The Band - Music from Big Pink poll

"The Weight" is one of the greatest songs of all time but will still listen first before voting.

i think i might vote for "Tears of Rage" but

Something about Manuels vocal at the start of "Tears".. So quietly desperate. One of the great moments in music. Gotta vote for it.

But yeah, "the Weight" is definitely among the greatest songs ever.

"Manuel's" even.

In a Station and Caledonia Mission are the overlooked heart of this album. Not sure which one I'll be voting for.

Station gets stuck in my head more often, but the back-and-forth between the sentimental verses and punchy chorus of Mission is really addictive.

written by Bob Dylan, Richard Manuel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Blz_sef-jj4

luv the organ solo on "Chest Fever" so going with that.

Went with Tears Of Rage but it was a tough one - The Weight, Chest Fever & Long Black Veil are just a fraction behind it for me, with Caledonia Mission & I Shall Be Released just a fraction behind them.

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. At the moment what I'm really drawn to are the slower songs on the self-titled album, especially Whispering Pines and When You Awake.

Tears of Rage

Might vote "In a Station", dunno, my other faves are "Tears", "Chest Fever", "Wheels" and "ISB Released". I really cannot bear "The Weight" (if you excuse the pun).

Prolly "Chest Fever" or "I Shall Be Released" (for the vox)

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.

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.

"In a Station" it is, lovely stuff

"we can talk" is underpraised but it's not the equal of "the weight"; not much is, though, it's so canonical. I love "chest fever" to bits, that chorus is just so jarring to me & the sound of the track is just gggghhhh so fuckin good. "in a station" is impossible to fuck with. "wheel's on fire" doesn't really get the treatment it deserves on big pink imo - song got a lot better live subsequently!

I don't know I want to vote for something other than "The Weight" but...it's one of the best rock songs ever written

"Chest Fever" is such a joint

I don't know I want to vote for something other than "The Weight"

why? it's ok to agree with the canon you know

Yeah, there isn't a song on here that I don't fuck with, The Weight included. I don't really understand the dog transaction in that song though.

the way I understand it: Danko thinks that Chester wants him to go shoot his dog, but Chester just wants Danko to take care of the dog. Is that wrong?

anyhoo, everyone otm, not really a bad song on here. at this point, "in a station" is the most *surprising* song on the album -- I've played it for people who are like "this is The Band"? Just a lovely, magical tune. But it'll be hard to vote against the Big Pink powerhouses. Man, this album is good.

if it weren't for the Weight this would be the hardest poll ever. maybe when that song dominates this poll we can have a "2nd favorite song on Big Pink" poll

Took me about a decade to realize "Chest Fever" was a pun on "Chest Cold"

Took me about a decade to realize "Chest Fever" was a pun on "Chest Cold"

Well. Make that two for me.

Hah, never occurred to me. Took me forever to get "Rubber Soul," too.

Wait, what's with that one? Rub her sole?

Seriously? Just literally a pun on rubber sole, like the bottom of a shoe. But of course it's Rubber Soul, which for whatever reason for the longest time I just figured was some surreal nonsense title.

so close.

http://1.imimg.com/data/C/V/MY-704883/Rubber_Sole_Sheets_2_250x250.jpg

I bet it's a secret foot massage thing. When you think about the Kinky Boot Beasts in Yellow Submarine, it all starts to add up.

kinda hard for me not to be boring and vote the Weight tbh. never liked this version of Long Black Veil, pales next to Lefty's.

wait how is Chest Fever a pun exactly? idgi

Maybe pun is not the right word.

I'm obviously some sort of crazy person because "The Weight" is probably my least favourite song on this album

It is a song about uncontrollable enthusiasm for chests.

I like "The Weight", but it wouldn't even come close to being the best song imo on this album. It does sorta just keep plodding along with a verse too many or so.

Didn't like it in "Easy Rider" either.

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.

Yeah fuck that shit

The murkiness is essential to this album's brilliance

The fuck? Whose incredibly bad idea was this?

I can't think of a single engineer more ill-suited to a Big Pink remix. But while he's at it, White Light/White Heat could surely use some massive stadium-sounding reverb.

Lol

Damn, and my copy is arriving today. I'm not nearly as excited now.

I'm sure that remaster thing is horrible if you all think so, but personally could never get into The Band's studio album, production is so muted and dry, clumsy (unlike that golden 70s dry style found on something like FM's "Dreams", one of the best sounding songs of all time) whereas I love The Last Waltz

I can't really enjoy the studio version of the amazing The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (love it on Before the Flood though, hell I even like Joan Baez' cover, it's a great song)

studio albums* that's supposed to say

I did think the Sgt. Pepper remix was a revelation, however.

muted and dry

Isn't that a really good description of what The Band were all about, though?

that's entirely possible - I guess my introduction to them was the (relative) grandeur of TLW and so that's kinda what I go for

but I like the Basement Tapes, and they're understated, chaotic

(xp) I think that's exactly what blew everyone's minds back in the day.

I remember reading Joe Boyd saying Fairport drove him mad trying to get their drum sound as close to the Band s/t as humanly possible.

niels, rumors was made like 10 years after MFBP wtf dude, unfair studio wizardry fight

hehe, I would def enjoy a thread on studio wizardry through the ages, here's a 1960 cut that's unbelievably clear:

https://open.spotify.com/track/73m8WuJlhzVusTVzJCGaDZ

some 60s album with (to my taste) impeccable production off the top of my head: Abbey Road, Ziggy Stardust, The Doors, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, In a Silent Way

but my taste is perhaps a bit weird, like the production on Forever Changes, for instance, does nothing for me

Ziggy Stardust is 1972 and the rest are 1969 - apart from the Doors. Seems like you don't 60s production much.

oops, I always get Ziggy date wrong

hmm I like a lot of 60s music

Doing the Pepsi challenge with the remix against the original and it's ... not bad. The biggest thing is Levon's drums and Rick's bass given much more prominence. (Some may say too much in Levon's case — he sounds like a timpani on "The Weight.") Some of the instruments (like the piano and organ on "We Can Talk") are moved more to center in parts — stuff like that. It doesn't really sound much "brighter" to these ears. But I've never really had hi-fi ears. Anyway, I'm digging it so far. The a capella version of "I Shall Be Released" is gorgeous.

It does have a little more "presence," like they're playing in the same room as you. But as others have pointed out, the fact that Big Pink souded so muted was part of the appeal.

OK, "Wheels on Fire" sounds horrible in this version. And the studio chatter added to the start of a couple of tracks is pretty pointless.

Is the remix an additional version on this new release? Or is it now the only version available?

Erlewine turns in a long review but only spends an paragraph discussing the “bright, discordant new remix”: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-band-music-from-big-pink/

Music From Big Pink may be rooted in the earth but it exists entirely within the head. The way it makes roots music sound as impressionistic and idiosyncratic as any other kind of rock’n’roll is revolutionary. It casts a very distinct spell, which is why it’s so unsettling that the new Bob Clearmountain mix breaks this moody magic. Clearmountain takes pains to separate the elements that were previously inextricably intertwined, shattering the specific otherworldliness that has been retained in every reissue of the album over the past fifty years. Sometimes, certain parts are pushed to the forefront—the call and response on “We Can Talk” by Helm and Danko are isolated from each other—and sometimes, everything piles on to of each other, as on the cacophonic “This Wheel’s on Fire.” Worse, extraneous studio chatter has been added to “The Weight” and “Lonesome Suzie,” a move that punctures the illusion that Music From Big Pink materialized out of thin air from a cheap rental house in the woods of New York.

I'm sure that remaster thing is horrible if you all think so, but personally could never get into The Band's studio album, production is so muted and dry, clumsy (unlike that golden 70s dry style found on something like FM's "Dreams", one of the best sounding songs of all time) whereas I love The Last Waltz

If you haven't heard Northern Lights Southern Cross give it a listen, its production is cleaner than the first two albums and it contains two of their finest songs in "Acadian Driftwood" and "It Makes No Difference".

The latter song is sooooooo beautiful. I love the Mekons cover and its ridiculous video:

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

And check out this vintage gem!

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

xp thanks will do! It Makes No Difference is certainly one of the highlights of The Last Waltz, fantastic song (and some great shredding, too)

wow had never heard Acadian Driftwood before but that is indeed very good songwriting

so weird how Robertson tapped into these themes

wait a minute you guys never polled The Last Waltz???

hmm to poll the original triple LP or the 2002 4-CD version...

Two great songs in their last 6 or 7 seven years - they didn't exactly maintain their batting average tbh.

Yeah the first two albums, NLSC and The Last Waltz are all you need really.

What about Rock of Ages?

stage fright is really great

way better than northern lights

"Stage Fright" is pretty good - but still a step down from the first two.

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