The Band.

According to Wikipedia, Fanny and Anna Lee are different people.

I love Before the Flood but it's also kind of ludicrous, isn't it? Dylan's singing is all over the place and lots of bellowing, the songs sacrifice subtlety for velocity and volume. But the Band sounds great.

And its version of "It Ain't Me Babe" rules, practically punk.

I'm guessing Barry Gibb was a fan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqtzloiPxZE

Randy Bachman from FB:

I first met Robbie Robertson at Le coq D’or in Toronto in 1964 when The Guess Who was just taking off with “Shakin’ All Over.” He played so bluesey and incredible that I took the opportunity to ask him how he bent notes like that. He said the secret was to buy a set of Gretsch Strings and put them on his Telecaster. So the extra 2 strings meant he strung a High E, a B and then another B instead of the G. This allows you to
bend them to play blues notes. It literally transformed my entire style of playing and stayed with me throughout my career. Thank you for the incredible music. #RIP #musician

I love Before the Flood but it's also kind of ludicrous, isn't it? Dylan's singing is all over the place and lots of bellowing, the songs sacrifice subtlety for velocity and volume. But the Band sounds great.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, August 10, 2023 10:47 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

totally i've always loved the complete coked out mania of that record

xpost

My understanding is that back then, packs of strings came with a hard-to-bend wound G. So I guess Bachman means that Robertson's One Weird Old Trick was to use a spare B - which was unwound - for his G. What I don't get is the implication that Gretsch guitars had eight strings?

there was "nashville tuning" as well, he may have gotten the idea from that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville_tuning_(high_strung)

xxpost

Love Garth's bonkers little synth flourishes on "Ballad of A Thin Man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3X82K7YU4k

Before the Flood is definitely bonkers. That tour (which was only 6 weeks long) and especially that album got a lot of ridiculous praise when they first came out, and I understand why - except for the occasional one-off show or guest appearance, Dylan hadn't toured in eight years, and that was the legendary 1966 tour. Even his recording output had slowed down to a trickle. The hype of having him back, on stage and on record, with no less than the Band was unavoidable.

I always got the impression that the adoration for those shows soon faded (at least by the end of the decade), and since then has only drawn mixed reactions. It's still a good tour, and had I been alive and caught any of those shows, I'm sure it would've been a contender for THE greatest concert experience I've ever had. I think it's great how Dylan seems to be raging against nostalgia - even though his setlists leaned heavily on his best-known songs (particularly three weeks in when he more or less stopped playing any new material) and everyone's reason to go was more or less nostalgia, the performances are ferocious and none of the arrangements try to re-create what he put on record, a practice he continues to this day. But performance-wise it was still a cut below their best tours - 1966 and 1975 for Dylan, the "Rock of Ages"/Academy shows from 1971 for the Band - and they all seemed to know it. It's strange that the final shows dominate the live album because by the end of the tour, Dylan was oversinging by his own admission, just doing it with as much force as possible with very little subtlety.

one great thing about the 1974 Dylan/Band shows is that Robertson kind of cuts loose on the Dylan material — he kinda stuck close to the script on The Band stuff during their live shows, but there are some recordings in 74 where he's seriously just winging it and sounding incredible... one of the Tom Thumb Blues from that tour is incredible. I think they could definitely do a big set a la the 75 Rolling Thunder collection that would be killer (and get people to reassess the vibe of that period somewhat).

The Bootleg Series Vol. 20: Wow, Lotta Energy, Man

probably the only time he got back to that level of mania was the trouble no more stuff but i guess that was jesus instead of coke (supposedly)

A shot of love'll make you goofy

at the time the tour was the most successful ever

i remember my biology teacher went. why didn't i go?

haha love this

This is my all-time favourite Robbie Robertson interview moment. Funny and also comforting in some kind of way pic.twitter.com/hIkiJby6SW

— HarryHew (@harryhew) August 11, 2023

i think ed ward ultimately soured on them.

https://waynerobins.substack.com/p/the-last-waltz-thanksgiving-day-1976-e33?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

probably the only time he got back to that level of mania was the trouble no more stuff but i guess that was jesus instead of coke (supposedly)

https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--VbonElik--/a_0/f_auto,t_large/v1667659608/tpuqb3s6rdvnqg345lzd.jpg

That clip is great, thanks.

Thanks, bulb. That explains it. So Gretsch gave you spares as standard! I'm wondering what the business model was? It's hard to imagine archtop players regularly snapping their high strings with wild four-semitone bends.

Had been thinking we should have a poll about which string on our guitar tends to break. For me it’s the D string.

The Jesus of Coke.

^^Best Nick Lowe album.

Take the load off NME.

I love the sound of scraping glass.

Charlie Prevost

Jemima Surrender to the Rhythm

I shall be resneezed

Lol

Virgil ‘Caine is my name

they called it rock

I Love My Black Label

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzHRXx-O7Ys

just posted

https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-167-the-weight-by-the-band/

Cool. I will listen while sitting here in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.

The Wait

Only two hours???? C’mon man.

It won't be the only Band episode, though.

20 minutes in. So far so good.

I am still dealing with the ramifications of realizing just last week that it's "Take a load off FANNY" and not "off ANNIE." All these years I thought it was about one person but it's about somebody totally different.

what?!

https://genius.com/The-band-the-weight-lyrics

it's in the grand tradition of the answer record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc1ZTXCBeOs

Work with me, Fanny.

There’s also a certain cartoon I wasn’t going to mention but…

"Well there was a stack of Playboys in the basement at Big Pink, and I was just paging through them one day ..."

^from the Robbie Robertson Achives at the University of Toronto library, as researched and reported by Andrew Hickey. For Patreon subscribers only.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAvzc20q8DY

OnlyFannys