Wednesday, November 9, 2005

WHO'S NEXT: I'm still obsessed with the new Neil Diamond album, 12 Songs, which is receiving glowing reviews all over the place. (If you haven't listened to it yet, it is still streaming here.) As you probably know, Diamond paired with producer Rick Rubin, the man responsible for Johnny Cash's last career renaissance, for 12 Songs, and the result is magical. Some of the elements that made the Cash-Rubin collaborations work so well are here, too, but the main triumph of 12 Songs is the conflict between Rubin's approach and Diamond's inherent showmanship and bombast. While Cash sounded like a man with a foot in the grave reflecting on his entire life, Diamond, while acknowledging his mortality seems to be insisting he still has something left to offer.

(For those interested in reading more about the Rubin-Cash sessions, Vanity Fair had a great article on the subject in its October 2004 issue. If you're motivated, the article on the farce of the presidential election in Florida in 2000, is worth reading too.)

All of this is a roundabout way of trying to ask you who you think would benefit from a Rubin Extreme Makeover. The ideal candidate will have been someone with a great deal of talent who at some point went astray. Paul McCartney seems an obvious choice, but he's too big a name. It also needs to be someone who you've almost forgotten was once a real talent. No one is ever going to forget what McCartney or the Stones or Stevie Wonder once were, no matter how many decades they are removed from their artistic salad days.

A music critic friend of mine suggested Rod Stewart, who I think is a great choice for Rubinizing. Who do you think?

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