Hot August Night Long Ago and Far Away

By Betsy Ashton

August 24, 1972. Blazing hot. Greek theater was packed. Music was amped up. Counter-culture smoke wafted skyward. Tree people leaned dangerously from their illegal perches. The audience was impatient. Lights finally dimmed. The stage went dark. One loud downbeat, and the show started. The musical prologue went on forever.

The crowd was on its feet, all but the tree people. They clung to the limbs, afraid to move too much or fall. No one moved to remove them. Simply not safe in that swirling crowd.

From the opening number to the last encore, we were a collective whole there to adore, the performer there to be adored. Neither let the other down.

I was cheering with "Crunchy Granola Suite," crying with "Song Sung Blue," and rocking with "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show." Unabashed fan in heaven.

Mind you, this wasn't the first time I'd seen Neil Diamond in concert. And it wasn't the first time I'd been to a concert at the Greek. I lived a 25-minute drive from the theater. (Two hour drive home afer the concerts, though.) I went all the time in the '70s. Noone, not Manilow, not Devo, not great blues artists, not Earl Klugh, nothing wove the spell Diamond did that night.

My friends and I knew he was doing 10 (!) performances at the Greek that summer. All sold out in minutes. Even with our connections, we had opening night seats in the nose-bleed section almost under the tree people. Man, if anyone of them had fallen, we would have been squished. None of us knew the concert was being recorded. When the double-vinyl set come out, and we heard Diamond give a shout out to the tree people, we knew we had witnessed music magic. We could say we were there on that hot August night.

I've seen Diamond in other venues, larger and smaller, since, but when I think back on that night, when I listen to the CD (now, because I played the grooves off the vinyl), I can still feel the heat of the bodies, the smell of really, really good grass, the music pounding and whispering, the shrieks from the audience. And the grateful bows from Neil Diamond himself.

I wouldn't have my hot August memory any other way.

Hot August Nights

by Diane Burton

When I first heard about the topic for this month, a Neil Diamond song immediately popped into mind—“Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” that begins “Hot August Night…” Love that song. Back in the day when it came on the car radio, I’d sing at the top of my lungs—windows closed, of course. When I got my first MP3 player, it was one of the first songs I uploaded. The music starts out slow and builds—just like the old-fashioned tent revivals the lyrics are about.

Growing up, we didn’t have central air conditioning. It was years before we got a window unit that didn’t come close to cooling down the house. Even Hubs and my first home didn’t have central AC. August in Michigan can be beastly hot. Not as hot as other places in the country, but plenty hot. Like Neil Diamond says in the song “you could hear yourself sweat.” Oh, yeah. That hot.

One of the best things about August comes in three nights—the Perseid Meteor Showers. Weather-permitting, we should have quite a show in the sky the nights of August 11-12 and August 12-13. Although these are the peak nights, with 50-100 streaks an hour, start watching tonight. The showers—bits of meteors hitting our atmosphere—increase each night. The showers begin around midnight, but the best viewing is before dawn. For the next few nights, if we have clear skies, you’ll find me lying on my deck, holding Hubs’ hand (if he can stay awake), watching Mother Nature’s fireworks.

 

Photo Credit: David Kingham/DavidKinghamPhotography; taken from Snowy Range in Wyoming August 12, 2012.

Diane Burton blogs here on the 8th and 30th of each month and on her own blog http://dianeburton.blogspot.com on Mondays.