A lot to like in this announcement:

Every week we here at Cacophony Central will pick and choose the songs that have gotten us through the week. Sometimes there’s a rhyme and reason to them, other times, there’s not. We’ll let you decide if there’s a theme or not. Some of it is new, some old, some you’re heard of, some you probably haven’t, but seek out these tracks and we guarantee you some good times. Or at least a way to make you look as cool as us. If we could, we would post these up, but seeing as we don’t want the man looking down on us, we encourage you to go out and find some of these tunes, wherever they may be. We promise, you won’t be disappointed.

As arguments for mix tapes (and CDs) go, this is definitely one of the better ones: it covers all the major justifications, the ones you’d admit to and the ones you think to yourself. And the actual programs (the second one went up today) are pretty good, too.

Neil Diamond’s recording career, like Gaul, was divided into three parts: the Big Bang (on Bang Records, natch), the West Coast Incubation (on Decca/MCA’s less-unhip Uni label), and the OMGWTF Period (on Columbia, mostly). The man had dozens of hits, and a fair compilation wouldn’t attempt to squeeze him down to a single CD, but I never said I was being fair. And give Diamond credit: even some of the latter-day stuff has held up pretty well, and the ones that didn’t, well, they didn’t make it onto this disc. The cover photo, which is not called “Thank the Lord for the Knight Time,” derives from an old jewelry-store ad.

Track listing for 111135-2 (all tracks by Neil Diamond):

1. Solitary Man
2. Cherry, Cherry
3. I Got the Feelin’ (No No No)
4. You Got to Me
5. Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon
6. Thank the Lord for the Night Time
7. Kentucky Woman
8. Two-Bit Manchild
9. Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show
10. Sweet Caroline
11. Holly Holy
12. Cracklin’ Rosie
13. I Am … I Said
14. Done Too Soon
15. Stones
16. Song Sung Blue
17. Play Me
18. Longfellow Serenade
19. If You Know What I Mean
20. Forever in Blue Jeans
21. September Morn
22. Love on the Rocks
23. Hello Again
24. Yesterday’s Songs