Neil Diamond Bang Alternatives

If, like me, you recently picked up Neil Diamond's The Bang Years: 1966-1968 on CD and found yourself disappointed with the sound quality (personally I find it way too bright and compressed sounding), what are your alternatives?

Unfortunately, none of them are perfect. The very best I have heard this material sound, strangely enough, is on an LP compilation distributed exclusively by the Columbia House Record Club on the Frog King label in 1978. Back then a mere penny (or whatever the deal was in 1978) could get you excellent sounding versions of 12 of Neil's biggest hits for Bang Records. However, the versions on this compilation are not exactly the original hit versions of the songs. They are stereo remixes with some added overdubs. Still this LP, mastered by the great Bernie Grundman, sounds excellent and is very enjoyable to listen to even if it lacks a certain faithfulness to the punchy sounding 60s hits. There's more "space" between the sounds here than on the mono mixes, and the instruments and vocals sound highly resolved and articulated, whereas on the mono mixes you get a bit more of that squashed "wall of sound" effect.

A very similar LP called Classics: The Early Years was issued by Columbia in 1983, and later reissued on CD. The CD is still available. I can't vouch for the mastering of this title, but my understanding is that it mostly features the same mixes as the Frog King LP, with the exception of "Kentucky Woman" which is presented in a true stereo remix on the Frog King LP and in a fake stereo remix on Classics. But be warned, while the cover (somewhat misleadingly) says "Original Hit Recordings," these are definitely stereo remixes, not what you would have heard on the radio circa 1966-1973 when these songs originally charted. And more importantly, it only gets you 12 songs.

Another option that gets you more songs (21 in all) is the 1973 Bang Records 2 LP set Double Gold that I mentioned in my previous post. Unfortunately, I have trouble recommending this set on sonic grounds as well. Many (not all) of the tracks are featured in annoying "fake stereo" mixes that really don't sound very good.

Another good choice is the 3 CD In My Lifetime box set that was released by Sony in 1996. While it only features 11 of Diamond's Bang recordings, they are presented in their original mono single mixes and were mastered without the artificial brightening and excessive compression that mars the new set. Used copies of the box can be found cheaply, and of course you get many of the later hits like "Sweet Caroline," "Cracklin' Rosie" and "Forever In Blue Jeans" as well. I'm not crazy about all of the later material, but I still consider this an essential purchase. If the current CD only sounded as good as the Bang era cuts do on the box set, I would have been very happy.

Still that leaves you missing a lot of great songs from the Bang era. You could try picking up original mono pressings of Neil's first two albums The Feel Of Neil Diamond and Just For You. But finding original mono copies of these LPs in anything resembling good condition is a very difficult (not to mention pricey) proposition. Additionally, a few of the songs on the mono LPs feature different mixes from the hit single versions. Stereo copies are somewhat easier to find, but the original stereo mixes are drastically inferior to the later remixed versions. "Solitary Man" in particular features a horrible "ping-pong" stereo mix that really distracts from the song.

Which leaves us with.....

...collecting the original 45 RPM 7" singles. Many of them can still be found in excellent condition for reasonable prices. I've picked up a few already, and while no one will confuse these with fussy "audiophile" recordings, they sound great nonetheless. These songs were mastered loud (although not nearly as loud as the new CD) and have a "punchy" AM radio quality to them. While there is some distortion inherent to the mixes, it's a friendly, euphonic, analog, tube-driven kind of distortion, not the hard, brittle, digital sounding distortion I hear on the new CD (or perhaps it is a matter of the compression and bright EQ taking that euphonic tube distortion and making it sound hard and brittle... I'm afraid I can only speculate.) So while the original 45s have some distortion in them, they sound very exciting and alive, as did the best pop music of that era.

Of course there are frustrations with collecting 45s. Off center pressings are more the rule than the exception in my experience. Sometimes they look fine when examined visually, only to reveal serious damage when placed on the turntable. And, of course, listening to them will never be as easy as putting on a CD, or even an LP for that matter. Still, if you want the authentic sound of these hits, I think this is the only way to go.

Neil Diamond - The Bang Years 1966-1968

Neil Diamond's recordings for Bert Berns' Bang Records label have a tortured release history, so it is good to see the release of the 23 track The Bang Years: 1966-1968 CD on Sony Legacy, a long-promised, but much-delayed, collection. The set presents nearly all of Diamond's Bang recordings in their original, rockin' mono mixes (but omits two Bang era tracks, "Shot Down" and "Crooked Street," for reasons I am not entirely clear on).

I primarily know these songs through a 2 LP set released by Bang in 1973 called Double Gold. Double Gold, while containing some great music, is a fairly thorough butchering of Diamond's early hit records. It features a couple mono recordings, some of the inferior stereo mixes, some horrible sounding fake stereo remixes with annoying panning effects, and some mono recordings that have had (unnecessary) stereo overdubs added to them.

Confused? That's okay, someone named K.F. Louie has done an admirable job of sorting out the whole mess with a handy chart and track-by-track analysis. Many of the tracks were also re-released on Early Classics on the Frog King label and Classics: The Early Years on Columbia. These LPs featured remixed stereo recordings (also with added overdubs), and while they sound good in their own right, they're identifiably different from the classic "hit" versions of the songs. The In My Lifetime box set corrected some of these errors by presenting 11 Bang era tracks, plus an alternate take of "Cherry, Cherry" in their original mono mixes with no overdubs, and sounding very good indeed.

Despite its sonic flaws, Double Gold presents a very compelling portrait of the artist as a young man. "Cherry, Cherry," "Solitary Man," "The Boat That I Row," "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon," "I'm A Believer,"  "Red, Red Wine," "Kentucky Woman," and others are classic tracks, strongly rooted in the Brill Building tradition, but also seriously rock and roll as well. Even if you think (as I do) that Diamond went off-track later in his career, the greatness of this material is hard to deny, and Diamond more than earned his reputation as "The Jewish Elvis" with these recordings.

As much as I would like to say this new Sony/Legacy release finally rights all the historical wrongs done to Diamond's Bang recordings, I can't quite bring myself to say so. The music has been mastered too loud and too bright, as if the producer decided the material needed to sound more "contemporary." Despite these flaws, it still sounds much better than most of the material on Double Gold, but unfortunately not as good as the same material on In My Lifetime.

It looks like I'm going to need to track down mono versions of the Bang LPs, The Feel of Neil Diamond and Just For You, if I want to hear this material sounding its best. I guess there are worse things I could have to do.

Update: The more I listen to this, the less enamored I am with the sound quality. There is a very hard, edgy quality to it that I do not find appealing at all. It sounds to me like the upper midrange has been boosted a lot, creating a sound that is excessively bright. I picked up a few 45s and they sound much nicer. The CD is more dynamically compressed than the 45s, but not by a huge amount (typically around 2 to 3 dB louder on average).  I guess it was too much to expect them to get this 100% right after such a long wait, especially given the checkered release history of this material.

Neil's liner notes are very thoughtful and frank. He talks at length about the critical role Ellie Greenwich (RIP) and Jeff Barry twice played in getting his career started, showing faith in his abilities when no one else did. He also gives them the credit they deserve for the critical role they played in the studio to help shape these songs into hit singles.

Girl, You'll Be Drinking A Coca-Cola Soon (Neil Diamond Coke Jingles)

I remember a long time time ago, when such things seemed really important to me, having a debate with a friend of mine over whether there there was some objective criteria for calling music "good" or "bad." My friend's opinion was that there were objective grounds for making such statements, even if he lacked the ability to articulate the criteria explicitly. He pointed to music that appeared in commercials as an example of music that is "objectively bad." My own take was that there was no defensible objective criteria for judging music. In my view, there was only power. I argued that those with access to power have historically been able to subject their notions of "good" and "bad" on those with less access to power. "Taste" in my view was nothing more than an instrument of social control, and I viewed championing music judged to be in "poor taste" as a heroic act of resistance against a repressive society. (You see, I couldn't just like Cat Butt and Mudhoney because they rocked out righteously, there had to be some deeper reason.)

In retrospect I can see that both arguments are hopelessly naïve. But I also think a better rejoinder to my friend would have been to play these Coca-Cola jingles by Neil Diamond, because they're awesome.

Forever In Blue Jeans

Michael Tomasky at The Guardian asks his readers to "Name us a song or two that all "right-thinking people" would dismiss as sentimental but that you love. And be bold and unapologetic!"

I'll start off with Neil Diamond's "Forever In Blue Jeans" a top 20 hit from 1979, seen here performed in concert for a CBS special in 2009. I could list you hundreds of reasons why all "right thinking people" should not only dismiss this bit of sentimental drivel, but should actively hate it. Instead, I'll limit myself to eight very compelling reasons:

1) This is not a track by the (relatively) cool, early, "Jewish Elvis" Neil Diamond. Nor is it by the Rick Rubin rehabilitated Neil Diamond either. No, this is the by the full-on, rhinestone-jumpsuit-wearing, 70s schlockmeister, Neil Diamond.

2) The fact that the track appears on the You Don't Bring Me Flowers LP should be enough for anyone with even a modicum of "taste" in music to write the song off without even hearing it.

3) The song was used to advertise actual blue jeans. By the Gap.

4) It's been performed on American Idol (by a white guy with dreadlocks no less).

5) It was produced by Bob Gaudio (of The Four Seasons, who is largely to blame for foisting the reactionary Jersey Boys on an unsuspecting world).

6) It features one of those awful disco-synth string arrangements that were already passe by 1979.

7) Oh my God. Look at those middle-aged white people in Diamond's audience try to dance. They probably paid over $500 a head and got all dressed up to sing along to a song about...

8) Most damning of all, this song belongs to the hideous musical sub-genre that features fabulously wealthy people singing about how great it is to be poor. Like John Lennon asking us to "imagine no possessions," Diamond's own life is so far from the simple, happy existence he celebrates in the song, it's laughable.

"Money talks,
But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk,
And long as I can have you here with me,
I'd much rather be,
Forever in blue jeans"

Look Neil, if money is so bad (or at the very least inessential to happiness) I'd be happy to take some of your many millions off your hands for you. Seriously.

I could probably make a relatively compelling argument that songs like this are foisted on us by the entertainment industry to keep the resentment of society's "have-nots" from boiling over into something like a revolution (or at the very least a less regressive tax code). After all, if Hollywood movies, hit pop songs and tabloids teach us nothing else, it's that the rich are never as happy as us simple folk. So maybe I shouldn't even bother to notice that the top 5% in the United States own something like 60% of the country's wealth, while the other 95% of us fight it out over what's left over. After all, all that money hasn't made those fancy rich folks happy, so why should I care? I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans. Yeah, right.

And yet, I love this song.

"Honey's sweet,
But it ain't nothing next to baby's treat,"

First of all, it's hard not to love a song that slips lyrics so casually obscene and vulgar into a tune that gets airplay on easy listening stations and CBS television specials. There's just something about that I respect.

I'm not stupid. I know Neil Diamond doesn't remotely live the lyrics to this song. He's an artist. A performer. An entertainer. A showbiz personality. But the fact is, I really can relate to the song's sentiment. I've made certain decisions in my life that have likely minimized the amount of money I earn, but maximized the amount of time I get to spend with my wife and kids. I wouldn't have it any other way. I was listening to this song on my iPod earlier today waiting for my wife and kids, thinking about the role of sentimentality in music. Just as the song ended I spotted my kids running towards me, just genuinely and totally happy to see me. I feel like I've done okay for myself. I really would much rather be forever in blue jeans.

Other sentimental songs I love:

"Giddy Up Go" and "Teddy Bear" by Red Sovine
I don't think music gets much more sentimental than Red Sovine's signature trucking songs. Both songs feature spoken-word vocals and it sounds like 'ole Red might choke up at any moment. "Giddy Up Go" tells the story of a trucker who discovers that his long-lost son is also a trucker now. "Teddy Bear" is about how a young paraplegic boy whose truck drivin' father has perished in an accident finally gets his wish to ride in a truck thanks to CB radio and some big hearted truckers. You would be hard pressed to find more blatantly emotionally manipulative music than these two songs, and yet I find them strangely sublime.

"Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro
This makes "worst song ever" lists about as often as any other song I can think of. It's a totally maudlin song about a guy who loses his girl to suicide. It even features a Christmas puppy. And yet it is so totally over-the-top and excessive in its sentimentality that I can't help but love it.

"Little Green Apples" by Roger Miller
Written by Bobby Russell (the same guy who wrote "Honey"). This song actually chokes me up. It's about a guy whose wife is tolerant of his flaws, and if that ain't lovin' him, "God didn't make little green apples and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime." It would be easy to dismiss the song as sexist, except that it is so clear that the protagonist really appreciates everything his wife does for him. It's about feeling like you don't really deserve the love your significant other gives, but being grateful for receiving it anyway. It's another sentiment I can relate to. Also, Roger Miller was a genius.

"The Most Beautiful Girl" by Charlie Rich
Everybody's supposed to hate the sappy "Countrypolitan" sound of the 70s, but I've always loved this song. And as you can see I have a soft spot for sappy country music.

"Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney and Wings
I understand why a lot of people hate McCartney, I really do. Still, I find this answer to his critics pretty convincing. That throbbing Macca bassline helps.

"A Tiny Broken Heart" by The Louvin Brothers
It's about a little boy who gets his heart broken because his his playmate's parents are too poor to stay in town. Frankly, The Louvin Brothers could have harmonized to the phone book and I would find it incredibly moving.

"Now Is Better Than Before" by Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
Jonathan Richman has created his own unique musical and artistic aesthetic by refusing to be afraid of being corny and sentimental, and by rejecting even the slightest hint of "coolness" or cynicism. He is one of the bravest artists I can think of. I find this to be one of his most moving songs.

More:

"Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain" by Willie Nelson

"Just An Old Fashioned Love Song" by Three Dog Night

"What A Wonderful World" by Sam Cooke

"A Good Year For The Roses" by George Jones

"Then Came You" by The Spinners with Dionne Warwick

"A Place In The Sun" by Stevie Wonder

"You Are Everything" by The Stylistics

"Beeswing" by Richard Thompson

"All The Right Reasons" by The Jayhawks

I could go on...these are just some of the first ones to pop into my head. What sappy, sentimental songs do you love?

My Favorite Albums of 2008

Here are my ten favorite albums of 2008. As I mentioned before, I really have no business compiling a "Best of 2008" list considering how much I haven't heard (still haven't heard Fleet Foxes, although I at least have the album on order). So this is just a list of some stuff I happened to dig this year.

1. Teddy Thompson - A Piece of What You Need
Last year I was the only blogger to list Teddy Thompson's Up Front And Down Low on their year-end "best of" list. So what does the usually non-prolific Teddy do? He releases an even better album in 2008. A Piece Of What You Need finds Teddy in about as upbeat a mood as you can imagine from the young man for whom "End Of The Rainbow" was written. Producer Marius de Vries (Bjork, Madonna) adds enough pop flourishes (handclaps!) to keep things bright, even if he can't stop Teddy from turning the gun on himself. A Piece Of What You Need is simply a brilliant album that takes Teddy out of his famous parents' shadows once and for all (Richard & Linda who?).

2. Duffy - Rockferry
My wife likes to listen to our local pop music station in the mornings. Because I'm a good husband I only complain about this semi-incessantly. One morning something really weird happened. I actually liked a song they were playing. This was a good song. No, actually it was great. "Who is this?" I asked (they never say who they're playing on pop radio, you're just supposed to know). Soon enough I figured out it was a young British woman known as Duffy. I picked up the CD at Starbucks that very day (remember when Starbucks used to sell music?). Later I picked it up on LP too, not because the CD sounded bad, but because the music was so good I just wanted to own it on LP. As I noted in a previous post, Rockferry (on CD or LP) has lots of dynamic range relative to most contemporary productions, proving that an album can be massively successful in 2008 without having every last bit of life compressed out of it.

3. Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
I don't think I need to say much about Vampire Weekend. This will be on every other blogger's list. This might be the most over-hyped album of the year, but that doesn't mean it isn't also good.

4. Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch
Mudcrutch's debut album was already the subject of much discussion on this blog.

It's an iconic story. A rock band torn apart by external forces over thirty years ago reunites to see if they can recapture the old magic. Against all odds they do, and the now middle-aged rockers find their belated debut album on the bestseller charts. It's a story that would carry the force of Greek Mythology were it not for the inconvenient fact that one of the members (a guy named Tom Petty) has a day job as one of the world's most successful rock-stars, and two others (Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench) punch the clock as members of his long-running backing band the Heartbreakers. Guitarist Tom Leadon and drummer Randall Marsh haven't kept quite as high a profile over the past thirty odd years, but from the sounds of the album they have lost none of their considerable chops.

If you can still find a copy, it's worth the extra money to pick up the LP with bonus "uncompressed" CD.

5. Neil Diamond - Home Before Dark
Neil Diamond has never made music to impress rock critics, and in return rock critics have never been very impressed by Neil Diamond. But Home Before Dark sounds like a different kind of Neil Diamond album. No, it doesn't sound like it was made with the approval of rock critics in mind (heaven forbid), but it does seem to be an attempt to make a "serious" album in the way that even his previous collaboration with super-producer Rick Rubin, 12 Songs, did not. It's a quiet album intended for intimate listening. I don't see how these songs reach the back rows at a Neil Diamond show. Nevertheless, the songs are full of the kind of drama and showmanship that characterizes Diamond's best work, it's just a quieter, more subtle kind of drama than we're used to from Neil. Unlike Rick Rubin's other big production this year, this album is emphatically not a victim of the "loudness wars." There's oodles of dynamic range on this album, and those shifts in dynamic range really are an essential ingredient in allowing the drama inherent in the songwriting to unfold. Congrats to Neil on the first number one album (and perhaps the best studio album) of his career.

6. Beck - Modern Guilt
This is another album I wrote a bit about already. At the time I was more interested in writing about the novelty of the album being offered on LP with an MP3 download sourced from vinyl than the music itself. Now I'd like to say a few words about the music: it's terrific. (I realize that technically this statement only counts as a few words if you consider the contraction "it's" as two words, but I believe it is legitimate to do so.)

7. She & Him - Volume One
I do not care that "She" is a pretty actress. I do not care that "Him" is M. Ward. This is very enjoyable classic pop music. If you've ever found yourself with a lump in your throat while listening to The Stone Poneys' "Different Drum" you need to add this album in your collection.

8. Orchestra Baobab - Made In Dakar
Hey kids, are you interested in checking out the roots of Vampire Weekend's Afro-Pop influenced sounds? Well, you won't find them here (for that check out Paul Simon's Graceland). Senegal's Orchestra Baobab came roaring back to life in 2002 with the release of Specialist In All Styles, and Made In Dakar suggests they are back to stay. Orchestra Baobab present a potent mix of Afro-Pop and Afro-Cuban sounds. Honestly, I'm not knowledgeable about this kind of music to say anything intelligent about it (that never stopped me before), but I really enjoyed this skillfully played and passionate album.

9. Mudhoney - The Lucky Ones
Twenty years into their career and Mudhoney are still the loudest thing going on. The secret to their longevity? Clean living. Mudhoney doesn't offer anything groundbreaking with their latest album; maybe their primal fuzz sounds a little wiser with age ("the lucky ones have already gone down"), but never sounds grown up. Mudhoney still offers retrograde, knuckle-dragging, loud fun. When Mudhoney debuted twenty years ago, few would have predicted they'd still be going strong in 2008. Even fewer would have predicted the long playing record album would still be going strong as well. But here it is 2008 and I bought Mudhoney's new album on LP with a code for a free MP3 download and a bonus 7" single that includes covers of Pere Ubu's "Street Waves" and The Troggs' "Gonna Make You." This is almost as much fun as collecting limited-edition, colored vinyl Sub-Pop 7" singles circa 1989.

10. R.E.M. - Accelerate
R.E.M.'s most exciting music in years was definitely a victim of the "loudness wars." On CD Accelerate sounds like total crap. Eric Zimmerman at REMring diagnosed the problem with this album quite effectively. The expensive 45 RPM double LP sounds better than the CD, but the relative lack of dynamic range (while made worse by CD mastering) seems to have been a choice made at the recording and mixing stage of this production. Pity, because there are some really good songs here. Personally, I think they would have sounded better with a little more room to breathe.

Neil Diamond - Home Before Dark

Surely the fate of Neil Diamond's last album, 12 Songs, must rank high on the list of incidents in which artists get royally screwed by their record company. Diamond recorded 12 Songs with producer Rick Rubin, the same guy who managed to land Johnny Cash on the best-seller list, wrote his best bunch of songs in years, and generally put his heart and soul into recording the album. Music critics went nuts, and for the first time ever Neil Diamond was cool (okay, anyone who has ever heard Hot August Night knows that Neil Diamond has always been cool, but suddenly nobody felt the need to keep that fact a deeply shameful secret).

Diamond seemed poised for the kind of late career renaissance that Cash, Dylan and others had experienced when the album debuted at #4 on Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. There was just one problem, the geniuses at Sony/BMG put a program on the CDs that prevented people from ripping the music to their computers (unless they owned a Mac). Worse than just being an unpopular copy-protection scheme, the program was actually malicious (and illegal) spy-ware. So just as Diamond was receiving tons of love from the critical establishment and fans were looking for his new album at Wal-Mart, it was pulled from the shelves and unavailable for weeks.

Diamond, who was unaware of Sony/BMG's plans for his CD, was reportedly devastated by the catastrophe that resulted from this idiotic, and ultimately doomed, scheme. I hope a better fate awaits Diamond's latest collaboration with Rubin, Home Before Dark.