Concert Review: Neil Diamond at Sprint Center. Tuesday, December 16, 2008.

“There’s only one rule,” Neil Diamond announces, in that diamond-hard, late Neil Diamond voice of his, that croak you could sharpen knives against.

“There are no rules,” he continued.

Crowd goes nuts.

“Except that I follow the noise.”

Crowd goes nutser. Especially my side, stage left, so Neil Diamond smiles big and heads toward us, much to the chagrin of the people sitting center stage, or stage right, or stage-band’s-asses, who all redoubled their appreciation. Suddenly, I understood. “I follow the noise” is Neil Diamond, that showman who sings in self-actualizing thesis statements: I’m a Believer. I Am I Said. I’m a Man of God.

“I follow the noise”: the belief so powerful it crushed Neil Coal or whoever into Neil Diamond, the sparkliest jewel in the great rock-and-roll related musical entertainment showcase, and brought him, some 40 years later, when most other easy-listening stars of the 70s have sunk to Branson or worse, to a Sprint Center so packed a couple hundred people paid hard cash to stare at the back of his band all night. He follows the noise. It’s grandiose. Declarative. It seems to be saying something grand about life and music but also seems to be the chintziest, smartest promise: he’ll go where his people clap the hardest. He’ll give those people what they like . . . and, for the last decades, what they like is the unlikely self he hauled himself into.