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Neil Diamond - Hollywood Star on Walk of Fame |
Turned out that getting tickets was a bit of a
problem.
We usually try to go to New York the week after
Thanksgiving and have used the American Express Platinum Concierge service to
get theater tickets to what are often sold-out performances, but all of their
allotted tickets to this concert were gone.
They did offer an alternative, a VIPpackage offered by another company.
For a flat price one would get favorable seating, a special “goodie bag”,
and ushered down the red carpet.
One also got some interesting seat companions.
The concert could not have been better. Neil shared
the microphone on only one song, a duet of “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” with
one of his backup singers. In the 1977
show we saw at The Greek he shared the stage on “Song Sung Blue” with Helen
Reddy and The Fonz, Henry Winkler. He is
effortlessly able to fill an entire program with solos from the seventy-three
singles he has written in a fifty year career.
The featured song of the evening and his concluding
number before encores was “Sweet Caroline”, which has become a signature song,
evoking from everyone the “Oh, oh, oh…life has never been so good ...so good…so
good” chorus. But for me, and it turns out to be a reflection of my softer side,
since it is rumored that sixty year-old women openly weep when he sings it, the
favored song is “Play Me”. The simple
lyrics, “You are the sun/ I am the moon/ you are the words/ I am the tune/ Play
Me” haunt me as I write this some three weeks after the concert.
Other sections of the lyrics, especially, “Songs she
sang to me/songs she brang to me” have caused both negative and some positive
comments, the latter from Dave Barry, who applauded the courage to rhyme rather
than be grammatically correct.
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Neil and Katie |
Possibly because he is still a relatively recent
groom, to his third wife, longtime manager and thirty year junior, Katie
McNeil, Neil seemed to relish the attention he gathered from those in the seven
rows in front of us. For a period of
several minutes he openly flirted and danced, if you can call it dancing when
one partner is standing at eye level to the other, with the crowd, establishing
a rapport that subsequently turned the crowd in front of our eighth-row seats,
standing, and shouting, screaming and singing in what I would describe as a
geriatric mosh-pit.
Mary was most impressed by those few minutes of
quiet when she could talk to our neighbors, an eclectic group from all over the
world, who seem to follow the concerts as if they were the equivalent to
Grateful Dead Deadheads, sans dope, abandoning family, friends, and occupations for a life
on the road. One lady brought two
seven-year olds; another was with a companion, having travelled from Germany to
see her 60th Neil Diamond concert.
Since the cost of our seats approached $300 before parking, I worried
less about the Euro crisis.

In my next Post I’m going to tell you a bit about
what has happened to Tupperware Parties.
Please come visit.
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