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

Tags: Neil Diamond

This entry was posted on Sunday, 1 July 2007, and is filed under New and Unreleased. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.