My Dad’s Music Is Apparently Rescuing Our City, One Concert at a Time

Yes, it’s apparently true. First I hear that the only big-ish and non-local benefit for Ike survivors scheduled will be down at Moody Gardens in Galveston with Dad favorite The Beach Boys (see here for details), and now HandStamp (yep, they’re on a roll, at least with me…) is reporting that at his show here in town last night, Neil Diamond promised to donate 100% of his merch sales to the Gulf Coast Relief Fund and match whatever that total was out of his own pocket.

First off: um, wow. That, my friends, is the kind of spontaneous, big-hearted, generous gesture I’d been sincerely hoping we’d see from the big-timers who pass through our city, and it warms even my black-as-coal music-critic heart. And I’m now put in the extremely strange, kinda uncomfortable position of liking a guy who I’ve loathed for the better part of 30 years, ever since my dad tormented us with the guy’s greatest hits on nonstop repeat while driving across the desert to the grandparents’ in Arizona. My father now denies he put it on repeat, but goddammit, I know what I heard, and it was painful enough that just the opening notes of “America” have made me long to stick my face into a blender or something, just to drown out the sound.

‘Til now, that is. I’ve always wrestled with Diamond’s music, wanting to respect the “old stuff” everybody assured me was actually really good but still scarred by the ’80s cheese, but this pushes it absolutely over the top. I’m going to have to call my dad & apologize at some point for sneering at his music all these years, but for right now, I’ll just say this to Mr. Diamond: thank you. It’s nice to know somebody cares.