. It was better than a billion Olympics. It was even better than that BBC news thing where Mark E. Smith makes that hilarious face. The best thing about it was Neil Diamond's stirring performance of his seminal classic "America". Neil Diamond's "America" makes every other song about America irrelevent. In my opinion we're a one-song country, and that song is "America".
12 Songs is Diamond's first posthumous record. Rick Rubin helped produce it, and finished it up after Neil's untimely passing. People think it's some sort of renaissance, but to me it just sounds like warmed-over Crooked Fingers. I like Crooked Fingers a lot, and if I wanted to listen to Crooked Fingers, I would listen to Crooked Fingers, not some washed-up old lounge singer. Washed-up old dead lounge singer. 12 Songs is for old ladies and little girls and dudes who don't have the stones to handle the monomythlogical rock of Crooked Fingers. Crooked Fingers is the purest and darkest of metals, reforged in unassuming singer-songwriter guise, and sailed forth to bring true poetry and beauty to the miserable, undeserving masses. On 12 Songs Neil Diamond is a mere shadow of that might, a lecherous boil upon the colossal bulk of Crooked Fingers' righteousness. There is no "America" here, no transcendent glory, no exalted symbology and patriotic anthropomorphism, just an old, dead man drooling haplessly into his morning laxative.
The only song worth hearing here is "Hell Yeah". It makes me want to hoist high my tankard of ale and drink deep from its bewitching bounty. For these four minutes, Mr. Diamond, you are momentarily spared my eternal enmity.
You can buy 12 Songs here, but beware the evils of rootkit.
Neil Diamond: "Hell Yeah"
The Statue of Liberty's 100th birthday celebration was the greatest television show of all time. It was better than The Pitts. It was better than a billion Olympics. It was even better than that BBC news thing where Mark E. Smith makes that hilarious face. The best thing about it was Neil Diamond's stirring performance of his seminal classic "America". Neil Diamond's "America" makes every other song about America irrelevent. In my opinion we're a one-song country, and that song is "America".
12 Songs is Diamond's first posthumous record. Rick Rubin helped produce it, and finished it up after Neil's untimely passing. People think it's some sort of renaissance, but to me it just sounds like warmed-over Crooked Fingers. I like Crooked Fingers a lot, and if I wanted to listen to Crooked Fingers, I would listen to Crooked Fingers, not some washed-up old lounge singer. Washed-up old dead lounge singer. 12 Songs is for old ladies and little girls and dudes who don't have the stones to handle the monomythlogical rock of Crooked Fingers. Crooked Fingers is the purest and darkest of metals, reforged in unassuming singer-songwriter guise, and sailed forth to bring true poetry and beauty to the miserable, undeserving masses. On 12 Songs Neil Diamond is a mere shadow of that might, a lecherous boil upon the colossal bulk of Crooked Fingers' righteousness. There is no "America" here, no transcendent glory, no exalted symbology and patriotic anthropomorphism, just an old, dead man drooling haplessly into his morning laxative.
The only song worth hearing here is "Hell Yeah". It makes me want to hoist high my tankard of ale and drink deep from its bewitching bounty. For these four minutes, Mr. Diamond, you are momentarily spared my eternal enmity.
You can buy 12 Songs here, but beware the evils of rootkit.
