Neil Diamond at his best with a guitar and some strings

Review Score: (8/10)
There is general agreement that there are pretty much as many misses as hits on this collection of Neil Diamond songs. Fortunately you can program your CD player to skip over "Sweet Caroline," "Song Sung Blue" and "I'm a Believer" (okay, the last one is worth listening to once). I find myself really liking what I see as the two extremes of Diamond's music. On the one hand, I enjoy his simple songs where it is basically just guitar and voices, which are mostly early songs like "Solitary Man," "Cherry, Cherry" and "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon." On the other hand, I like some of the songs with the sweeping string sections, especially "Play Me" and "Holly Holy" (I believe Lee Holdridge gets the credit for those orchestrations, but I am not absolutely sure). I could put together a single-CD of songs from these double-set that would be 5 stars without any problem, but there is much more than the cream of the crop included here. The best here is certainly worth having, but "Hot August Night" is still a better album.

More Reviews:

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• I AGREE THE LIVE VERSIONS ARE NOT THAT GOOD
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• All the classic hits
• not deceived, just not thinking.....
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• Absolute Perfection
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• Dont waste your money !
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• Basically, should have been advertised as a "Live" CD
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• Caveat Emptor
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• Just the greatest!
• Live performances of favorites dissapointing
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• A REAL TREAT FOR THE EARS! THIS WORK DESERVES MORE STARS!
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• Yikes!
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• brooklyn roads
• To coin a phrase...
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• Only one disappointment!
• brilliant ,as usual with The Diamond