The Band - Rock of Ages

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Free Music Notes for Rock of Ages

Free Music Review: How Appropriate The Title Remains - But...
Hit: 5 Stars

That said, "Rock of Ages" was always a transcendent statement in its own right, both as a document of just how potent this quintet could be in a live performance and of the tension between weariness and reluctant finality that seemed to have pervaded thr quintet's music by the time they rounded up for this performance. From beginning to end, the sense is that the Band is fighting a battle against time itself, a slightly ironic revelation considering that their music was first and foremost an indicator of time and an adopted country lost and only in their dreams re-discovered. Every note, every sound, every syllable sung, you sense both the lives of the Band and of the country they chose to love passing before them - and you - offering a permanence that the Band, perhaps to their disappointment in the end, were too exhaustedly realistic to accept.

Which is why, for all the luminescence of their own material and the tastefully arresting horns brought in for the concert - and if you think you'll hear the like of "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show," "This Wheel's On Fire," "The Weight," "Stage Fright," "Chest Fever" (and its absolutely breathtaking prelude, Garth Hudson's "The Genetic Method" organ improvisation), "Get Up, Jake," "Rag Mama Rag," or "The Shape I'm In" better than here, you're dreaming as deeply as they must have been - the most jarring selection in the entire set was to cover "(I Don't Want To) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes". By itself, the song reeks of bitter paradox, having been written, sung, and recorded in the first place by a man whose life was going to end before he lived to see it hit the charts (as the flip of, go figure, "What Am I Livin' For"). By the time the Band gets through with it - and the hefty horn chart Allen Toussaint wrote for the performance punctuates it with exclamation points all the way - it becomes both a defiant battle cry and a plaintive wish for what cannot, for too many reasons, continue.

For all the foregoing, though, it sure wasn't a bad idea to include the additional show material, and anyone who says he or she has heard "I Shall Be Released" too many times should be pitied.

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