Old Enough to Forget

Like any kid growing up in the '70s, you'd have had to be living under a rock to not be inundated with Neil Diamond songs. The cover for Hot August Night was the epitome of what a rock star was supposed to look like. Although I never heard the album in its entirety until fairly recently. I was dragged to the theatre by my parents to watch Jonathan Livingston Seagull  (and yes, I have indeed read the book). Despite his many earworms, I never had any Neil Diamond records growing up. He was too safe and, well, kind of boring. A little while back I was watching The Last Waltz, and amidst a who's who of rock royalty, up steps Mr. Diamond to sing "Dry Your Eyes," and I thought it was okay, but he was pretty commanding from the stage. He may have known he was the odd duck there, but he didn't seem to give a shit. I didn't realize that the song he played came from an album produced by Robbie Robertson, and that Garth Hudson was featured on keyboards on the track...

A new-to-me release. Many years ago I picked up Romeo Unchained and Notes from the Lost Civilization (not in that order), mainly because they were on WHAT?/A&M, where Mark Heard's iDEoLA project was released. So I figured it was a guilty-by-association sort of thing. It was an indie label after all, so that had to mean something. I remember liking Notes from the Lost Civilization , but honestly, I was getting so much music back then that unless something really blew my hat off, I gave it a listen or two and then filed it away. Here I am years later, and up pops a rather water-damaged copy of Life in the Foodchain . It made me sad looking at it. The vinyl was in surprisingly good shape, but any liner notes and credits were long lost to the gods of misplaced socks. Still, this was an album I had always been curious about, so I brought it home, where it joined the queue of treasures waiting for a turn(table). I popped it on, and the title track was cranked in the cave (everyone w...