The Band.

In Shakey, Joni Mitchell said the cocaine was cut with Borax, and it was really hard to get buzzed.

The 1974 version of a big entrance:

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... THE BAND"

*****five minutes of stumbling around the stage and tuning*****

Actually, it was nice to see/hear them doing "Just Another Whistle Stop" and "Smoke Signal", which aren't on any live recording I've encountered.

"Smoke Signal" was on the Live at the Academy reissue (i.e. the Rock of Ages reissue), and I was pleasantly surprised how well it came off on stage. It's not a great song, but even when it was slotted between much better ones, their performances sold it as a decent number.

I wonder if Robbie had written any of the Northern Lights/Southern Cross material by this point. It can't have been a good feeling if the only things he had finished since 1971 were "Endless Highway" and "Two Piano Song".

I saw them 10-30-70 at Memorial Coliseum in Tuscaloosa, and however stitched together Big Pink had sometimes sounded (in a good way) they had no prob replicating it and then some, very passionately, however many times they'd played it, incl. 32 previous shows on that tour, which started in Jan; and lasted midway through Dec. Songs from s/t were good too, but the only thing I remember remembering (even later that evening) from Stage Fright, which had come out that summer, is and was the title song. But I'm sure I was pretty stoned, so (still). And I've never felt the urge to get back to that album, but maybe I will (though it's not on the Bucket List),

Here's the show (not song) list; no wonder Robertson retired:
https://theband.hiof.no/history/The_Band_in_Concert_1970.pdf Pretty typical for a big or big-ish act back then, I think.

Big Pink live was being inside the record.

Even on the tour supporting it, they only ever played a few things from Cahoots live, and "Life Is A Carnival" was the only one that made it up to The Last Waltz. Moondog Matinee was their latest release in '74, but apparently they never did any of that stuff live either.

Moondog Matinee's a good album. I get the impression it's knocked unfairly due to its origins (Levon's book argues that they could only do covers at that point because there was too much resentment and jealousy for any collaborative work creating original material to happen.) But the idiosyncratic choices are surprisingly welcome, and the performances are all excellent. And Robertson's new verses on Mystery Train are surprisingly memorable - they expand the song rather than hurt or diminish it.

That should be "Mystery Train," no italics.

How could I forget "Mystery Train"? One track from MM made it into the setlist.

Not sure why I never go beyond Big Pink and the brown album, but I heard this today and it's really nice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq2e7DPhyHg

I know what you mean. It took me ages to go beyond those two as well, bu when I first heard Northern Lights Southern Cross it was a revelation.

i have to say the remixed and resequenced stage fright really make a great case for that album not being too far off the first two in quality

today i learned that the best band song not by the band is by....the beach boys???

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Xbg7v3Fwg

yeah I dig that stage fright reissue, but I like the royal albert hall show that came with the deluxe edition even more!

yeah that's great!

I was more just surprised, I'm pretty leery of people fucking with old albums, especially Robbie, but he did a great job

I voted for that album in the Todd Rundgren poll, but I still need to listen to it some more.

Another Band song not by the Band: "Once Burned" by Rundgren, with Rick and Levon on bass and drums.

Yeah, I dabbled with Stage Fright over the years, but now I love it. Time to Kill might be a top 3 The Band song for me.

It's the two songs that Manuel cowrote (his last songs) that are the essence of that record for me.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2YiHodVA5wIgMgcIkPmwDa?si=pEI73yo7THGtx0BaSXbmZA&utm_source=copy-link

I think I posted upthread but I did a mix of all Manuel's songs/cowrites in the Band

“sleeping” is one of those songs that’s almost painful to listen to, heavy emotional stuff.

Love Manuel’s heartbroken voice, it’s the one that I most closely associate with the group

Northern Lights/Southern Cross is all Robertson songs, but there are two otherwise unreleased Manuel songs from 67 or 68 on the box set A Musical History.

is one of those "ferdinand the imposter"? i'm kind of obsessed with that song, it's absolutely gorgeous.

"Words and Numbers" and "Beautiful Thing". I heard them once, but the currently available version of the box doesn't seem to include them?

Yeah that Royal Albert Hall show is so good! Nice to have a relatively straightforward live album with just the boys and no fancy guests or horn sections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YznZZkDTyo

The Manuel songs are always my favorites as well.

"Get Up Jake" is amazing and proto-"Cruisin'" by Smokey Robinson -- the lead guitar on the Rock of Ages version in particular

hadn't heard "She Knows". now listening to all available live recordings from 1985 on spotify.

oof big co-sign on the above, the Stage Fright remaster is wonderful. sounds fantastic.

from Early New Orleans Rock N Roll/R&B

Bobby Charles s/t '72 LP---he was a swamp pop country bandleader also into Fats Domino, who had a hit w BC's "Walkin' To New Orleans," declined' See You Later Alligator," but Charles did alright with it on Chess---Ed Ward tells his story here, w good musical excerpts https://www.npr.org/2012/06/13/150960729/the-untold-story-of-singer-bobby-charles";>:https://www.npr.org/2012/06/13/150960729/the-untold-story-of-singer-bobby-charles As Ward says, Charles was on the lam from a Nashville pot bust, made his way up to Woodstock, chosen cos he liked the name, and stumbled into the right crowd, where he got to record his s/t, which we-uns used to meller out with after playing The Meters' Cabbage Alley and xp Dr. John's Gumbo---Light In The Attic reissued the original LP version, which they aptly describe here:
A virtual who’s who of classic ‘roots’ rock – the album features 10 Bobby Charles classics supported by the likes of Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel of The Band, long time Neil Young sidekick Ben Keith, Bob Dylan’s former running mate Bob Neuwirth, session maverick Amos Garrett, the esteemed Dr. John, Geoff Muldaur and several others.

But this is far from an all-star jam session – this is an ensemble record in the truest sense of the word – with each musician simply supporting the Louisiana vibe that flows thru the 10 song collection of country, blues, R&B, and folk that all have that distinctive Bobby Charles signature sound..
Later it was a CD with three bonus tracks, and then a Rhino Handmade triple-CD! Expected to have way too many alt-takes, demos, etc., but here are a lot of titles I hadn't seen before:
https://media.rhino.com/press-release/bobby-charles Handmade CDs are ltd. ed. and go OOP fairly quickly, but this and others are still available as downloads, reasonably priced.
I find a lot of swamp pop (not that I've really heard a lot, but a lot of what I've heard) to be clunkly, at least compared to NOLA slippin'-bouncin' etc, but his LP has enough of the latter (and never clunks), though it is his boondocks stoner voice, making its way over the beat, floatin' to New Orleans (these are the original 10 tracks, although I think this playlist starts w the LP's closer? Good audio, anyway):
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh0ysVWgxTiz5GHBmHfAhrXMDsRlt_8-l

This is one of the Bandiest tracks also Randy Newman, swamp shuffle etc

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

Christgau called "Small Town Talk" from this record "one of the decade's great love songs". I heard it on a sampler and thought it was OK.

"Grow Too Old" was an old Charles copyright originally recorded by Fats Domino around 1960.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpwC2vXcOM

weird that christgau would call the title track "one of the decade's great love songs" ... it's not really a love song. but it's a great record anyway.

Another track from that album, "Tennessee Blues", quickly became a minor standard of sorts, getting early '70s covers by Doug Sahm and Tracy Nelson.

Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge too. Amazing tune.

"I Must Be In A Good Place Now" is fantastic as well.

"Small Town Talk" was co-written by Charles and Rick Danko,whose version is on his own s/t. Xgau wanted Dusty Springfiled to cover it, and liked the vocal by Geoff Muldaur, on It All Comes Back, by Paul Butterfield's Better Days (Mulduar also contributed to Bobby Charles):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QCpsPok6GU

Danko's version! Louder, faster than expected. hey fuck that small town talk!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hxOI1M5bpk

Boz Scaggs---verra nice, most intimate version, just him and his guitar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl-NMlmlnCE

That Danko version!

Watched the Once Were Brothers doc. Infuriating for the way it effectively tells the story of The Band as the story of Robertson plus collaborators. This guy just will not quit with the revisionism.

Or the story of Robertson plus irresponsible junkies. And some other guy.

tbf I knew Manuel and Danko were fucked up, but I had no idea Levon Helm was on heroin too.

The story goes that he'd shot up literally moments before cutting the vocal on "Strawberry Wine", which is why his voice sounds different there than in any other vocal he did.

History has told the story: the Robertson-less Band made a couple of decent records; and the first Danko record, and Helm’s Dirt Farmer, are superior to some ‘70s Band records.

Robertson on his own, however, has yet to make so much as a halfway-tolerable record. He can say what he wants about how he was the brains of the operation yadda yadda, but no Band or solo-Band-member record has anything as colossally awful as “American Roulette.”

JRR is obviously one of those vampire/chameleons who responds to and feeds off the energy of whoever he is around, which I guess is not really that rare tbh, but very well-defined in his case. He did pretty well with those guys when they were “just” alkies and not junkies or however you want to describe it. All the later long hard years of showbiz schmoozing clearly took a toll on his creative abilities.

Looking at what they recorded after 1976/78, the truth really does seem like somewhere in-between, at least to me. The Robertson-less Band albums were almost painful in how disappointing they could be, but they had their moments, and except for Garth's solo instrumental "French Girls," the best ones weren't written by any of the original members. In fact, there are very, very few writing credits for Danko and Helm in general until you get to their last one, Jubilation (probably my least favorite one). Those later records lean heavily on covers. My favorites are "Blind Willie McTell," "Atlantic City," "She Knows" (I can't tell if they overdubbed the strings, which sound awful, but Richard's performance is beautiful), "Book Faded Brown"...all covers.

Levon's Dirt Farmer and Electric Dirt (which I prefer to Dirt Farmer) are good records, but Levon doesn't have a lot of writing credits - it's mostly other people, great covers or traditional songs. I wasn't a fan of Rick's first album but that live bootleg of him and Levon from the early '80s is wonderful - they could still be great performers.

Robertson's didn't record as much, but his albums are mostly his own original compositions. I think the songs on his first album are wildly uneven - "American Roulette" and at least a few others really are terrible, but there are a few good songs elsewhere. More controversial is the production - kudos to Robertson for trying something different, but I was hoping for something more than asking Daniel Lanois to do for him what he did for Peter Gabriel and U2. Some people liked it - you can find effusive praise for his first album, and it had a strong placing in the Pazz & Jop poll - but I wonder how many of them would be so kind to it now. I guess his next one is a "better" album, it hangs together better, but I have no interest in revisiting it. Since then his albums have sounded like a string of failed attempts to do something new or contemporary.

I don't doubt Robertson was the main songwriter for the Band, at least within the legal parameters of what constitutes songwriting, but he really needed the fucking Band to make something of his compositions. The music really was a collaborative effort, it wasn't just a vehicle for Robertson's songwriting.