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Wednesday, August 8, 2012

I'm Drunk! Today in Very Important Neil Diamond News

Posted by Ned Lannamann on Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 4:51 PM

To mark the 40th anniversary of Neil Diamond's Hot August Night—his 1972 double live album in which he spends a lot of time singing to his giant imaginary penis (see image, right)—McMenamins is pulling out all the stops. They've got Super Diamond at the Crystal Ballroom on Saturday, August 25, which is great, although that tribute band plays here all the time. So this time they're recreating LA's Greek Theater, where the live album was recorded, inside the Crystal complete with trees and Greek columns.

Okay, sold. But there's more: McMenamins is also offering Neil Diamond themed drink specials all month in Ringlers Pub. I repeat: NEIL DIAMOND THEMED DRINK SPECIALS. Yes, they will have Red Red Wine. Yes, they will have Cracklin' Rosie, which I think is also another kind of Red Wine. (Actually, Neil has a lot of songs about wine. Off the top of my head, there's also "If You Know What I Mean" and "Free Life"—oh man, "Free Life" is great. It's all about Neil getting drunk and fooling around with a girl that he doesn't necessarily find that attractive. Sample lyric: "If she ain't no belle/hell/It's okay, I won't pay no mind/We'll just have us a time.") Also, I bet they will have Love on the Rocks. (Which is Scotch. Love is Scotch. Scotch on the Rocks.) Also, they're showing The Jazz Singer at the Mission on Wednesday, August 22, which is a really terrible movie. You can watch its best/worst/most racist scene here. Things get really ugly around the 2:12 mark.

[UPDATE: Literally minutes after I posted this, I opened a piece of completely unrelated snail mail from Tony Starlight, who has his own tribute to the 40th anniversary of Hot August Night planned. Details for his thing here. This is an awful lot of fuss over a four-decade-old live album. What's next, a 25-year golden jubilee for Billy Joel's Концерт?]

All this Diamondy news comes on the heels of this weekend's Mars rover landing, after which Neil tweeted this:

To which I say: YES. YES, NEIL. Of course, a thousand times YES! Please let Neil Diamond be the first musician to play on Mars. Seriously, why would anybody have anything against this? Let's make it happen, America. And at any rate, Neil Diamond is longtime fan of science fiction, as this Blade Runner-esque video for 1986's "Headed for the Future" makes clear. (Warning, this video not for the faint of heart):