(I'm not sure if or how this fits with Tom's Roxy analogy.)
― fritz, Friday, 24 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― N., Friday, 24 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― mark s, Friday, 24 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 24 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― dleone, Friday, 24 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Tracer Hand, Friday, 24 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Billy D, Friday, 24 May 2002 00:00 (twenty-one years ago) link
― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 09:46 (twenty-one years ago) link
The only crazy thing about this record (apart from the line "My horse Jethro, now he went mad") is that for some reason EMI put out a reissue of it in the 80s that was inexplicably missing a couple of tracks. I've got no idea why the fuck they did it, but the first version I bought of it didn't have 'When you awake' or 'King Harvest' on it. There is absolutely no logic behind that - it's not like it would have saved them any money or anything.
― James Ball (James Ball), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 10:10 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Roger Fascist (Roger Fascist), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 10:15 (twenty-one years ago) link
― di smith (lucylurex), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 10:23 (twenty-one years ago) link
― M Matos (M Matos), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 15:12 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Jody Beth Pinefox (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 25 April 2003 21:27 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Friday, 25 April 2003 21:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
― the jel (the jel), Friday, 25 April 2003 21:43 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 25 April 2003 22:01 (twenty-one years ago) link
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 25 April 2003 22:08 (twenty-one years ago) link
I love Rick Danko and Richard Manuel's voices but I can't abide Levon Helm and all that hokey downhome shit-kickin' good ole boy stuff. Plus I HATE "The Weight"! Instrumentally they were all great but special marks go to Rick Danko who was one of the funkiest rock bassists of all time.
― Dadaismus (Dada), Saturday, 26 April 2003 16:10 (twenty-one years ago) link
California? New Orleans!
― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Saturday, 26 April 2003 22:04 (twenty-one years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Saturday, 26 April 2003 22:13 (twenty-one years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Saturday, 26 April 2003 22:14 (twenty-one years ago) link
(is all lower-case the new hard n' ghetto amateurist?)
― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Saturday, 26 April 2003 22:22 (twenty-one years ago) link
yep!
― colin m., Saturday, 26 April 2003 23:32 (twenty-one years ago) link
― amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, 27 April 2003 00:46 (twenty-one years ago) link
― cutty (mcutt), Sunday, 27 February 2005 05:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― Hurting (Hurting), Sunday, 27 February 2005 16:11 (nineteen years ago) link
― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Sunday, 27 February 2005 22:58 (nineteen years ago) link
― Bumfluff, Sunday, 27 February 2005 23:08 (nineteen years ago) link
― Bumfluff, Sunday, 27 February 2005 23:11 (nineteen years ago) link
Isn't "going over the top" pretty much what Greil Marcus DOES?
And hey, maybe I was wrong about Levon Helm's drumming.
― lovebug starski (lovebug starski), Sunday, 27 February 2005 23:18 (nineteen years ago) link
Question: is it hokey to sing and play like you're a bunch of backwoods weirdo yokels if you really are a bunch of backwoods weirdo yokels? Save Robertson, the rest of the Band sometimes barely seemed housetrained. We're talking alcoholics, manic depressives, even narcoleptics (!) - musical geniuses all. These are the types of guys I imagine losing their checks on payday (assuming RR even had them paid).
Anyway, they're great for their feel, just like a good jazz band, but they were also tight, like a good soul band. And that also kept the Grateful Dead styled noodling out of the music. At the least, Rick Danko played bass like few others, as did Levon and Garth with their respective instruments.
Also interesting was how nearly all the band members were multi-instrumentalists, and that included horns.
― Josh in Chicago (Josh in Chicago), Monday, 11 July 2005 12:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― Jams Murphy (ystrickler), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 16:39 (eighteen years ago) link
<i>Question: is it hokey to sing and play like you're a bunch of backwoods weirdo yokels if you really are a bunch of backwoods weirdo yokels? Save Robertson, the rest of the Band sometimes barely seemed housetrained. We're talking alcoholics, manic depressives, even narcoleptics (!) - musical geniuses all. These are the types of guys I imagine losing their checks on payday (assuming RR even had them paid).</i>
I'm rereading Across the Great Divide by Barney Hoskyns, and I think this view of them is inaccurate...Obviously, Robbie was a smart guy and was definitely the most well spoken and maybe "cultured" of the group, but that was encouraged a bit by Albert Goldman who sort of took Robbie under his wing and promoted him to leader...gave him books, etc etc...But yeah in the early days Robbie's just as naive as anyone, and for all his "aw shucks" demeanor, which I think he used as a bit of a shield against the press, Levon Helm is certainly no dummy...Perhaps Rick was just pretty much a farmboy, and Manuel was a sad sad case of alcoholism, they were both great musicians, and honestly I think one of the tragedies – and the BIGGEST reason for the Band's decline on record after Stage Fright - was the fact that Manuel's drinking (and I think a bit of Robbie's increasing dictatorial control over things) robbed the Band of Manuel's songwriting, which I think was often less "studied" and more raw than some of Robbie's more pretentious and labored stuff....
Also, to call Garth Hudson a "yokel" is just wrong, he was by FAR the most trained and skilled musician in the bunch, could play classical, jazz for real, not just fake his way through it....he'd been studying music in college before he joined, and actually helped Robbie a lot out with composition and chord voicings, etc...
But anyway, yeah I fucking love the band...Listening to Stage Fright right now, and honestly I think the songs on the whole are just as strong as Big Pink...if this were recorded in the same manner I think it would be a universal classic as well...but...you can definitely here a creeping professionalism and slickness...I've always blamed Todd Rungren cuz he mixed it and he bugs the fuck out of me for some reason...but damn some of these songs like "Sleeping" or "Time to Kill" or "The Shape I'm In"...wow...such a great band.
― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 15:59 (sixteen years ago) link
I think one of the tragedies – and the BIGGEST reason for the Band's decline on record after Stage Fright - was the fact that Manuel's drinking (and I think a bit of Robbie's increasing dictatorial control over things) robbed the Band of Manuel's songwriting
OTM. All of Richard Manuel's songs and co-written songs are great.
― Tom D., Tuesday, 19 June 2007 16:07 (sixteen years ago) link
So Albert Goldman is to blame for Robbie Robertson too!?!
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 16:16 (sixteen years ago) link
haha not totally but the book gives the impression that - like he did w/Dylan - goldman sort of played into Robbie's ego and help sort of isolate him from the rest of the band, and maybe helped encourage Robbie's douchiest tendencies...
― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 16:20 (sixteen years ago) link
I find it interesting that although they're harking back to the country at much the same time as contemporary Brit acts like Traffic, the experience seems much more difficult and trying for them. No bucolic, sun dappled idylls as enjoyed by the Brit crowd it's dirt, disease and poverty all the way. Maybe thats why I like them so much.
― Billy Dods, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 16:26 (sixteen years ago) link
Well, Traffic moved to the country, but they didn't really sing about it - apart from "Berkshire Poppies", and that's just a joke track really. Fairport seem a closer comparison.
― Tom D., Tuesday, 19 June 2007 16:32 (sixteen years ago) link
<i>Eh, I still don't buy the Roxy comparison. Part of it was the trappings of Roxy, obviously, but it seems that the Band were all about a (potentially stultifying) 'authenticity' whereas Roxy were not. Admittedly this may also have something to do with the fact that at best I admire the Band, but I unreservedly love Roxy, so I'm biased to start with -- the Band are a very hard group for me to imagine anyone getting really obsessed with.
-- Ned Raggett, Friday, May 24, 2002 12:00 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Link</i>
I don't really buy the stultifying authenticity thing...for all their R&B , country, and blues influences, they certainly weren't playing it or writing songs that sound like trad stuff...I mean, shit King Harvest or Daniel and the Sacred Harp are a pretentious in their own way as Bowie or Queen....
...they got to the core of what's great about american roots music without sounding like anyone but themselves...
..plus it goes with out saying that their backwoods Southern image, with the possible exception of Levon who was really from the South, was as much a fantasy for these Canadian boys as glam rock was for people in the UK...same with CCR...people never seem to recognize that fantasies about rural stuff or being authentic are just as much fantasy as imagining yourself as a German computer or gay spaceman.
― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 16:49 (sixteen years ago) link
I've been listening to Stage Fright non-stop. I think it might be my favorite.
― will, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 16:56 (sixteen years ago) link
Also, to call Garth Hudson a "yokel" is just wrong, he was by FAR the most trained and skilled musician in the bunch
Check out that Rhino DVD about the making of <i>The Band</i>. It isn't very good, but Hudson plays his solos without the band, and they are totally far out avant-garde organ freakery. Amazing.
What's so overly authentic about fusing Curtis Mayfield, Dylan, the blues, and a little Wild-Honey-era Beach Boys. Sure, they didn't dress like Rick Wakeman or Roy Wood, but the Band was modern.
― QuantumNoise, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 17:13 (sixteen years ago) link
Wait, M@tt, it's Grossman, not Goldman you mean, I think.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, 19 June 2007 17:27 (sixteen years ago) link
that's where the pharoah's maidens picked young baby fogerty out of the bullrushes
― M@tt He1ges0n, Thursday, 21 June 2007 18:30 (sixteen years ago) link
perhaps here is where we should mention that the second band album was recorded in sammy davis jr.'s Hollywood Hills mansion.
― tylerw, Thursday, 21 June 2007 18:45 (sixteen years ago) link
a/k/a <i>Music From Little Sammy</i>
― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 21 June 2007 18:48 (sixteen years ago) link
Music From Little Sammy
there...
I've said this before, but not on this thread, apparently:
For me, the genius of The Band (and, to a lesser extent, CCR and even Little Feat) was the completely modernist invention of a mythic past that never existed but should have. Very similar (at least in my mind) to Garcia Marquez with 100 Years of Solitude -- taking a bunch of folk elements and combining them in a way that both feels like it was always there but makes sense in (and of) a modern context.
Fairport Convention or Pentangle are not so dissimilar, but they were jazzing (or bluesing) up actual traditional material, primarily, and playing it with electric guitar solos. Plenty nice, but not the same level of myth-creation that The Band did.
So, anyway, ultra-classic. Towering.
― Vornado, Thursday, 21 June 2007 22:48 (sixteen years ago) link
"I'd never been anyplace. Went to Montana once. But when I was young, we used to do a lot of vacationing or whatever up near Sacramento. There's a town called Winters. And there is a Cody's Camp there. And we went there, like, every year and it was tremendous. It was exactly what Green River was all about. It was like the West Coast version of the Bayous. And that part fit together. In other words, I always thought what I had lived must have been the same thing. Because, like, it had sort of a swampy kind of deal. And there were lots of bullfrogs and the whole thing. So in that respect, I DID live it. Lot of happy memories there. I learned how to swim there. There was a rope hanging from a tree. Certainly dragonflies, bullfrogs. There was a little cabin we would say in owned by a descendant of Buffalo Bill Cody. That's the reference in the song to Cody Junior. The actual specific reference, Green River, I got from a soda-pop syrup label... My flavor was Green River, it was lime-flavored and they would empty some out over some ice and pour some soda water on it and you had yourself a Green River." - John Fogerty 1970
THREAD DERAIL!
― Shakey Mo Collier, Saturday, 23 June 2007 01:17 (sixteen years ago) link
I thought this was going to be about a newly formed band called CLASSIC OR DUD
― The Real Dirty Vicar, Saturday, 23 June 2007 21:47 (sixteen years ago) link
<i>So, anyway, ultra-classic. Towering.</i>
The idea was better that the way they pulled it off, I think. Or maybe it reads better than it sounds. I've never been able to get into these guys as much as I'd think I would.
― mitya, Sunday, 24 June 2007 07:06 (sixteen years ago) link
I think about the Band a lot these days, mainly from the perspective of their being the original Canadian Third Way; Big Pink is routinely and mistakenly labelled as untrammelled roots-revisiting though it's more like roots-rewiring - much of it is as adventurous as any '68 music, but less obviously "confrontational" since it's a tentative-masquerading-as-bold answer to the question of where "we" go from "here." But yes; without the Band, no Arcade Fire, no Broken Social Scene etc.
The Band were also rock's Art Ensemble Of Chicago - they came to prominence at roughly the same time after long apprenticeships in other set-ups, both were viewed as a way out of the noise cul-de-sac, reintroducing space and silence, both were nominally leaderless groups of multi-instrumentalists with the exception of their most readily identifiable member who stuck doggedly to the one instrument (i.e. Robbie Robertson/Lester Bowie).
― Dingbod Kesterson, Friday, 18 January 2008 14:38 (sixteen years ago) link
Can "Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" be understood as anything other than a romanticization of the Lost Cause narrative of the civil war? I had always pushed this into the back of my mind, but I heard the song a couple days after Charlottesville and it suddenly really rubbed me the wrong way.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 21 August 2017 04:16 (six years ago) link
joan baez version is so much better.
― scott seward, Monday, 21 August 2017 06:08 (six years ago) link
I never heard it as a romanticisation of the Lost Cause so much as a song from the perspective of a kid caught up in the Confederate side of the war without any actual commitment or relation to its cause - more about the pointlessness of war and the loss of life than the Cause itself? Like, the kid doesn't care about what the war's about, he just feels he has to join the war to defend his family and his home. Which, when I type that aloud, feels like a pointed omission in 2017. I don't know - maybe I'd be less forgiving of the song if I hadn't loved it since I was kid and before I could interrogate the lyrics. I've always felt Robertson was writing in character rather than delivering his opinion of the Civil War.
― not not not not yr academy (stevie), Monday, 21 August 2017 10:06 (six years ago) link