The Band - The Last Waltz
|
Music CD Cover Artist: The Band Brand: BAND Edition: Music CD Audio: English (Original Language) Format: Box set, Live, Original recording remastered CD Release Date: 2002-04-23 Music Label: Rhino Soundtracks: Music CD 1
|
| New | New Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $41.96 | ||
| Used | Used Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $31.75 | ||
| Collectible | Collectible Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $88.72 |
Your purchase is protected by the A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee. Amazon.com automatically transfers your payment to the merchant so you'll never need to pay a merchant directly. Amazon.com A-to-z Safe Buying Guarantee covers both the delivery of your item and its condition upon receipt.
Free Music Notes for The Last Waltz Album
Free Music Review: Maybe The Fan(atic)s Are Still Stoned!
Hit: 3 Stars
I expect to take some arrows from the Band fanatics, who seem to pretty much deify this record, but please just give me a listen. First of all, I think The Band was positively one of the great bands of their era. They put out some classic studio albums (to digress, at one time I would have put MUSIC FROM BIG PINK at the top of that list, but recent listens to the remasters forces me to revise my LP days opinion that THE BAND did not compare well with their first album; I now concede that THE BAND was the superior album, and I sometimes wonder how I did not notice that songs like ROCKING CHAIR and UNFAITHFUL SERVANT represented some of the finest music of the day (since I did not get stoned, I cannot blame it on that)! They even put out one of the top five live albums of all time. It just was not called THE LAST WALTZ. In my mind THE LAST WALTZ typifies the worst excesses of the period when it was created and the coming complete commercialization of rock, that has continued and run rampant to this day. The Band had had it when they decided to go out with a bang with this massive undertaking--they had been on the road too long, they had tired of each other (there was much bile among the members, which continues among those still living), and they had lost all spontaneity and real emotion in their music. And guess what? It shows! The whole thing (check out the DVD for further evidence) is tired, ponderous and just not very conducive to repeat listenings. It feels like a museum piece, not rock and roll.
Oh, I did say THE BAND put out one of the great live albums of all time, didn't I? Yes, and it was called ROCK OF AGES, and it happens to blow the socks off this tired mess. I actually never picked up on ROCK OF AGES upon its initial release (I had hundreds of albums, but I could not own them all, no matter how hard I tried!), but the double set remaster of ROCK OF AGES has completely blown me away, and I would take it any day over THE LAST WALTZ.
Well, I know this is supposed to be a review of THE LAST WALTZ, but I come by my opinion of this bloated package in the context of The Band's overall work, and particularly their live work.
If you can only buy one of their live albums, I would humbly direct you to ROCK OF AGES in a heartbeat over this one.