Hot Greek Nights and Neil

Ok don’t make fun but I love Neil Diamond and from Neil, I especially love his album Hot August Night (really Neil just one hot night?) and from Night, I especially love Song Sung Blue. Why oh why are you so afflicted you may ask? Because when I was 13 I sailed around the Mediterranean with my grandparents, my aunt and two cousins. One longish stop was on the Greek island of Mykonos. In 1976, Mykonos was just another white washed, windmill bespectacled Greek island and not the trendy hot spot it is today.

In 1976, there were two maybe three late night bars/discos in Mykonos. And at that time no other island we had been to had a late night bar or even a disco or anything remotely exotic or fun to a country girl of 13, so this was pretty much the apex of the trip.

We returned night after night (and during the day as well) to the same bar which was run by one of the few English speaking Greeks on the island. Demetri loved Americans and had been to America only a few months before our visit to Mykonos. He returned with an armful of English words and tucked under his arm – “Hot August Night – Neil Diamond Live at the Greek Theater.”

The whole time we were in Mykonos, nothing else was allowed to be played in Demetri’s bar. Our visits there as I can best recall them were Demetri serving me endless free cokes so he could freely flirt with my 18 year old cousin L. or alternatively, my aunt buying me endless cokes so she could freely flirt with Demetri. And me, a shy 13 year old, sat in the corner and daydreamed of handsome Greek bartenders.

Demetri loved entertaining the women and tending bar, that was until Song Sung Blue would find its turn in the Hot August Night playlist. Everything in the bar came to a standstill while Demetri and Neil sang Song Sung Blue as if the very democratic independence of Greece (see the Junta Dictatorship of Greece 1968-1976) was dependent on it. And after our fourth or fifth visit we found ourselves belting “Song Sung Blue, weeping like a willow...” along with Dimitri.

So pardon me if I, in the privacy of my own home, am sometimes inclined to throw Neil on the CD player and dream of Hot Greek Nights in August. Did I mention Sweet Caroline….