The Band - The Band
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Free Music Notes for The Band
Free Music Review: the best thing to come out of Canada... ever
Hit: 5 Stars
of course, the band is not purely a canadian import, levon is from the south. but let's get to the point, this album is seriously overshadowed by the first, music from the big pink. and if it came down to owning either one or the other, i would buy both. they are both incredible musical statements in the history of american music and will never be surpassed. bands and albums like this come only once in a lifetime, where indigineous styles blend so seemlessly and beautifully, where the songwriting reads like a book, where the souls of men are revealed. the band are extremely inventive, but you can tell where it all came from. Free Music Review: the greatest American prog album ever!
Hit: 5 Stars
Everyone knows this is a masterpiece. But I have never read that this music is actually PROGRESSIVE ROCK, American style. Forget Happy the Man or Kansas or whatever. They were imitations of European styles. But The Band is, indeed, very progressive. It is to America what Genesis was to England. (Do I hear a guffaw?) First, just like Genesis incorporated traditions from Britain's culture (church hymns, folk music, and a very English humour), The Band drank deeply from all things Americana. They speak with the voices of bluegrass, and soul, and the blues. Sure! The songs aren't that long, but many an Italian prog lp presented the listener with short tunes. Not only that, but Garth Hudson beats Rick Wakeman to the keyboard punch with every chord. And is this music complex? Listen To "Rockin' Chair." Listen to "Whispering Pines." So...my diatribe is over. But think about it when mentioning the great prog bands of North America (four of the band members were Canadian!). In my humble opinion, The Band is the prog masterwork from this side of the ocean. It is our Foxtrot.
Free Music Review: History as Mystery: The Band's time-defying masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
Some albums are declared "dated" or "timeless" based on particular qualities (lyrics, instrumentation, production gimmickry) that either trap them in cultural amber or leave them curiously unscathed by musical faddishness. But The Band's eponymous second LP (now reissued with greatly improved sound, penetrating liner notes, and some decent but inessential bonus tracks) is that rarest of things: an album that exists OUTSIDE of time, or rather *in* but not *of* it.
Let me explain. This disc was written, recorded and released in 1969, but could just as plausibly have come from 1869. The songs (gorgeously played slices of Americana, all) do indeed speak of certain historical events - Stoneman's raids and a visit from General Robert E. Lee near the end of the Civil War in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" to name one, the coming of rural trade unionism in "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" to name another - but the music and performance stands eerily outside the continuum of actual CHRONOLOGICAL time, and instead gestures towards a permanent, idealized near-mythical imagining of American history.
It's rather amazing, really: Robbie Robertson and his cohorts, having fully absorbed the American folk tradition, have reorganized it as an impressionistic snapshot history of the United States in sepia-tone. Given the preternatural way in which every single song on the album fully and flawlessly evokes American folk images and myths while simultaneously remaining effortlessly modern - again, a product of its times but still not of them - it's either deeply ironic or perfectly predictable that this most American of albums was written and performed by four Canadians (plus one Razorback). I'm still not sure which.
What IS beyond doubt, however, is that The Band is a landmark in the history of modern American music, and one which the group themselves could never live up to in later years. It is one of the very few albums I've ever owned that has a palpable aura and mystique; absorb it in all of its impossible perfection and you will feel like a magic spell is being worked upon you. To embrace the sweet cadences of "Rockin' Chair," to join in singing the ragged communal harmonies of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," or to plunge into the darting guitar figures which represent the deceptive moral choice posited by "King Harvest"...to do these things is to delve into the joyful enigmas of the United States' own founding myths.
History as mystery. Not bad for an 11-song piece of vinyl, really.
Free Music Review: I Can't Help But Agree With You All...
Hit: 5 Stars
I was looking for something else but ended up at this album by The Band. The first reviewer pretty much covered it. This is my favorite album of all time, too. I bought it when it came out, at a Sears of all places but this was before the megastores. There is just nothing missing from it, and it was timeless then and remains that way today. It was almost spooky how they had tapped into something so close to the soul of America and with love, pride, and faith. I swore I'd not fall behind as music evolved but there is just something about what is happening in music when young that is a natural connection. Rock and Roll got to the point it started to repeat itself and it's cool, but been there, you know. Something like this album simply transends any pretense and I hope people hearing it today make the same connection with the music and get that crazy feeling they have been there before. Best heard as a vinyl 33rpm record on any player at hand, it is in it's natural form.
There is so much great music in the world I am rather astonished I can name one album as my favorite.
Free Music Review: Don't Miss This Album!
Hit: 5 Stars
"The Band" was the Band's second album, and probably their most consistent and influential. At the time of its release in 1969 nothing quite like it was heard before; apart from, of course, their first album "Music From Big Pink", which is as close as it gets to being an equally strong release.
What makes the Band's early album so great is the simple fact that they have it all. Great songs, concerned lyrics, 3 outstanding lead-singers, brilliant musicians, inventive arrangements and tight playing.
All songs on this album are very memorable, many of them classics like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "Across the Great Divide" and "Up On Cripple Creek".
Some of the quieter song that may not hit you the first times you listen to them, may grow to be favourites like they did for me. "When You Awake" and "Rockin' Chair" belong to that category. A shame the Richard Manuel eventually lost faith in himself as a songwriter, but on this album he still contributes to the song-writing on songs like "Whispering Pines", "Jawbone" and "When You Awake".
He may have felt it too burdening to live up to Robertson's prolific songwriting.
The bonus track features the great outtake "Get Up Jake", known from the "Rock of Ages" live album.
The other bonus songs are alternate versions of songs on the original; all interesting and most of them almost as good as the originally released versions.
A highly recommended album!