The Band - Music from Big Pink
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Free Music Notes for Music from Big Pink
Free Music Review: Band buyers begin here
Hit: 4 Stars
Largely influential on the currently voguish Americana and alt. country scene, this first album grew out of the music the Band were creating with Bob Dylan at the house Big Pink, near Woodstock NY in 1967, and includes several new Bob Dylan songs - I Shall Be Released, This Wheel's On Fire and Tears Of Rage, the latter two co-written with the members of the Band who sing them. Probably the best known song was the single The Weight, which also appeared in the film Easy Rider (but was not licensed for the soundtrack album). There is one cover, Long Black Veil, which was influential on Robbie Robertson's writing style, and which he learned from Lefty Frizell's version.
If you need to own one Band album, this is the one to go for. It was hugely influential, an album unlike any other, and caused huge ripples across the music fraternity, changing the way people like Eric Clapton experienced and created music.
Beautifully re-mastered this new edition has copious notes and is almost doubled in length with bonus tracks, mostly appearing for the first time. It is fascinating to hear alternative arrangements of some of the songs, such as Lonesome Suzie which turns up with a big band horn arrangement. Musically, it sounds great, but was discarded, rightly, for being inappropriate for the song. A couple of covers recorded for fun, never intended for release on the album, are included - the Stanley Brothers' bluegrass If I Lose, and a less successful stab at the Jazz Allum and Big Bill Broonzy blues standard, Key To The Highway.
Some of the songs were included on The Basement Tapes, the Bob Dylan and the Band album of demos and home-recordings made at Big Pink. Orange Juice Blues and Yazoo Street Scandal are alternative versions, but of especial interest are Katie's Been Gone and Dylan's song Long Distance Operator. These are presented here as full stereo studio recordings, but are clearly the same takes that appeared on The Basement Tapes, demonstrating that the eight tracks by the Band on that album had not been recorded at Big Pink at all but had been muddied up to sound as if they had. Long Distance Operator now spawns an extra verse, but unfortunately there is a mistake in the editing so that the first line of the last verse is missing. Clearly these and other Band tracks from that album and any others from the same period need to be rounded up and given a proper release in restored sound quality
Free Music Review: AMERICANA *****
Hit: 5 Stars
When I learned who The Band were, I figured the moniker came from their fame as "the band" that used to back up Dylan. Later in life, when I joined a band and was faced with the insurmountable impossibility of naming it, I figured they got tired just like I did and decided on the first thing that came into their head. (Apparently, "Mean Phoenix" was the first thing that came into my head. Not a good name, though.) Now that I'm a very old man (25) and am fairly well versed in the history of rock and/or roll, I know the method behind the name. It's a generic term for "the people's band," as in "the band" we all like, or "the band" that plays music that sounds like my life. With a little more persuation, we could say there's Dylan, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and then there's "THE BAND," i.e. the band of all bands. I don't really believe all that. My point is that if you've lived or currently live in America and you crave music that speaks for everyman in a more simple, a more moral time, then this is "the band" for you. And "Music From Big Pink" is the album. From "tears of rage" to "chest fever," from the classic single "the weight" to Dylan collaboration "I shall be Released" this is music that sounds and acts like music of a generation and beyond. Looks like they painted their masterpiece years before they sang about it.
Overall: 10 out of 10.
Free Music Review: The Manifesto For The Revolution In Simplicity
Hit: 5 Stars
MUSIC FROM BIG PINK, the debut album from The Band, was the manifesto for the revolution in simplicity wrought with their second album. The songs are based on the Memphis-Chicago-Texas-St. Louis-Muscle Shoals-Detroit-New Orleans-Kansas City blues/R&B/soul/rock & roll axis, as well as country, folk, ragtime, vintage jazz, Cajun, and jug-band styles, and totally eschew the musical excesses of psychedelia for a sound and lyrics steeped in American history. Although things start off a bit slow with "Tears Of Rage", the album as a whole cannot be denied. The three best songs here are "Chest Fever", an organ workout far superior to anything Procol Harum or ELP ever did; "The Weight"; and "Long Black Veil", a tale sung from beyond the grave by a man executed by hanging for a murder he didn't commit. Like the self-titled second album, this one is also highly recommended for anyone with a "B" average or better in American History class, whether it was in high school or college.Free Music Review: Doesn't get any better than this!
Hit: 5 Stars
I still find it kind of scary that after all these years, this album continues to amaze me with its power and emotion. The way the 3 vocalists fight to get a line in, Robbie's so understated playing, and the mood is to this day unmatched. "Astral Weeks", "Blood on the Tracks" and "American Beauty" all rank in greatness, but Big Pink beats them all. I wonder when I play it if they knew at the time of recording it that they had created arguably the greatest album of all time. And I still can't make out the lyrics to "Chest Fever" after all these years. Hope I never do.
You (and everybody else) should own this masterpiece!
Free Music Review: How to put intelligence in music into words?
Hit: 5 Stars
Well, it is a little frightening when you realize that the Band's albums defy time altogether and that in one way or another all of their songs are linked (yet they seem like seperate far and away efforts). Like another reviewer stated, this is a record that doesn't hold a certain place in any time, and although you'll get some images in your head, you certainly can't rely on them. This album isn't depressing, or bad, or unprofessional in any way. I find it inspirational and even comforting compared to today's music. Yet it still has a hard edge to it, and it seems like it could even be popular with some folks today (understand why I'm concerned--how did Robbie know how to make these songs both timeless and lyrically on top?). If you have never heard the Band before, and you are used to that standard but shameful FM radio polish that is on other records, then you'll need to give them some time and interest before you start saying (rather estatically) how this is the greatest album ever released, like other people who are balling over themselves to do so. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO LISTEN TO THIS MUSIC, rather than dance to it or put it on for a party (and in that case, it is not destined to be certain folks' road music). The sounds are unlike any other sounds, and you'll need to listen to them a while and adjust to their level (as opposed to those folks who think they are so good that they want their music to adjust to THEIR level). After you understand where the Band is coming from, and after you move to their ideas and sonic land, you too will start calling their stuff the best music ever made. I don't need to ramble about how good the record is, and I couldn't anyway because their is so much depth in it. Plain and simple, it is a work of genius, it belongs to their time and our time and all time, it is a work that is both moving and funny, universal and downhome. Quite frankly, I don't know how the guys did it. Dylan wrote "I Shall Be Released", a song about a prisoner, that closes the album. Robbie wrote a completely different story about a "Caledonia Mission," in which a woman has to stay locked up inside mission walls. Is that why Manuel is singing so high in the Dylan cover? Is he imitating her voice or is he someone else? Is it a concept or is it not? See? Pure genius. SO MUCH DEPTH, so much richness, and a lot more too. You get quality and smarts for your dollar. Thanks to the other reviewers who have now told the world how good they feel that this timeless and beautiful piece of art really is.