Bang! Neil Diamond shoots a bull's-eye

I've been a fan of the early Neil Diamond for a long time. Note that I say "early." After he went to Columbia in the early '70s and began cranking out soft-rockin' smoothies for the Jonathan Livingston Seagull self-help crowd - not a fan so much! But his early work for Bang Records was pretty awesome.

A little history: Bang was a New York label whose name was actually an anagram of the first names of its owners, who were Bert Berns, a talented producer for Atlantic Records, Atlantic co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, his brother Nesuhi Ertegun, and Atlantic's top gun producer Jerry (Gerald) Wexler. They'd had a lot of early hits with The Strangeloves, The McCoys (with a young Rick Derringer) and had re-invented Johnny Cymbal (remember "Mr. Bass Man"?) as Derek and had a hit with a song called "Cinnamon". Van Morrison's first U.S. solo release after disbanding Them was on Bang, and it was a killer - "Brown-Eyed Girl".

Diamond was just a songwriter at the time, and not a particularly good one, but he was friends with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, two of the hottest songwriters of the '60s, and they convinced the Bang boys to record Neil. It seems that when Neil wrote songs for other people, they were just mediocre, but when he wrote songs for himself - they were spectacular. "Cherry, Cherry" was a huge radio hit, and his career took off from there.

Diamond cut a total of 23 tracks for Bang from 1966 - 1968, when he departed for MCA's new Uni. label. Of those 23 cuts, about half were original songs, and they were amazing: "Solitary Man", "Cherry, Cherry", "Kentucky Woman", "Shilo", "Thank The Lord For The Night Time"... great stuff.

"Neil Diamond: The Bang Years" is the first-ever collection on CD of Neil's Bang masters in their original mono versions, cut for 45-RPM release and unsullied by overdubs and other strings-n-things that got added to some of the stereo album versions. It's a really great collection with a lengthy booklet written by Neil telling his own story of what it was like to be a hitless songwriter living on a shoestring in 1960s New York, and I was pleased as punch to find it at my local Fry's. A truly great collection of music, and one I will be playing in the Studebaker quite a lot while I drive around :)

For further research:
The Bang Records Story
Neil performing "Cherry, Cherry" on "Where The Action Is", 1966
   (the lip-synching is awful, but it's cool to see Neil doing his stand-up on location)
Promo video for "The Bang Years" collection

James Brown's in a Cold Sweat.

There's no doubt that James Brown can rightfully be called "The Man From FUNKle." Along with Maceo Parker, Bobby Byrd and Pee Wee Ellis, he pretty much invented in the '60s the music that everyone from Sly Stone to George Clinton would amplify and popularize throughout the '70s. It was essentially uptempo soul with jazz and Latin rhythms swirled in.

If you look back, you can hear the roots of funk in JBs work as far back as 1965 with "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag."  "Cold Sweat" dates from a couple of years later, in 1967, and like "Papa" and "I Got You" and "Ain't That A Groove" it was a monster hit. Brown was on a real roll during this time, churning out record after record, most of them instant winners. And with every new 45 he pushed the boundaries just a little further, getting a little more boisterous, a little more... well, funky. And "Cold Sweat" itself was a giant piece of fatback. It was easily the funkiest thing Brown had yet cut - it sounded like nothing else on the radio.

I picked this disc up on my last trip to Vegas, during this year's NAB. Record hunting is one of the things I most look forward to when I'm in Vegas; so many people cross through there that you can find virtually everything, musically speaking. This copy is in perfect mint condition, plus it's stereo, and a first-press, so it set me back a little, but it was worth it. Old JB albums don't just turn up, you understand, at least not on this side of the country. And when they do they usually have more scratches than a club full of DJs.

But this album's a fascinating dichotomy, because for all the funky groove and stop/start staccato of the title cut, the rest of the disc is amazingly laid back. "Nature Boy"? "Mona Lisa"? "I Loves You Porgy"? WTH? Yes, James loaded up the whole rest of the disc with covers of ballads and standards. The only thing I can figure is that Brown, still feeling his way with what he called "the New Breed thing", felt that "Cold Sweat" was sooooo badass that he'd better mellow out for the rest of the disc.. But don't think that just because those songs are downtempo or standards, they're not worth hearing. JB cries, squeals and smooves his way across these songs, adding a new dimension and texture to each one.

The other possibility is that James just wanted to use up some previously cut material. You see, he'd tried to jump his contract with King records by pre-emptively recording with Smash in 1965, and when the dust settled in '67, he was back with King (at least for a few more years) - but there were a ton of songs he'd cut before he tried to exit stage left. And some of these were them.

This album has been reissued a couple of times; first in the '80s by Polydor UK and available as an import; then as a Japanese CD with the mastering errors of this vinyl release (re-channeled stereo, reversed phase tracks) corrected. It's still amazing music, even 45 years later - it simply a shame that the record companies in Brown's own birthplace don't see fit to make it available.