The Band - Music from Big Pink poll

My man!

Glad you two found each other.

Not a pun, but another form of wordplay

i just listened to this album for the first time last week, it's pretty amazing.

Maybe it's an "Only Nixon Could've Gone to China" type deal.

But one thing that's really stuck out in listening to The Band for the past week has been that coming from four Canadians, the American Gothic rings true. And Levon Helm, an American by birth and Southerner by the Grace of God, never sounds too maudlin about his roots.

What am I trying to say. --- I finally listened to Southern Rock Opera recently on Grooveshark. I've heard so much about this record and how awesome it is, that I decided to give it a shot while I was uploading cocktail photos to our online society magazine. Don't get me wrong, there's some strong ass guitar licks in there, but I get so tired of Southerners trying to be Southern. By the time, George Wallace was being welcomed into Hell by Satan, who offers him a glass of sweet tea, I realized that this was just another one of those items of culture from the South that plays too hard on being from the South. The Oxford American dances around this all the time. It's all former beauty pageant winners sitting in their ivy-colored antebellum mansions, sipping sweet tea and calling everyone "hon".

So the fact that Robbie Robertson is credited with writing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", barely 100 years after that war finished, is a landmark achievement. You want to talk about a song that could've "gone South" so easily? And it never does, not once.

Creedence Clearwater Revivial is another out-of-area band that accurately reclaims Southern soil. But even while Fogarty rarely gets a little transparent (you "hoid" it through the grapevine, eh?), I can't think of any instances where the Band steps out of line at all.

Southern Rock Opera is awesome. It's not just about the south, which it is partly about, by way of guys as southern as Helm, but about the history of rock and roll by way of the south, the way the mythology of music and location converge. "SRO" is about the south without being about the south. It's both southern rock opera and southern rock opera, about both Skynyrd and a band like Skynyrd, paralleling the misunderstanding of that group against the social complexities of the south with the misunderstanding of the south in general. Which is to say, it's complicated, a whole lot more complicated as an album than "Big Pink," which like you said, could have gone too far into the hokum but somehow gets it just right. "SRO" starts from a different hokey point of departure - the saving graces of butt rock - but goes a lot deeper than that.

By the way, here's Patterson Hood, but mostly his dad David, talking about Helm: http://www.timesdaily.com/stories/Local-musicians-Levon-Helm-was-coolest-man-alive,189731

so many classic jawns but only one vote :(

as a fanboy scum i want to vote for something other than "the weight" but that song will last for 1,000 years if humans are still here

Sorry to veer, but here's some clips of the Truckers and Megafaun doing a mini-set of the Band a few nights ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DuwObzg0GIw

This is a beyond respectable version of "The Weight."

Megafaun encored w/that at the Songs of the South deal a couple years back, they kill it. Brad (bearded guitarist) has a tattoo of the Band with all figures in solid ink except Robertson, who's an outline lol

Great video

Southern Rock Opera really runs the gamut from rocking and beautiful to embarassing and forgettable.

All part of the same portrait, in proud double album tradition.

Would you say, perhaps, that it's part of its duality?

the duality of the double-album thaaaang

Tried to listen to that just now, almost got as far as pplains, then put on Rock of Ages instead.

Not a fair fight, really, but give it another shot when you get the Band out of your system. Best stuff is on the second disc, though.

I'm also getting hit with a bunch of invitations to crawfish boils, and dammit, those things are disgusting.

Best stuff is on the second disc, though.

Seconded. If anything Shut Up and Get On the Plane > Greenville to Baton Rouge > Angels and Fuselage.

"Let There Be Rock,' "Women WIthout Whiskey," "Life in the Factory," "Plastic Flowers on the Highway" ... wow.

First song here is more of a Rick number, I think, but that doesn't detract from this Levon tribute at all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSHDjGgGGXU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

While we're here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42WnZxLYWrM

Sorry, fellow Mekons fans, here's a more palatable, er, palate cleanser:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6lhX08hz8A

Can I just take this opportunity to say what a great bass player Rick Danko was

Dude was incredible. Here he is, being all around ... festive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_dkavLVcN0

He had a unique sound and style, played like he wanted you to think his bass was a tuba

It's incredible how much the law of diminishing returns kicks in. "Stage Fright" is pretty good, "Cahoots" has its moments. The rest are kind of erratic at best, which is pretty amazing, given the calibre of the players involved, but they all have their moments as well.

Yeah it might be about time that I gave Cahoots another chance. Most of their later work I've just skimmed through on spotify/youtube etc and not really returned to. I do have Stage Fright, but despite there being some excellent songs on there - Time To Kill, The Rumor, Shape I'm In - I don't often feel compelled to put it on (again esp in comparison to the first 2 albums).

Also re the Festival Express movie I think I actually prefer the (slightly jauntier) version of Long Black Veil on there to the album cut:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMbVXYQpJV8
NB tho I'm not familiar with the og recording of LBV that Shakey alludes to upthread. Pretty amazing song still, the lyrics are sort of the perfect condensed story.

worth getting familiar w/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc5p0-6uc_g

Seconded. If anything Shut Up and Get On the Plane > Greenville to Baton Rouge > Angels and Fuselage.

Absofuckinglutely.

that woodstock clip Bee OK posted is kind of scary. Or at least I imagine it must've been scary for the Band -- just blackness out there, but knowing there are like 300,000 people in the crowd.

avoiding the obv 'chest fever' is really fukkn dope

oh man i take ppl's point I GUESS abt the slow steady decline in the band's songwriting/albs (after the peak of #2 imho) but some of the bonus/outtakes on the cd version of big pink point to the incredibly fecundity of their 'early' period - i mean, to leave off 'Katie's Been Gone', w/ another heartbreakingly gorgeous manuel vocal, is just criminal! and the fact that the only surviving version of Ferdinand the Imposter is v. sonically imperfect is a gddamm crime!

not enough for lonesome suzie on this thread, tho :-(

enough LOVE

It's one of those cases of "you have your whole life to make your first album and six months to make your second," I think. The Band had a huge backlog, and once they caught up with it it was a struggle to come up with new stuff on par with their peak (see also; Cheap Trick, Van Halen). If anything, the key to the evolution of, say, the Stones and Beatles is that they started with a bunch of covers and worked their way up from there. Plus, the Band stopped living together, in Big Pink or on the road, and according to Levon they had trouble recapturing that vibe when they tried to recreate it in L.A.

It's amazing, by way, how much of an impression the Band made on the Brits, with group after group trying to glom onto their shambling Americana vibe vibe. I mean, the Beatles and Eric Clapton are two of the last acts I think of what I think of the Band. but they were both uber-besoted.

(sorry for the typos)

otm about "ferdinand" -- always loved that little fragment and wish there was a better version!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this thread took off, i thought it was going to be like The Band poll and get no love.

well, not no love but really there was not a lot of discussion like this thread has produced.

ok finally voted. "in a station." there are obviously plenty of towering songs on this record, but right now, in a station is the one i want to hear on repeat. karen dalton's version is nice too.

just heard Dalton's version for the first time last week. It's lovely

yeah, pretty different interpretation, but gets to the heart of the song. I dunno, I think that song (and "whispering pines" too) gets to a kind of dreamlike americana thing that robbie robertson couldn't quite nail on his own. robertson's more of a novelist, whereas manuel is like an impressionistic painter. or something!

I like that take

listening to this album again this week, i was struck by one thing -- what did these songs sound like when Robertson presented them to the rest of the Band? Seems like there's never been, like, a solo demo of "The Weight" that's come out on bootleg or otherwise. Maybe that sort of thing doesn't exist.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Voted for "Caledonia Mission" but almost voted for "To Kingdom Come"

"To Kingdom Come" wuz robbed, Rick Danko's bass playing on it is fantastic

I'll admit to being one of the people who's obsessed with The Band's first two albums but rarely feels the need to explore very far into their later work.

Same here, pretty much, even though "Stage Fright" itself is possibly my favourite song by them. There are some great songs on the other albums and they always play and sing immaculately and I can never think of an occasion when they embarrass themselves but, I don't know, the tunes just aren't there

stage fright is pretty solid through and through, tho it doesn't have as many classics. moondog matinee is a fun record, too. cahoots has always bored me.

Yeah, Moondog Matinee is fun, and with a lot of great singing by Richard at his best. Also the extra lyrics to "Mystery Train"!

What about /Rock of Ages/?

"It Makes No Difference" is one of the greatest recordings.

The last waltz is kind of lame

moondog matinee kinda rules. i mean, i'd take a whole album of levon helm disco rockabilly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQFE113iDx4

worst one is probably cahoots, but even that has some good stuff on it.

Great example of what happens when a band that plays and stays together almost 24/7 get their own places and lives and can never quite capture what they once had, good and great as they often still were.

Islands is probably worse than Cahoots, but then again it's an outtakes set and contractual obligation album (as pointed out by an extremely defensive Robertson in the reissue liners).

I always thought "Northern Lights/Southern Cross" was a pretty good listen for the later LPs. The keyboards on the album are so lush, it's really well recorded.

NL/SC also has Ophelia which has an awesome New Orleans groove and an A+ Helm vocal

Listening to this album for the first time in a while. I can't believe how good the drums sound. I'm on "Chest Fever" now--these drums sound so incredible.

I just learned you can stay in the house:

https://www.vrbo.com/3970069ha

cool!

Note: the Basement is not included in the rental

That's the only bit I want to see :(

Pssh, I'm there for the 4 bay toaster.

gonna have to go there and make some living room tapes, i guess

Just found this, a documentary released on VHS from 1995:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQn0QoQsqB8