The Band - Moondog Matinee

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Free Music Notes for Moondog Matinee

Free Music Review: Richard Manuel's Glory Days
Hit: 5 Stars

Like the other Band singers, Manuel had the ability to fully inhabit the character "narrating" the song. But with Manuel, the stakes always seem a little higher. He was the most personal singer, the one who could make you cry as well as laugh. In the Band's earlier days, he offered songs like "Katie's Been Gone" and "Orange Juice Blues" (on The Basement Tapes w/Dylan), and of course on those first three, classic disks, he gave us the timeless "Tears of Rage," "In A Station," "King Harvest," "I Shall Be Released," "Lonesome Suzie," "Across the Great Divide," "Whispering Pines," "Sleeping" and "The Shape I'm In."

In my mind, I've been putting together a "Best of Richard Manuel" album -- it would also include songs like "She Knows," a stunning 1980s performance that is on the "Across the Great Divide" compilation, "Country Boy," which the reformed Band put on Jericho, and of course some of his later, great Band performances like "Right as Rain" "Rags and Bones" "Hobo Jungle" and his version of "Georgia on My Mind."

The Richard Manuel cuts on this album would have an honored place, and are one major reason why one might consider this album an essential purchase. And what will occur to you, perhaps, is that maybe it wasn't the best thing that Richard Manuel was a part of this outfit -- as great as they were, there was something destructive about membership in this Band, and Manuel was its first and most tragic victim. When I see Rod Stewart, a great singer but surely not the equal of Richard Manuel, prancing around on David Letterman singing a Sinatra standard, it's hard not to think of the rich American music, whether written by Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan or any other songwriter in America, that will never be performed to its fullest glory because Richard Manuel is now silent.

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