NEIL DIAMOND
Neil Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter, musician and actor. With 38 songs in the Top 10 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary charts, Diamond has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. Neil Diamond has been touring around the world consecutively for 50 years. Diamond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1984 and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011. Additionally, he received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and in 2011 was an honoree at Kennedy Center. In 2018 Diamond received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. (More from Wikipedia)
Writing in 2010 for the Detroit Metro Times, Bill Holdship writes that “the Ramrods [were] Detroit’s first ‘official punk’ band” and also gives a great overview of what the Lovemasters were all about: “Bootsey X & the Lovemasters were the best live rock ’n’ roll show in town then — sometimes approaching rock ’n’ roll carnivaldom. . . . [I]n the mid-to-late ’80s, a Bootsey X & the Lovemasters performance was akin to seeing Iggy Stooge fronting a James Brown and His Famous Flames Revue — that is, if both the Godfathers of Soul and Punk had even greater senses of humor . . . plus, everything else such a concept would involve (with flashes of George Clinton’s Funkadelic and Sly and the Family Stone, both of which were psychedelicized versions of the [James] Brown revue anyway). The act came complete with horns, keyboards, a jive-talking emcee (who doubled on sax), and the ever-present — and ever-hot — Sugarbabes of Soul. . . .
“And if that weren’t enough, the crew mixed it all with such perfect punk-ified covers as Neil Diamond’s ‘Brother Love’s Travelin’ Salvation Show’, Elvis’ ‘Kissin’ Cousins’ and ‘Suspicious Minds’, Roy Head’s ‘Treat Her Right’ (the instrumental that always announced Bootsey’s imminent arrival onstage), and perhaps the greatest cover of the O’Jays’ ‘Love Train’ of all time.”
(March 2016)
