The Band.

that's not a criticism

i haven't been terribly excited by the walkabouts stuff i've heard, but maybe i should listen again

It could simply be a reflection of a private passion, but at their best the Walkabouts synthesize so much in such a striking way that I'm in quiet awe (and consequently frustrated at how other bands in theoretically similar veins just don't work as well).

damn

no i would attribute it to bob dylan's horrendous voice

Ah, friend!

charlie rich seemed genuinely uncomfortable with genre categories and that hampered his music as much as it helped it i think

the band were without doubt a 'rock' band--whether or not thats endemic of the time in which they were recording, they were comfortable with the label

but yes i agree that mixture of sensibilites is really exciting

better still that the soul influence and country influence is somehow sublimated in such a fashion where it becomes exceptionally difficult to parse the songs for evidence of discrete influence

Yep that's it. Let's face it the 'grizzled old-timer' thing wouldn't have lasted. It's the extraordinary blend of soul, country, funk, rock n roll, wurlitzer/jug-band weirdness, and it all sounds uncalculated.

Classic Or Dud: The Band

Well Aretha Franklin did record a great version of "The Weight".

There's a similarity in the vocals at times (I think Rick Danko is the most Garcia-like one?), but the Band never wanked off quite like the Dead...

"Music From the Big Pink" is just about perfect, the rest a bit hit-and-miss.

"The Weight" is, of course, great - is it representative of the rest of their material. Can I just buy whatever album that's on and be set for a start?

I like the Band a lot, but I admit I like them best on The Basement Tapes. Their first several albums are all classics, though. When I was a kid, I was always put off by their muddy, murky sound. Now that's one of the things I love about them.

Yes miloauckerman, get Big Pink, it's awesome. I always found it much better than their self-titled second album, more diverse, less "reactionary" I suppose. "Life is a Carnival" from Cahoots is a party of a song, no wonder the Avalanches use it. Wouldn't qualify it as "corny" though...

how embarassing, I said the same thing on the other thread.

i feel this doubly

fritz, shame on you

And I can't believe you dissed "The Last Waltz" on the other thread, Matos - everybody knows the guest spots are mostly cack (they should have instituted a ban on performances by anyone named Neil) and Robbie was a douche, but "Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" should be proof enough that Fleetwood Mac AND Outkast together are not fit to lick Levon Helm's boots when it comes to adding brass bands to your sound for fun and profit(!!! Yeeeahh)

this isn't what i was trying to say, exactly; i was asserting (as i guess i had done on the other thread, but i forgot about that) that without having an ideological program necessarily they had a specific approach to arranging and recording and mixing which later became identified with a certain subgenre of rock music that is often called "rootsy"

i dunno about "authenticity" (a power word that doesn't really clear anything up) but robertson et al were certainly going for a certain "rooted" sense of americana, a music with a strong sense of history, and like ccr they were selfconsciously tapping into an existing mythology, adding to it besides (ccr was both more monomaniacal and i think even more successful in this regard)

i guess there was a kind of low-key program at work, perhaps not charged with the reactionary values that much subsequent "rootsy" music has adopted but purposeful and willful nonetheless

there's an interesting dynamic involved, however, that Barney Hoskins' Band book explored, that to the members of the Band, the cultures they were tapping in their music were both alien and natural to them, and the extent to which they were scholarly exploring these genres and musics, and simultaneously the closeness they felt to them (thinking mostly here of levon's arkansas roots). so their music was simultaneously an exercise in attempted authenticity, and imaginative explorations of genres they revered.

lately i've been spinning 'Rockin' Chair' a lot - love the heartsick, pleading sound of manuel's vocals, the absence of drums, the entwined mandolin and guitar, and the way the lyrics shift between 'downhome' nostalgia and a kind of resigned dread: these lines are especially devastating

Hear the sound, Willie Boy,
The Flyin' Dutchman's on the reef.
It's my belief
We've used up all our time,
This hill's to steep to climb,
And the days that remain ain't worth a dime.

god i love the band soo much

Great song

so is this really the only thread? or just a impediment of searching "The Band"?

i've been rather obsessed lately, mostly w/ the first three records. but i'm thinking of digging around for the others on the cheap. challop: Stage Fright is every bit as good as the first two. "The Rumor" and "Sleeping" are heartbreakingly awesome.

and hey, anyone remember this POS?: http://www.artistdirect.com/artist/videos/robbie-robertson/485778-811823-1

certainly some of the most creative and breathtaking uses of time signature changes in rock/popular music imo.

<3<3<3Levon @ 2:58 - "maybe they won't, you know i sure hope they don't"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Pt_ZkGg8I

this other thread is mentioned above: Classic Or Dud: The Band
certainly some of the most creative and breathtaking uses of time signature changes in rock/popular music imo.
this is otm -- for being known as such a "down-home, authentic, straightahead" their songs are hard as fuck to play. i mean, there's straight up rockabilly, but also new orleans + appalachian + country rhythms going on, sometimes all in the same song.

:D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_hsp4SBwO4

-aha, i knew there had to be another thread...

Absolutely brilliant music, especially Music From Big Pink, The Band, The Basement Tapes & Dylan live 1966 recordings.

this is otm -- for being known as such a "down-home, authentic, straightahead" their songs are hard as fuck to play. i mean, there's straight up rockabilly, but also new orleans + appalachian + country rhythms going on, sometimes all in the same song.

― tylerw, Thursday, April 29, 2010 2:57 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

garth hudson was classically trained and i really think some of his modern classical influences are apparent as well, esp in stuff like the genetic method, but little bits of a lot of songs i can hear stuff like ives and copeland etc

there was also this poll: The Band poll

how funny, i thought this was a new thread...

http://i50.tinypic.com/2eam8n4.gif
hey check out the maine's new shirt at hot topic today ! :D
http://www.hottopic.com/hottopic/Apparel/TShirts/BandTees/The-Maine-Target-SlimFit-TShirt-972970.jsp

what a rag mama rag

king spam (has surely come)

D:

has anyone explored band members' post-Band solo stuff? or want to rep for the post-Robertson era records? I've only heard bits and pieces. Danko's first record has some gems. And I know I've heard a couple Levon Helm records. Never pulled the trigger on any of Garth Hudson's recent solo things. every robbie robertson record i've heard has been terrible.

I've long been intrigued by Robbie's solo records based on the glowing reviews in the 1990-era Rolling Stone review guide, but never enough to buy them (I've never even seen them in a store). I guess they're not great? Aren't they Lanois productions? I guess I know what I'd be in for. Does Robbie actually sing?

yeah they are the kind of records that rolling stone would give a good review to

they are very lanois

robbie cannot sing for shit

yeah, he's not a great singer. and the songs are pretty weak too, at least on the s/t record. lanois production is just the icing on the crap.

the bono duet is pretty lol

http://archive.gg.ca/media/pho/galleryPics/1340.jpg

is that a recent pic? if so, robbie has actually aged pretty well!
seems funny to me: he's a fucking unbelievable guitarist (listen to Live 1966!) but i wonder if he even touches his guitar anymore. doesn't seem like he guests on other people's records or anything.

i like the story about robbie joining the hawks, and the departing guitarist teaching him the wrong way to play harmonics or whatever out of spite. ends up backfiring, becoming an awesome robertson "trademark" or whatever.

i'm talking about those "popping" sounds, (like in the solo of "king harvest" on rock of ages)

from 2006; he looks pretty straight!

never forget:

I mean, years on the road.
The numbers start to scare you.

I couldn't live with years on the road.

I don't think I could even discuss it.

listening to Moondog Matinee, pretty tight record! seems like no one gives it the time of day, since it's covers, but it is a lot of fun. not as straightforward as it might seem on the surface (is that a vocoder on helm's voice on "ain't got no home"?!) "Share Your Love" has a pretty classic Manuel vocal. anyhoo, if you see it for a buck on vinyl, totally worth it.

also, this "mystery train" is as close to cosmic disco as the Band ever got. there should be a 12-minute Tom Moulton remix. Someone make it happen.

Band fans should really seek out the s/t LP by Bobby Charles. Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Dr. John, I think Danko too? and Richard Manuel? Great record, imo.

http://theheatwarps.blogspot.com/2008/02/bobby-charles.html

yeah, that's a classic from start to finish.

yes on Bobby Charles---"Tennessee Blues" is a stone cold classic for sure. His album Wish You Were Here Right Now is pretty great too, with a smoking "The Jealous Kind" (which he wrote, despite the Joe Cocker version being the famous one) & with Neil Young guesting.

It's funny that I only know four songs off Moondog Matinee, off the box set A Musical History, &you mentioned three of them, Tyler. I like that "Mystery Train"!

yeah, that mystery train is great! some kinda sun records gone disco thing.

fucking the best

yes!

totally regret never going to see Rick Danko in the late 90s -- he played a bunch in upstate NY in random places. could never convince anyone at school with a car to drive me. curses!

aw man. RIP, rick.

say whaaaa http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/robert-pattinson-says-hell-be-starring-in-a-movie-about-seminal-rockers-the-band-20120524
Pattinson also dropped this little bit of info: "I'm going to do a movie about The Band, the one that played with [Bob] Dylan. [It's] a beautiful script about the nature of songwriting."
in other news, the classic albums doc about the making of The Band is on netflix streaming now. Watched it last night, recommended, if only for the scenes of Levon at the mixing desk.

Making Of seconded, for same reason

Thirded. Also love John Simon's perspective on Band arrangements as analogous to those of the Ellington orchestra.

yeah, simon seems to be a big part of the band saga -- i think he actually asked them if he could be a member at some point and they turned him down!

RR told him "we already have two piano players"! Also never paid him any producer royalties until JS held him up when they asked him to do The Last Waltz. At which point RR's accountants wrote him a lump sum check and told him they would give it to him if he agreed never to ask for any more ever.

ha, that blows. i guess he and levon had some commiserating to do when they filmed the doc, then.

A decent part of Levon's book is "Let's let John Simon tell you how it was."

I would watch a biopic about The Band, even with Robert Pattinson. It sort of makes sense, his girlfriend was in a Runaways Biopic.

Finally watching that VH1 Classic Albums making of --- Levon at the desk is awesome, where he's just laughing and air drumming along with Danko on Rag Mama Rag is just pure joy to watch

I am trying not to get super sad that so many of them have passed now but the music makes me so happy it balances out :)

Yeah, that's a great one. Love when Garth Hudson is playing and says, "Ooh, how's he gonna get out of this one?" and smiles knowingly after executing some crazy-ass turnaround.

There was a VHS doc back in the late 80s/early 90s, when the Band were still active, has lots of great, charming Levon moments.

love how they talk about recording in sammis' house in LA

via Scott Seward: http://music.yahoo.com/news/garth-hudsons-belongings-sold-off-garage-sale-152544389-rolling-stone.html

eek what a weird story. i saw a post about it on facebook and didn't realy understand what was happening.

among the goodies are uncashed checks, including one issued from EMI in 1979 for $26,000

dude!

lol, right? that would've solved half of the problem there...

"i don't go to the bank for less than $30,000"

mentioned this on the reissue thread but this band-related stuff seems cool

http://therisingstorm.net/borderline-sweet-dreams-quiet-desires/

nice, hadn't heard that before. sounds excellent.

Of course there is no download available to purchase, just in time for my no more CDs edict.

i hear CDs are totally coming back #RememberCDs

Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson both grace this class act recording credited respectively as “Dick Handle” and “Campo Malaqua"

Perhaps he misplaced the check and then had them issue another.

This is one of my favorite live bands. If it weren't for their energy and great harmonies on Before The Flood, I don't know that I'd ever listen to much Dylan. And if you delete the Last Waltz guest appearances that aren't Muddy, Bobby Charles, or Emmylou Harris, I think it's a top 5 live album of all time. Every song on that crushes its respective studio version, except maybe The Weight. The sound, vocals, arrangements (esp. Toussaint on Dixie) are immaculate, and Levon was always in a different dimension as a live singer.

But I find their studio work largely tedious. After listening to, for example, the Last Waltz version of Wheel's On Fire I find the studio version very trying to listen to. There's some good stuff, I know, but it never strikes me on any kind of gut level.

P.S. Their 90s albums aren't great either but they sure do sound good and they have a few real gems, e.g. Atlantic City, Blind Willie McTell, Shine A Light, Book Faded Brown.

dunno if we ever went over this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsbTSUwgBfs&feature=youtu.be

how do you embed youtubes on ILX? I went over this last week and I thought it was just keeping the www in the youtube link but not the http

you just take the 's' out of 'https'. that's all

That youtu.be messes things up too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1Nw_pKXl8U

streamed some of the "new" live at the academy" thing, and however you feel about the endless repackaging of their stuff, the band sounded fucking glorious.

Totally. I was holding off on that, but I never got the 2001 reissue with extra stuff, so I may end up springing for the box.

Fun fact: everyone in that amazing horn section (except for Snooky Young) played in the bands of Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon at one time or another.

haha, is that right?
danko's bass was sounding particularly good -- what a weird player!

Yep, in fact, Howard Johnson's recording debut was on a Bill Dixon record.

OTM re: Danko. Played with a pick, yet was still a funk monster.

http://bassmusicianmagazine.com/2012/04/how-to-danko-a-lesson-in-the-style-of-rick-danko-by-rob-collier/

Unless I'm totally wrong, the new box is a total rip. It's the same set as Rock of Ages, two discs remastered (again), two discs a board mix of the same set, and then a DVD with a 5.1 mix. When it was announced as a 4 CD/DVD package, I expected more.

there are previously unreleased performances on there, from different nights during the Rock of Ages shows.

The collection's first two discs feature performances of every song played over the course of the four concerts, and the New Year's Eve soundboard mix on discs 3 and 4 puts the listener in the room for that entire legendary night: Uncut, unedited, taken straight from the master recordings and presented in full for the first time. The set's DVD presents the tracks from discs 1 and 2 in 5.1 Surround, plus Alk and Lerner's filmed performances of 'King Harvest (Has Surely Come)' and 'The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show.'

From an Amazon review:

Disc 1 & 2 is the show sequenced from performances on 12/28/71 to 12/31/71 with one previously unreleased track. (So basically Rock of Ages)

Disc 3 & 4 is the New Year's Eve show in its entirety and labeled the soundboard mix. It's very close to the same setlist as the first two discs. (with 7 repeat performances)

Disc 5 is what originally prompted me to buy the set. It is a DVD in 5.1 sound of the NYE performance. I thought I was getting a video performance. I guess I didn't read the details well enough. It is indeed the show in 5.1 and it sounds spectacular but there is no video just a photo montage.

right, so the unreleased stuff is from the NYE show.
Disc: 3
1. Up On Cripple Creek (Previously Unissued Performance)
2. The Shape I'm In
3. The Rumor (Previously Unissued Performance)
4. Time To Kill (Previously Unissued Performance)
5. Rockin' Chair (Previously Unissued Performance)
6. This Wheel's On Fire (Previously Unissued Performance)
7. Get Up Jake (Previously Unissued Performance)
8. Smoke Signal (Previously Unissued Performance)
9. I Shall Be Released (Previously Unissued Performance)
10. The Weight (Previously Unissued Performance)
11. Stage Fright
Disc: 4
1. Life Is A Carnival (Previously Unissued Performance)
2. King Harvest (Has Surely Come)
3. Caledonia Mission (Previously Unissued Performance)
4. The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show
5. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Previously Unissued Performance)
6. Across The Great Divide (Previously Unissued Performance)
7. Unfaithful Servant
8. Don't Do It (Previously Unissued Performance)
9. The Genetic Method
10. Chest Fever (Previously Unissued Performance)
11. Rag Mama Rag
12. (I Don't Want To) Hang Up My Rock And Roll Shoes (Previously Unissued Performance)
13. Down In The Flood (with Bob Dylan)
14. When I Paint My Masterpiece (with Bob Dylan)
15. Don't Ya Tell Henry (with Bob Dylan)
16. Like A Rolling Stone (with Bob Dylan)

chest fever

What are the best solo albums?

Danko's is great; best Band record since Stage Fright.

surely this band was just paving the way for the Walkabouts

from memory the danko solo also features some co-writes with the elusive emmett grogan. i should really pull that one out again sometime, only given it a couple of listens...

Does that one have "Java Blues"?

Yep, that's the one.

http://touch.dangerousminds.net/all/bob_dylan_joni_mitchell_eric_clapton_neil_young_the_band#1

Never seen this footage before, why isn't there a live bootleg series for The Band dammit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFgyD3Uk1JQ

i have never listened to stage fright. i need to check it out

also that footage is great

totally great. The Band stuck pretty close to the script when it came to their live shows -- not sure if there's much that isn't covered in the officially released live recordings. Wouldn't mind hearing their full set at the Isle of Wight in '69 ... there's a late 76 Palladium gig that is pretty solid. And a Royal Albert Hall show (some of which is on A Musical History) that could be good to hear in full.

this is the Band release that needs to happen: http://theband.hiof.no/albums/from_bacon_fat_to_judgement_day.html
Levon and the Hawks: From Bacon Fat to Judgement Day

8-CD + DVD Levon and the Hawks Limited Edition Box Set, documenting the Hawks' evolution from the pre-Hawkins bands of the late 50's to the Basement Tape recordings of Big Pink in 1967. Includes previously unheard historic studio & archival live recordings, rare singles, extensive liner notes, interviews and photos. Included among the material on the DVD are video interviews with Garth Hudson.

[obviously it didn't actually come out this year]

xposts: love that live footage^ available on this thing if you can find it: http://theband.hiof.no/videos/boot_iow_69-70_DVD.html

That 1970 footage linked me to this 76 show - Manuel's voice seems a bit shot, but kinda surprised how much all of them are still putting into the performance - the clothes have got much worse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZeboTzerHQ&list=LLWwmSqUluMWZ5qidhsGaTzA

The Band stuck pretty close to the script when it came to their live shows

Yeah, wasn't totally expecting Dead-style workouts (tho I'm sure they could've done it) but a nice-sounding box set of live recordings etc from throughout their career wld hit that sweet spot for me - thanks for the suggestions, tylerw and no lime, will hunt for more, I've got the taste.

some high points available here: http://www.ousterhout.net/mp3/theband.html

thanks again tyler, will take a load off you

man, not much is gonna make me stop watching the vids for SGomez's "same old love" and Demi's "Confident," but that '76 shit shows what those guys were made of…unlike the useless Last waltz… watching Helm play the shit out of those tunes there suggests that he had an inviolable right to be pissed about that band shutting down.

Does anyone have any information on jug(instrument) or jug bands?
If you do, Then that's going to save me heaps

Pitchfork gave the self-titled record the Sunday Review treatment.

Anyway, I’d never thought of “Dixie” as problematic, despite its subject matter, but here’s Hyden on listening to the song in 2018:

This complementary dynamic is on display in “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” about a Confederate soldier named Virgil Cane who’s resigned to a downtrodden life as a poor farmer after the Civil War. It is one of the songs on which Robertson based his reputation as a budding Serious Rock Songwriter—he aped ancient American folk forms like his mentor Dylan, and successfully composed a new tune that felt like it was already 100 years old, while also commenting obliquely on the class and regional divides that are seemingly eternal in this country.

Today, “Dixie” and the empathy it has for defenders of Southern slavery makes it a thorny listen. But the tenderness and pain in Helm’s voice stand apart from Robertson’s words as an eloquent expression of profound sorrow, the type of immutable loss that’s passed down from generation to generation, as both birthright and original sin. It’s possible to both question whether a song like this needs to exist, and appreciate how Helm’s naked hurt transcends it.

I seem to remember tension between Robertson and Helm on the sentiment of that song, but I don’t remember the specifics.

Robertson had been reading books and thought the Civil War was just about slavery, so Helm had to sit him down and explain through a southern lens the political picture of the time.

That song, I always listened to it as the root of what Patterson Hood would term "The Duality of the Southern Thing."

Yeah, and the narrator of that song may not have even particularly given a shit about the Confederacy per se (the further from the cotton, the more likely that was). But when the Union finally showed up, they sometimes decimated the farm, town, etc. (likewise the Confeds on occasion). Scorched earth, yeeha.

Wanna read this, got me interested in Canada of 50s-60s, though prob most about him x Dylan, as indicated below:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-the-road-with-dylan-1478900285
By
WESLEY STACE
Updated Nov. 11, 2016 6:08 p.m. ET
Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist and main songwriter of the Band, is in the unenviable position of never having been much of a singer. (He posits asthma as a factor.) Luckily, the Band was blessed with three of the greatest vocalists of the rock era (Rick Danko,Richard Manuel and Levon Helm), who were able to give his beautiful melodies and lyrics their fullest possible emotional expression. In “Testimony,” however, the “voice” is not in question. Robust, wry, gritty and wise to the vicissitudes of a career in rock ’n’ roll, it is just what the reader wants, marred only occasionally by stiff dialogue.
TESTIMONY
By Robbie Robertson
Opening with a train ride, Mr. Robertson captures the rhythm of rock’s mystery train, even its final lurch into the terminal. In this memoir named for a song from his solo debut, Mr. Robertson bears witness to his life in music, from his precocious success in Ronnie Hawkins’s “raging rockabilly” Hawks to that band’s historic involvement in Bob Dylan’s mid-1960s “explosive electric sacrilege”; the subsequent retreat to Woodstock, N.Y., for the “loose as a goose” sessions with Mr. Dylan that became known as “The Basement Tapes” to the group’s rebranding as the Band, whose career climaxed, as this book wisely does, with “The Last Waltz,” a 1976 concert in San Francisco that was filmed by Martin Waltz,” a 1976 concert in San Francisco that was filmed by Martin Scorsese.
“Testimony” comes 23 years after drummer Levon Helm’s memoir “This Wheel’s on Fire,” notable partly for its extremely negative portrayal of Mr. Robertson. Of that book, Mr. Dylan enthused: “You’ve got to read this!” The blurbs here are by Mr. Scorsese and David Geffen, neatly delineating the great divide in the Band. But after the deaths of Manuel (suicide, 1986), Danko (heart failure, 1999) and Helm (throat cancer, 2012)—which triumvirate he often pits himself against in his memoir—Robertson is one of the two men left standing (along with keyboardist Garth Hudson). His may be the last word.
The haphazardly collaborative nature of the Band’s work, and the natural disinclination of most of the members to deal with business, led to arguments over songwriting credits, a feud that
Helm took to the grave. Resentments had long simmered: The film “The Last Waltz” seemed contrived to put Mr. Robertson center-stage, as the genius Mr. Scorsese clearly believed him to be, yet he was the only member of the Band who actually wanted that Waltz to be the Last. His Band-mates were happy to play on, and this was by no means the final Band concert, though it was the last to feature Mr. Robertson. If you saw a later incarnation of the group, you heard precisely what you would have wanted to hear: the singers singing their beloved songbook accompanied by a great rhythm section. If anything, one later felt the lack of Manuel more than of Mr. Robertson.
Half-Jewish, half-Mohawk, Jaime Royal Robertson was brought up on the streets of Toronto and on the Six Nations Indian Reserve, where he was “introduced to serious storytelling. . . . The oral history, the legends, the fables, and the great holy mystery of life.” The reader might suppress a groan, but add to the mix a steel-trap memory and a muddled childhood—featuring two fathers, numerous gangsters, alcoholism and some diamond smuggling—and you have the makings of a Dickensian bildungsroman.
“Testimony” next becomes a bible of road lore, a lurid coming-of-age story that veers wildly between the sweet and the brutal and a how-not-to guide to running a band. The Hawks, formed at the whim of Arkansawyer Ronnie Hawkins, who enjoyed regular residencies in Toronto, take off on the road, and the craziness of these early days is presented in brilliant Technicolor, with Helm cast as blood brother and Hawkins as amoral Virgil. A 16-year-old Mr. Robertson, too young to frequent any of the joints he’s playing, descends into an underworld of torched nightclubs (the arsonists thoughtfully remove Leon Russell’s band’s equipment before they light the match), bitten-off nipples (word to the wise: Don’t “taste her milkshake” while traversing bumpy terrain in the back seat of a car) and a vast choice of artificial stimulation.
As for Mr. Dylan, a key attraction, the book offers a refreshing account all the better for starting no earlier than the recording of “Like a Rolling Stone,” to which Mr. Robertson was escorted by producer John Hammond Jr. in 1965. Here is by far the fullest first-person account of the early electric tours of Mr. Dylan, not to mention an astonishing tale of a “passed out sitting up” Mr. Dylan, “deliriously exhausted” after the final date of the emotionally and physically exhausting 1966 tour, whom Robbie and Mr. Dylan’s manager, Albert Grossman, try to revive him in a bathtub (returning once to find him submerged) while four Beatles await an audience in the adjacent hotel room. The account of Mr. Dylan’s 1966 motorcycle accident is refreshingly lucid, as is that of the subsequent making of “The Basement Tapes,” as the Band improvises around Bob’s “vibing vocables.”
The Nobel Prize winner himself will probably not opine on Mr. Robertson’s livelier claims, among which is that he clothed Mr. Dylan (the classic ’66 houndstooth tweed: “Bob didn’t seem like much of a suit guy, but Lou [the designer] was on top of his game”); suggested the iconoclastic cover design of “Blonde on Blonde”; gave Mr. Dylan’s song “Obviously Five Believers” its title, adding that witty adverb—both positively (4th Street) and absolutely (Sweet Marie) something Mr. Dylan might have come up with himself; finished the editing of Mr. Dylan’s film “Eat the Document”; taught the neophyte rocker how to stretch guitar strings to keep them in tune; and saved Mr. Dylan from his musical self (by refusing to clutter the sparse perfection of “John Wesley Harding” with the requested overdubs). And of course he is responsible for creating the circumstances, and ambience, that brought the “The Basement Tapes” into existence. I am not suggesting that these claims aren’t true, merely that the abundance of them becomes slightly comical.
Occasionally one has the impression that Mr. Robertson is tiptoeing around awkward issues, always to the detriment of the book: Helm’s 1993 account of the various delegations sent in to get Mr. Dylan onstage at “The Last Waltz” is agonizing (the singer didn’t like it assumed that he had given his consent to being filmed, fearing a conflict with a forthcoming movie of his own, “Renaldo and Clara,” shot the previous year). But Mr. Robertson barely scratches the surface, preferring to deal with the technical problems involved in creating the movie.
Mr. Robertson’s writing about music, either from inside looking out or simply from the point of view of an audience member at a Bo Diddley or Velvet Underground concert, can be beautiful, as when, in the closing pages, he pays full tribute to each Band member and their role within the overall sound, repeating, as if in litany, “God only made one of those.” Here “Testimony” becomes a testimonial, and the effect is redemptive. Generosity suits him, and whatever the truth, “Testimony” is a graceful epitaph.​
—Mr. Stace is an author and musician who has also recorded under the name John Wesley Harding.

the narrator of that song may not have even particularly given a shit about the Confederacy per se (the further from the cotton, the more likely that was). But when the Union finally showed up, they sometimes decimated the farm, town, etc. (likewise the Confeds on occasion). Scorched earth, yeeha

Which is also why the song strikes me as a veiled Vietnam commentary, even if that was totally not Robertson/Helm etc's intent.

If so, it’s a very bad analogy

No that can fit: scorched earth, shock 'n' awe, vengeance, random outbursts, calculated trauma, in a lotta countries, lotta wars. Ditto rape and pillage as perks, at least the first night.

But back to the Band--what are the best solo albums/side projects? Best Band albums without Robertson?

Dude -- the overall treatment of civilians in (a) Sherman's March to the Sea and (b) The Vietnam Fucking War were highly dissimilar.

i feel like Jericho was well-regarded when it came out but i don't really fuck w/ the Band too much after Cahoots

Jericho has the Springsteen cover right? That version of Atlantic City has come close to becoming canon for the Band.

yeah it's really good

or "AC" is, i should say. i'm sure i've heard more from Jericho but I can't say specifically what

Just gave it a listen and "Jericho" goes on a little long, and too many of the songs seem to intentionally echo past Band work. But on the plus side, it sounds pretty good, and the singing and playing are good. The guitarist, Jim Weider, does a pretty solid Robertson impression.

What a weird messy post-band history the Band had. You've got Robertson, who tried to snag all the credit, yet didn't release a solo album until 1986, with an album that sounded absolutely nothing like the Band, for that matter. The other guys scattered or, tragically, worse, and never got much momentum going. Danko managed that one album, Hudson went more or less journeyman session guy, Levon did a few albums here and there and tried acting; his solid late career recording comeback came after a 25 year gap. When the Band did reconvene to record those 17 or so years after breaking up, for "Jericho," the songwriting was almost all from outside sources, which was a strange way to counter Robertson's claims.

Maybe Ophelia should be higher idk

watching the classic albums doc on the self-titled right now. that album truly holds a special place in my heart.

glad you picked jawbone. what a weirdly enchanting little ditty.

the way it switches to the waltz time in the verses and lets loose during the chorus, along with the switch in lyrical perspective...

Manuel had some great cowrites with Robertson

he was something else, "Sleeping" is such a strange beauty

jawbone is so amazing

Jawbone has such a deep country funk. I respect the rest of the Band's canon, but I am and always have been deliriously in love with the s/t album. Fortune was smiling on them when they recorded that.

Robertson had been reading books and thought the Civil War was just about slavery, so Helm had to sit him down and explain through a southern lens the political picture of the time.

Ah the danger of reading books.

When Robbie went down to Arkansas from Canada he couldn't read. Levon made him woodshed with books until he had built up a basic literacy. After touring with Dylan, Robertson could really read, pretty much anything, but by then he was pretty sick of reading. That's why there's not a lot of reading on Band albums.

The Danko album had some good tracks, but I was more impressed pverall by the band he brought to Soundstage, the old Chicago PBS show: 50-odd minute sets, back to back, no bathroom breaks (at least in the version televised, and his crew certainly had no prob being on the same bill w Graham Parker & The Rumour, who were at their peak (this was late 70s, maybe '80). Don't remember who was in the band, but saw him on another thing in that era w Butterfield, who was maybe here for this.

There was an interview where Robertson mentioned sitting crammed into the backseat, with Hawkins at the wheel in the boondocks, and R was reading a paperback of From Here To Eternity: purty cool and wonder if it gave him some ideas for songs.

but I was more impressed pverall by the band he brought to Soundstage, the old Chicago PBS show: 50-odd minute sets, back to back

alfred otm but man

stampeding cattle
they rattle the walls

is dire

i can't get over this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKD1Vdarnw

i usually feel like singing drummers look sort of awkward or even dumb but man is levon one cool motherfucker

That version of "King Harvest" is amazing. The guitar solo is one of my favorites ever, by anyone.

So weird to see RR pre-Telecaster. Also, is he wearing finger-picks?

i also appreciate how much crisper the drums sound in this version

great recording, Robbie looks like such a chilled hipster

I thought Robbie was wearing shorts for a minute, there. Eech.

some days the band is my favorite band, i guess this is gonna be one of those days

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/flashback-ringo-starr-and-his-all-starr-band-play-the-weight-251846/

Or just:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=187&v=bNpcms4UdMA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNpcms4UdMA

^Features Levon, RIck and Garth, along with a cavalcade of RIngo's All-Stars.

Seems like there are not one, not two but THREE drummers up there: Levon, Ringo and Jim Keltner.

I'll let you figure out for yourself who is the surprise guest vocalist/pianist taking one of the verses.

RIngo and Jim seem to do some fills along with Levon - it's almost like Antmusic.

When I saw that opening guitar playing I thought, huh, that person knows what they are doing. And ... of course it's Nils.

yup

Just rewatched video of him playing "Purple Rain" for the first time since it happened but was a little afraid to.

xxxpost, Robertson's misgivings were justified to an extent: no doubt some Johnny Reb headz heard "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" as tons of sobs for the Lost Cause. When I play it on my radio show, I'll follow it with Isbell's "White Man's World" and "Danko and Manuel."

Cool. Are you talking about something you read in Testimony?

No, a discussion upthread, but mis-remembered re Robertson's misgivings, sorry, should have re-read. Still, the proposed song sequence seems good, even though I don't have a radio show.

actually went and looked for that radio show but all I could find was an on-air personality with your same last name.

Timely revive, as I discovered today that the vinyl copy of the s/t I got on eBay was delivered to someone else at the wrong address way the hell across town.

I'm usually put off by ensemble 'all star band' stuff, but damn you can't deny that above clip.

Thought the revive would be for this:

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/8510996/robbie-robertson-the-band-documentary

The 75-year-old Robertson, who was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame Thursday night (May 9) at Toronto's Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Awards, has an incredibly busy year, including finishing a new solo album, scoring the music for Scorsese's new film, The Irishman, remixing music for the 50th anniversary reissue of The Band album, and writing the follow-up memoir to 2016's Testimony.

uh-oh

he might just be remixing outtakes?

Is there a good place to read about The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down and if it is pro-Confederacy? Always just thought it was about how wars chew young people up into fodder regardless of the "cause", a Vietnam allegory, but as I've gotten older and learned what that war was actually about (I'm from the UK) I feel less comfortable about it.

This article pretty much covers it:

http://theband.hiof.no/articles/dixie_viney.html

The whole of Music From Big Pink got remixed by Bob Clearmountain last year though, which doesn't augur well

xxp

thanks anagram - and oh yikes, that is not good news!

Not quite as must see as the last clip- no Garth for one thing- but from the same tour, and still Levon and Rick. Like what Nils and Joe Walsh are doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUwb1ToTkpk

This looks great although.. yeah the comments making it very plain that it should not ave the name 'Robbie Robertson and.. '

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

Would watch despite the title.

For sure

Shit, looks great. Though yeah, with Levon, Rick and Richard dead, that more or less leaves Robbie and Garth to tell the story. Yet the one (negative) review I read said that Garth is barely in it, and Robbie's over-rehearsed and apparently uncontested versions of his truth begin to grate.

isn't it based on his memoir? I cannot wait to see this, but given Robbie's long friendship with Scorsese I wouldn't be surprised if its entirely Robbie-centric

Robbie Robertson is entirely Robbie-centric.

What blows my mind about The Last Waltz is how few 'The Band' songs are in it!

Funny this thread got revived. My pick of covers.

Fuck Robbie Robertson.

no!

Like, what a dick. Maybe he and Scorsese will die of coke-induced heart attacks in the after party.

"Once we were brothers, but I have to get top billing."

we've discussed his songs enough -- let's discuss Robertson the man

Which songs, the ones he wrote or the ones he took credit for?

He tried to take most of the songwriting credits for the Band, but basically has written next to nothing of note in the decades since they broke up. Hmmm ...

(See also: dude from Soul Coughing)

There's good stuff on the first Robbie solo album. Too bad about the singing tho.

NPR used to have an audio-only HDTV channel called Mixtape, which offered daily block programming of what I guess could be described as "Adult Alternative" mixed with some Classic Rock and Oldies. More than once I heard a Peter Gabriel track segued into the original of "Broken Arrow", which I always thought was a cheeky move on part of the programmer given how hard Robertson was biting PG on that album.

The Band made good records without Robbie. Robbie couldn't even manage a tolerable record without the Band.

They only did ... two without him? The only thing I remember is the (excellent) Springsteen cover.

Even Levon was less than prolific, though his final albums are great.

Surprising that The Last Waltz soundtrack has never been polled.

My negative take on Robbie has softened somewhat over the years. He's the one who kept getting those drunks into a studio and on tour, after all. But seriously, fuck that title.

xp to alfred's list - i hate that i have to admit that the jakob dylan cover of whispering pines is good

YES to a last waltz sdtk poll

The Mekons cover is inspired.

They only did ... two without him? The only thing I remember is the (excellent) Springsteen cover.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, January 23, 2020 10:25 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Three! Jericho, High on the Hog, and Jubilation. They're not spectacular by any means, but unlike, say, "American Roulette," listening to them doesn't make me shout STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT at the speakers.

The latter day Band's "Blind Willie McTell" is great too.

i've seen the new doc and it is basically the visual cliffs notes for robbie's memoir. some good live/rehearsal footage, but nothing too revelatory. robbie is pretty insufferable, no new garth interviews. i don't even take a hard line on Robertson — incredible guitarist, a pretty strong run songwriting-wise from the late 60s to early 70s. But the eagerness with which he trots out the same old shit is just boring.

It's kind of baffling that he never found a decent context/vehicle for his brilliant playing post-Band (or did he and I missed it?)

i don't think so — seems like he is fairly uninterested in the guitar, really! which is crazy, he really was one of the greats.

whoever wrote it, unfaithful servant is a fuckin great song, ain't it

what DID he do to the lady???

Yes but he’s not really a nice guy https://t.co/KkUH6v6BSP

— David Crosby (@thedavidcrosby) September 15, 2020

lol croz is such a messy bitch

someone should start a new poll, who is the bigger asshole david crosby or robbie robertson?

at this point it's probably croz

My lazy self posted upthread about "The Night..." without listening again, just misremembering ol' Virgil as a farmer who happened to fall victim to whatever troops, one generic example collateral damage, from the subset of those left alive and workin'. However, let's review---words from bobdylan.com (because, ad reminds us, it's on Before The Flood:
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
WRITTEN BY: J.R. ROBERTSON

Virgil Caine is the name,

and I served on the Danville train,

'Til Stoneman's cavalry

came and tore up the tracks again.

In the winter of '65,

We were hungry, just barely alive.

By May the tenth, Richmond had fell,

it's a time I remember, oh so well,

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,
They went

La, La, La, La, La, La,

La, La, La, La, La, La,

La, La,

Back with my wife in Tennessee,

When one day she called to me,

"Virgil, quick, come see,

there goes Robert E. Lee!"

Now I don't mind choppin' wood,

and I don't care if the money's no good.

Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest,

But they should never have taken the very best.
(Chorus)
Like my father before me,

I will work the land,

Like my brother above me,

who took a rebel stand.

He was just eighteen, proud and brave,

But a Yankee laid him in his grave,

I swear by the mud below my feet,

You can't raise a Caine back up

when he's in defeat.
So Virgil was not just a farmer in the War, but he wasn't a soldier either, volunteer or conscript (of which there were many, some forcible, as in the North). So you could say he was complicit, but maybe it was just or mainly a job, his railroad trade, after leaving (getting away from?) the farm (started out in a farming family, as eventually mentioned). But wait, "served on", was he a soldier after all, or was it that this line, from what I've read elsewhere (w/o wanting to go back into the bottomless lake of the Civil War rabbithole), which supplied Richmond during the war, counts as war service for all such workers? Either way, he was in there, and yep Gen. George Stoneman's Union cavalry tore it up more than once.
So he goes back, during the winter of '65, with no Union aid yet coming or whatever they worked out, and he's back in Tenn. keeping his head down, and yeah re that Viney discussion linked upthread, the Robert E. Lee bit does seem like an Elvis sighting etc., since Lee isn't known to have visited that part of the South , also he's being rational re "You take what you need and you leave the rest," applying to soldiers and civilian survivors, or that's how they should be, within limits.
But his brother, Johnny Reb or not, saluted as such, is still his dead brother, with whom he grew up farming, for instance, and gone as Robert E. Lee. The South's not gonna rise again, not the way some who celebrate the Confederacy want, and, The chorus is a kind of funeral elegy, bells ringing that-a way.
Kane, or however you spell it is farming 'til the crops come back and maybe crowd the memories and the empty spaces a little.
So it does leave some areas to be filled in however you want, but still think it's more for commiseration than glorification or false equivalence (I hope).

In the winter of '65,

We were hungry, just barely alive.

By May the tenth, Richmond had fell,: Oh, so the worst of it may have been when the cut-off Danville-Richmond sector ran out of food---physically, he may be more or less okay in Tennessee, the home state of now-President Johnson. But well-fed enough to think about something other than food...

Also, who the hell cares if Robert E. Lee is back or not? He doesn't mention responding to his wife when she tells him, just goes on with his thoughts, sorting it out and mourning his brother.

And re the thing about Robertson reading a Civil War book, and Helm's response, that prob contributed to the writing---Like Lou Reed said Nico came to him with the line, "I'll be your mirror, reflect who you are," and Warhol wanted him to write a song about being visious, "Oh, you hit me with a flower"--but Robbie and Lou ain't sharing any credits.

"Vicious" too!

i think "dixie" suffers from Born In The USA-itis, in that its anthemic irony gets lost when it turns into a concert singalong fave. as a song, i think it's perfectly valid.

Yeah, those moneyshot choruses, man. I mean, when you follow them through the verses, you get it, but they lend themselves to being taken out of context, especially "Born," jeez (although sometimes he's slowed it down and done it as a growly solo performance, going from Broooce to Bruce, as much as possible, on a couple live tapes I've heard).
I gotta look at more of Robertson's lyrics, get past the personality problems.

Could also follow this w Drive-By Truckers' sequel-of-sorts, "The Night GG Allin Came To Town."

I think due to his terrible rep his lyrics get underrated a lot

Robbie i mean. GG's rep as a respected lyricist is well earned

Yeah when he hits his lyrics are amazing, just yesterday I was marveling at this insane realness in "Stage Fright"

I've got fire water right on my breath
And the doctor warned me I might catch a death
Said, "you can make it in your disguise
Just never show the fear that's in your eyes"

If we want to have a discussion about if he actually wrote these lines and wasn't helped by Danko or anyone else...I think that is a fair question

Come to think of it, in The Last Waltz, he complained pretty emphatically about The Road, man, "impossible," and remaining members indicated that was a or the bog reason for his calling it quits (for the whole Band),"he didn't wanna be sweating in some airplane hangar any more" (although the last few studio albums with him were not so hot either). So maybe at least some of that was stage fright. Has he done any post-Band shows? (Solo albums, as noted upthread, took a while---maybe some studio/writing/working fright as well?)

"big" reason, I meant, but maybe bog reason too.

xxpost Danko inhabits those lines so well when he sings them that even if he didn't write them he deserves a lot of credit for how great they come off

"stage fright" in the last waltz really gets to me, all the parts with danko or manuel really...but he's kind of frantic and pitched, you could tell those guys had no illusion in their heart of hearts - they knew the road had run out. robbie on the other hand obviously is ready to shed what he felt had become dead weight, proving he knew very little about what made the band he'd been in since he was a kid a great band.

xxpost Danko inhabits those lines so well when he sings them that even if he didn't write them he deserves a lot of credit for how great they come off

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Thursday, 17 September 2020 19:27 (sixteen minutes ago) link

For real, in fact I had to look it up to make sure cuz I was convinced Danko had to have a co-writer credit on it, same with Manuel and "The Shape I In"...now that I think about maybe the most important aspect of the Band dynamic is that Robbie needed SOMEONE to write for, that on some deeply empathic level he understood Helm, Danko, and Manuel in ways maybe they didn't and so was able to craft songs for them "Dixie", "Stage Fright", "Shape" that cut so to core that seems hard to believe the singer wasn't the writer, which speaks to both Robbie's skills and theirs, which makes his "betrayal" of them even more cutting & cruel, at least from the outside.

But obv as much as they needed him, he needed them.

Also does Robbie still have beef with Dylan (or vice versa?)

Huh maybe not

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/robbie-robertson-explains-why-he-turned-down-bob-dylans-new-album-1022791/

Right, he was writing for those guys the same way Ellington would write for his soloists
xxp

dylan asking robertson to play on his new album sounds like a tall tale to me, but who knows

I always think Robertson as one of those cases of a super talented person who knew all the right moves and absorbed all the great influences, but at the same time is just deep-down fundamentally uncool and uncharismatic, and nothing can change it.

idk if his problem is that he's uncool or uncharismatic. i think he has a bit of a capitalist/ambitious streak that makes him come across as "fake" to people like levon and co. who are all about the music, maaan

I think Manuel's decline as as songwriter (assuming caused or at least made worse by alcohol and drugs) is an unsung part of the Band's decline

For all the talk about "Robbie wrote all the songs" - on Big Pink Manuel is big presence - co-write w/Dylan on Tears of Rage, and three solo songwriting credits - In a Station, We Can Talk, and Lonesome Suzie

on The Band it's three co-writes with Robbie - When You Awake, Whispering Pines, and Jawbone

Stagefright it's down to two co-writes - Sleeping and Just Another Whistle Stop

then two co-writes (Acacian Driftwood, Ring Your Bell) and a solo (hobo jungle) - nothing on Islands (not that anyone is clamoring for credit on that)

but look at the list those are some of the truly great Band songs imo, his contribution is way underplayed by Robbie's mythmaking

xp to me

i think he actually is pretty charismatic as a speaker, and considering how much time the last waltz spent on interviewing him, scorsese thought so too.

lots of fan fiction itt. at the level of one directioner shippers tbh

Care to set things straight Robbie?

but look at the list those are some of the truly great Band songs imo, his contribution is way underplayed by Robbie's mythmaking

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, September 17, 2020 3:36 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

not only that, they're the band's most unconventional and quirkiest tracks, the ones that really feel like they connect to that old, weird america they were always going on about

definitely - "Jawbone" is just a piece of magic, so anthemic but almost falling over itself, don't know how they did that

feel like there's something weird w/the time signature but i don't know that stuff, sund4r if you are lurking let me know

Remember too on The Basement Tapes Manuel has some solo comps that were actually Big Pink outtakes.

oh yeah! that adds Rubin Remus, Katie's Been Gone, Orange Juice Blues as writes or co-writes

I quick made playlist "album" sequence on Spotify....I'd put this up against and Band record:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2YiHodVA5wIgMgcIkPmwDa?si=o_BGLHJ2T8qC-UbdM494nw

feel like there's something weird w/the time signature but i don't know that stuff, sund4r if you are lurking let me know

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, September 17, 2020 3:51 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

im not as smart as sund4r, but i can tell you that it changes time signature and key several times throughout the song. the intro, chorus, and the "oh jawbone" part of the verse are in 4/4 and in the key of E. the "three time loser you'll never win" section switches to waltz time and modulates to the key of D (mixolydian i think, but there's also a weird dominant 7th substitution on the VI (B) chord). the main riff of the chorus does some kind of three against four thing, too, which is cool.

cool thanks I figured it was something like the three against four type deal, which i sort of understand but not really

the playlist I just made is now the best Band album

Even factoring in the usual thing of the lion’s share of the credit being taken by the person who is the principal songwriter or leader, de facto or otherwise, there is still something ice cold and disturbing about the way JRR Fabulist seems to treat the rest of the band. Even Lennon/McCartney gave the other two a moment now and then. And Mick Jagger famously said “Charlie’s good tonight, isn’t he?”

“Levon wasn’t even the best drummer in The Band!”

i also just noticed for the first time that "jawbone" switches to 3/4 time on the phrase "three time" *chef's kiss*

Right, he was writing for those guys the same way Ellington would write for his soloists
xxp

Dylan said that thing about JRR being a "mathematical guitar genius." I like his playing fine with The Band, but really? I also remember reading something about him holding his own or even cutting Clapton with his solo during "Further On Up The Road" but again, really? I mean I have my reservations about EC the same as Phoebe Bridgers does but still.

Actually I think it is in that Classic Albums doc Tarfumes just mentioned where Clapton says something about Richard Manuel's charisma and (negative) energy. He could be sitting curled up in the corner of a room and you would be drawn to him or something like that.

Part of me is drawn to viewing Robbie as some kind of Zeppo Marx figure who managed to stay in the act by buying his lyrics from the Gypsy Woman.

the playlist I just made is now the best Band album

I don't know how much of a guitar genius Robbie was or wasn't, but his solo on this version of "King Harvest" is easily one of my favorite solos ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKD1Vdarnw

I like that solo fine and believe it has been remarked upon before. But some of why I like it is that it is part of that song, don’t know what I would think in another context.

it’s true that Robbie Robertson isn’t really suited for a stint in G3

Not what I'm getting at.

Don't think Ron Asheton or Steve Jones would fit in there either, to name two.

Robbie Robertson is an exceptional guitarist.

Maybe he's not that into people, crowds----like in the autobio )as described in the review posted upthread), he's shuttled between his relatives, urban Jews and Mohawks in the boondocks, leaves all that for the isolated stability of the roving Hawks, with Ronnie the roadsmart uncle or some shit, then cut to The Last Waltz, where he's raspin "The Road is just an impossible fuckin' way of life," then he splits, and later I read in the Stone that he was working on his solo debut, but then heard an album of Penderecki or Crumb (George, too bad it wasn't R. Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders), and started over. But also read that he and Scorsese stayed holed up in the house a lot. Oh and his acting career seems to have consisted of surly presence in Carny.
So maybe some early aversion, lack of sociabilty, insecurity, augmented, via career burn-out---for a while, but then some productivity, with "sociable" story-polishing, wheel-spinning, like with Sam Phillips---a struggle in there somewhere, judging by traces of someone I've never met.

I’ll tell you some of Robbie’s playing that I think is grebt: on the original Ronnie Hawkins single of “Who Do You Love.”

Wow, has anyone seen this movie?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_What_You_Eat_(film)?wprov=sfti1

xp ha I was just thinking of that same single as displaying examplary robbieness. so cutting!

But also read that he and Scorsese stayed holed up in the house a lot.

...doing coke.

However, after all that Robertson helped put together the soundtracks for Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, and The Color of Money, so he was working.

I guess I like Robbie more in a Hubert Sumlin-type mode than when he tries or is forced by some circumstances to be a more conventional player.

Robbie Robertson: Opinions on three things

His playing on a couple of those Albert Hammond albums is great. I saw somewhere that Hendrix apparently really admired Robertson on those albums. Also that Mike Bloomfield was scheduled for the sessions but felt he wasn't up to Robertson, at least not those days. I've seen pointed out that he is sort of simultaneously two types of players, an electric blues guy and also a Curtis Mayfield-styled funky rhythm player (Mayfield of course being another root of Hendrix's playing).

Keeping in mind that The Last Waltz is pretty much none of these guys at their best, Robertson easily holds his own against Clapton, especially when Clapton's strap comes loose and Robertson doesn't miss a beat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WDmMWF83x4

That was better than I remembered it.

xp Think you mean John Hammond Jr. AKA John Paul Hammond, although would like to hear young JRR w young Albert Hammond Sr. for sure, so I hope he did that too.
James, the Hawks backed Tiny Tim on a few YAWYE soundtrack tracks, think the orig connection may have been Dylan, who in Chronicles describes scruffy gigs w Tim way way back there (night manager Fred Neil would dispense leftover fries and subway fare at the end of an evening), despite the band site's quote of Hoskyns re they were new buddies----articles and YouTube clips here:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Tiny+Tim+You+Are+What+You+Eat&oq=Tiny+Tim+You+Are+What+You+Eat&aqs=chrome..69i57.21213j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Also on the soundtrack: members of Electric Flag, John Simon and John Herald performing title song, other people

Track list from Amazon, who have it on mp3 (may also have the DVD, but looks like all or at least an hour-long chunk of it is on YouTube; I'll watch that first)
Hawks are only on Tim tracks:
IDE ONE:
Teenage Fair (Helmet Commercial) - Rosko
Moments of Soft Persuasion - Peter Yarrow
Silly Girl - Peter Yarrow
Desert Moog Music - John Simon
Be My Baby - Tiny Tim
The Family Dog - John Herold
The Nude Dance - Hamsa El Din
My Name Is Jack - John Simon

SIDE TWO:
I Got You Babe - Tiny Tim/Eleanor Barooshian
You Are What You Eat - Butterfield Blues Band
Beach Music - John Simon
The Wabe - Peter Yarrow/John Simon
Don't Remind Me Now of Time - Peter Yarrow
Painting for Freakout - John Simon
Freakout - The Electric Flag/John Simon

Thanks, dow. Saw some of the credits for that earlier this evening, including jazz bassist Bill Crow on some of the tracks if I read it right. Found a John Hammond (Jr.) album that has The Hawks on it, So Many Roads, and they do sound good. Even has a version of “Who Do You Love.” Hammond actually sounds a bit like Captain Beefheart, at least on first listen.

xpost yeah John Hammond

That two or three things I know about JRR thread has a link to a pretty tough takedown of some of his solo work by A. Sotosyn

the yawye soundtrack is ace, but have never made it through the whole film (was all up on youtube at some point)

couple of other band/tiny tim tracks on this

seem to recall dylan hooking up with the band was a direct result of their recording with j hammond jr?

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

I've seen pointed out that he is sort of simultaneously two types of players, an electric blues guy and also a Curtis Mayfield-styled funky rhythm player

Yeah this is totally spot on wrt to Robbie's playing

I watched the movie last night, the most notable aspect for me was how large a role his wife Dominique has in the film, usually spouses tend to be erased completely or at most referred to but rarely seen or heard from.

The movie is well made and the there was a fair amount of backstage pics/footage I hadn't seen and a very welcome appearance by Ronnie Hawkins, cussing and talking about coke and pussy vs everyone else bloviating about the magic of music or some shit, the narrative it follows is pretty Behind the Music-level.

Robbie is very actorly and smooth and rehearsed which makes him seem like he is trying to sell you something (himself) even if a lot of times he seems very genuine and honest.

Garth is generally praised in an "also appearing" manner, that basically Garth & Robbie held everything together post 69.

Danko is barely mentioned at all or remarked on, unless he was crashing a car (and watching the old footage man he was a beautiful man)

Richard is a sad drunk, everyone is kind of "whaddya gonna do?"

The Levon portrayal is really jarring, it starts with Levon & Robbie as very tight bros but pretty soon Levon is painted as a junkie, paranoid, hick who let bitterness consume him while Robbie was out here living his best life, haters to the left, etc. Some of the way footage of Levon playing live and grimacing is paired with voice-overs about what a bitter asshole he was is unsubtle and fucking gross frankly.

Also for all everyone talking about how Levon bitched about how they were getting screwed by management & accountants, no one ever refutes that on camera.

But at the same time the movie ends with "Dixie" from the Last Waltz

The end of the Band is basically Robbie lamenting how fucked up everyone was and how if only someone had written a song he would have kept the thing going. It is very clear though that Robbie hated the road and really wanted to spend time with his family, even as early as the Dylan tour (which I think tends to get underrated a far as scarring everyone in the band having to go out night after night getting booed playing with Dylan)

W/r/t to Levon v Robbie and songwriting credits, part of the issue is the way songwriters traditionally are credited and remunerated is fundamentally not how rock bands work, esp bands like the Band where one person might write the lyric & melody but obv lots of other hands are involving in the arranging and turning it into an actual "song", which is def a skill and an important aspect to writing that is hugely underrated.

It certainly won't change anyone's opinion and though interesting in spots I don't know that I would call it a crucial view.

yeah the lack of garth in the movie (not even a talking head) was bizarre, though he always seemed to be a guy who didn't seek the spotlight.

Garth doesn't seem in the best of health in this little feature from a few years ago, so may well not have been up to participating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBc_4dPQusI

By a lot of accounts it really was Manuel's decline that did them in. He couldn't always play or sing, and when he could it was nowhere near what he used to be capable of singing. That and the band literally moving apart really ended whatever magical thing was going on with them. Same thing sort of happened with the Beatles and other bands. You spend every waking hour together in a house, on a bus, on a stage. Then you go your separate ways and it's harder to get on the same page.

https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/music/as-tiff-opens-with-a-documentary-about-his-life-robbie-robertson-opens-up-about-his-past-present-and-future

Some of the difficulty arose from alcohol and drugs: For the film, Roher spoke with Dominique Robertson, Robbie’s ex-wife, who was with him during The Band years and was nearly killed when singer/keyboardist Richard Manuel, after a few drinks, totalled his Mustang. Dominique, who would become a psychotherapist and addiction counsellor in the 1980s, says in the movie that while her husband was no angel, he lacked the genetic predisposition to become addicted — unlike Manuel, Helm and singer/bassist Rick Danko.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/movies/2020/02/27/robbie-robertson-salutes-band-bittersweet-once-were-brothers/4881038002/

In what certainly feels like a pivotal moment, Dominique Robertson, the guitarist's wife, recalls one night a drunk Manuel convinced her he would "sober up behind the wheel" and ended up driving them both into a ditch. Then Helm got in his car and raced to the scene of the accident and crashed into a parked car when he got there.

Looking back on it a lifetime later, Robertson says, "Richard could've killed Dominique. What do you say? It pissed me off."

The Last Waltz got me into the Band, then a short while later, I became disappointed that Richard Manuel barely made the film because he seemed especially integral on their first three (i.e. best) albums, not to mention one of their three main vocalists. It wasn't until much later that I heard about his alcoholism, especially on his singing, though he could usually pull off a song or two before his voice gradually deteriorated.

The late Peter Stone Brown (a long-time "Dylanologist" who was also a huge fan of the Band) gave what seemed like a pretty even-handed review of the Band's history in his reviews for "The Last Waltz"'s 2002 reissue and later Robertson's memoir. Unfortunately, his blog has been having constant issues, but you can find google cache links to both of the relevant reviews.

He was someone who knew of the group through Dylan even before they released an album, and this seemed enlightening in terms of how people might've perceived them over time:

"The image The Band presented on Big Pink was that of 19th Century outlaws, and there was also a big picture of them with their families—a distinct slap in the face to every rebel rock band at the time. Looking at the photo and hearing the songs, it was easy to think these were clean-living country guys who went to church on Sunday. Thirty years later books started appearing that blew that image to bits. They were partying, drug-taking, drinking maniacs who regularly wrecked their cars and had a hard time keeping anything together."

I think the most remarkable thing about the Band was their impact on a lot of their *British* peers. Like, iirc, the Beatles and Eric Clapton/Derek & the Dominos, acts who obviously heard something unique in the Band but couldn't quite put their finger on it (or, like most, including even the Band after a short bit, pull it off).

Especially Richard Thompson and The Fairport Convention, who DID manage to pull it off.

It's been forever since I've read but I remember loving Barney Hoskyns's Across The Great Divide, which I should probably re-read

I wonder if the Band influenced the Dead, or was the turn with Workingman's Dead more attributable to the CSN connection via Crosby?

I mean, I know about Garcia's bluegrass roots, but that's not what they're doing in 1970.

I guess Festival Express is an answer.

It's been forever since I've read but I remember loving Barney Hoskyns's Across The Great Divide, which I should probably re-read

great and v sad book.

Other things I've read by him seemed good, but since he got that wrong about Dylan and Tiny Tim having just met, when Dylan's contradiction is right there in Chronicles, makes me wonder what else he got wrong.
xp Festival Express, yes! Forgot about that--wiki sez: The train journey between cities ultimately became a combination of non-stop jam sessions and partying fueled by alcohol. One highlight of the documentary is a drunken jam session featuring The Band's Rick Danko, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, New Riders of the Purple Sage's John Dawson, as well as Janis Joplin.[4][6]
Been listening to the 50th Anniversary WD, which sounds great, and now can hear def. Band-compatible sonic etc. sensibilities, though of course still much more spare than Big Pink---Dead were on best behavior after financial blowout of prev studio adventures. "Black Peter," climbing and then slamming into and through those choruses, seems Bandworthy as Hell. Though they did credit Croz and maybe Nash with teaching them to sing harmonies, so also that in the sound, without getting too sweet.

Greil Marcus mentioned, maybe in Mystery Train, somebody else's article, from late 60s or early 70s, re Manuel, "measuring him for a straitjacket," so word was already getting out, to some extent, however pre-Behind The Music in delivery.

xpost Oh, yeah, Fairport for sure, though (sensibly) from a distinctly British perspective, with the exception, perhaps, of the Bunch album.

Right, that’s what RT says, they were trying to do a British version.

I think the most remarkable thing about the Band was their impact on a lot of their *British* peers. Like, iirc, the Beatles and Eric Clapton/Derek & the Dominos, acts who obviously heard something unique in the Band but couldn't quite put their finger on it (or, like most, including even the Band after a short bit, pull it off).

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 18, 2020 10:56 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

So many UK bands wanted to be the Band...or, in Clapton's case, be in the Band (he asked to join). The impact of the Band in general, and Big Pink in particular, on the UK scene was pretty massive: Clapton broke up Cream and formed Blind Faith, the Beatles' did the Get Back thing, Traffic holed up together in a thatched-roof cottage, Jack Bruce's "Theme From An Imaginary Western," the Small Faces' "The Autumn Stone," Humble Pie's Town & Country, about half of Let It Bleed, the Kinks' Muswell Hillbillies...can't think of an obviously Band-influenced Who record, though (maybe "Let's See Action"). Hell, even Roger Waters claimed Big Pink "affected Pink Floyd deeply, deeply, deeply." I don't hear it, but that's on me, not them.

i can hear a tiny bit of big pink influence in atom heart mother, now that i think about it.

Workingman's Dead was definitely Band-influenced, and was actually released prior to the Festival Express tour.

can't think of an obviously Band-influenced Who record, though (maybe "Let's See Action")

Those post-Tommy, pre/post-Who's Next songs "Water", "Naked Eye", "Join Together" might be some Band influence

the who covered marvin gaye's "don't do it," also covered by the band, but i'm not sure who covered it first

I was thinking that too but I'd bet that both bands played it back in their R&B days as High Numbers or the Hawks

Also any Band influence on the Who was probably all second hand Townshend aping Clapton

Don't forget Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, which incl. (though maybe not at the same time?) all of the soon-to-be Derek and the Dominoes, and their crucial "Layla" guest, Duane Allman, also George Harrison, Leon Russell, Dave Mason, Rita Coolidge (wiki adds King Curtis, though I don't remember him on the live tracks I've heard). No Band members that I know of (they were good w Bobby Charles and Ringo, Garth later w Marianne Faithfull, although solos could go on a while).
Seems like there was a fair amount of Band-ish influence in Clapton's 70s solo albums, a taste that also led him to songs of JJ Cale, Don Williams, even John Martyn ("May You Never"). Oh yeah, and Sign Language, which sounded pretty good at the time---haven't heard it since---and, as wiki sez:
The album was recorded at The Band's Shangri-la Studios in March 1976, and included involvement from all five members of The Band; Rick Danko shared vocals with Clapton on "All Our Past Times," which he co-wrote with Clapton. The album also includes a duet with Bob Dylan on his otherwise unreleased song "Sign Language."

"Dominos," sorry!

I'm sorry, I meant No Reason To Cry, Clapton album w Band members.

I always forget that Rick, Levon, and Garth were all in the first Ringo All-Star band.

Those post-Tommy, pre/post-Who's Next songs "Water", "Naked Eye", "Join Together" might be some Band influence

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, September 18, 2020 2:36 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the who covered marvin gaye's "don't do it," also covered by the band, but i'm not sure who covered it first

― i got a homogenic björk wine farmer permabanned (voodoo chili), Friday, September 18, 2020 2:40 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was thinking that too but I'd bet that both bands played it back in their R&B days as High Numbers or the Hawks

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, September 18, 2020 2:42 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Join Together" does have a slight Band resemblance, and yep, the Who covered "Baby Don't You Do It" in 1964 (as the High Numbers), and in 1971. But the post-Tommy songs for the unreleased EP don't strike me as particularly Band-like. "Time Is Passing" and "Love Ain't For Keeping" seem to show some Band influence, though.

Perhaps this will refresh your memory.

Not to mention this

Doesn’t work on zing though:(

robbie has barely played live in 45 years; he appeared on SNL in 87 to promote the first album, was at some Stratocaster fest in europe with other big shots in the 90s, and he showed up and played (not very well) "Don't Do it" at one of those Last Waltz reconstructions in Nashville with one of those neo-Outlaw guys (jamey Johnson?) with Don Was on bass. He has never toured for one of his records… when someone way upthread said he doesn't seem "charming," it's more that he seems too charming… he's a HUGE schmoozer, an oily/slick networker; one would think for the past 40 years or so, Dylan would prefer the company of the other guys in the Band… and in terms of his playing, it seems like it was him and Bloomfield in the U.S. and Canada that you could put in the mid 60s white blues company of EC, Beck, Peter green… and it is especially unusual in that doc that Domninique, from whom he has been divorced for at least 35 years, is a character witness (my god is she gorgeous)…

as it've said before, maybe on this thread, the 2016 book, as well as the doc and the 2005 box set, has him trying to clear his name and to go over his version of the history of the band over and over again… he doesn't like to say that the other guys got back together… in any case, his life after the Last Waltz would be pretty fucking interesting to hear about… I hope he lets go of this shit now and moves on to the events of the last 45 goddamn years

Watching the Once Were Brothers now. So far pretty conventional– Jann Wenner is one of the talking heads!– unlike, say, the Other Music doc.

Okay, things just got a little interesting when Ronnie Hawkins showed up with teenage Levon in tow.

Hadn't known about this Geffen/Asylum interlude. Hadn't know that John P Hammond had a different middle initial from his father John H. Hammond. The way John P. Hammond tells the story, Dylan wanted the whole Band right away but I thought there was another version where he at first he only wanted Robbie but Robbie held out and said "Levon's got to come too" (and maybe all the rest of the guys as well) but I don't remember where I heard that.

For that Forest Hills show Dylan did in 65 the band was Robbie, Levon, Al Kooper and Harvey Brooks. Thought this was some sort of tryout for Robbie and Levon.

Okay, the longer version of this last thing is in Robbie's book.

Watched all the credits roll and saw that Rob Bowman got one which is good, that guy is pretty thorough.

This turned out to be worth seeing. It's very clearly from Robbie's point of view but has some other voices to balance it out even if they don't contradict him. Who knew that two of the most important ones would be Ronnie Hawkins and, as mentioned upthread, Robbie's ex-wife, Dominique.

Their son Sebastian has a very long Wikipedia entry, which includes mention of his friend Daniel Davies, son of Dave. Perhaps they could form some kind of supergroup with Rufus Wainwright and Teddy Thompson.

John P was often billed as John Jr. while his father was still around, maybe so no semi-informed would think the old man was gonna play.
I also heard that it was Mary Martin, not the Peter Pan star/Larry Hagman's Mom alas, but Grossman's associate, who got Dylan to go see the Hawks, as Wiki sez, with sources noted re all this (caveat on top: "This article needs additional citations...," but this section seems okay):

As Dylan finished the sessions for his 1965 "Positively 4th Street" single, he wanted to reproduce on-stage the same sound that he had polished in the studio.[1] He soon began to gather a pick-up band, with several musicians, such as bassist Harvey Brooks and organist Al Kooper, that had played during the sessions for Highway 61 Revisited.[1] However, the bulk of the players came from Ronnie Hawkins' former backing group, Levon and the Hawks. They impressed Dylan when he saw them play in Toronto, at the direction of Albert Grossman's staffer, Mary Martin, who told him to visit the group at Le Coq d'Or Tavern, a Yonge Street club. (Robbie Robertson recalled that it was the Friar's Tavern, a nearby establishment.)[2] An alternate version of the first meeting, put forward by Williamson, suggests that he saw them in a Jersey Shore club.[1] Drummer Levon Helm and guitarist Robbie Robertson were quickly invited to join Dylan's backing group.[2] Only two shows into the initial tour in North America, Kooper left the band due to stress and safety concerns.[3][4] He and Brooks were promptly replaced by the remaining Hawks (bassist Rick Danko, pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson). Drummer Levon Helm, too, disillusioned by the constantly hostile reception from audiences, jumped ship in November, getting replaced by session drummer Bobby Gregg.[2][5] Gregg eventually left the band as the tour progressed, and Sandy Konikoff replaced him on drums, but Konikoff also left when Dylan traveled to Australia.[2] Former Johnny Rivers drummer Mickey Jones remained with the band throughout the rest of the tour.
---from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan_World_Tour_1966

Of course, just because she told him to check out the whole group, doesn't mean that younger John *didn't* take Robertson to meet him during sessions or whatever it was. Maybe that meeting inclined D. to follow her advice, even though she was just, like, a woman.

Mary Martin honored by the Country Music Hall of Fame:
...Jay Orr, a museum staff member who hosted the program, listed a few of Martin’s important achievements in his introduction. “She played a key role in connecting Bob Dylan with the Band; she managed Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Rodney Crowell, and Vince Gill at crucial stages of their careers; she signed Emmylou Harris to Warner Bros. Records at the outset of her illustrious Hall of Fame run. Then Mary came to Nashville where she touched lives inside and outside the music business.”
---from https://countrymusichalloffame.org/plan-your-visit/exhibits-activities/public-programs/the-louise-scruggs-memorial-forum/mary-martin/

Robbie’s version of the story as told in Testimony is that they first met Dylan briefly through Hammond, that Mary Martin was working in the Grossman office and pushing for the Hawks, at some point Robbie was asked to come to meet Dylan at the office, they then took some guitars from the Grossman office and went to Grossman’s house to play a few tunes together, Robbie realized this was an audition and said “but I already have my own band!” Then there was a further meeting with some other management in which a full band audition was discussed and Robbie mentioned the Toronto gig, so Dylan- and Sara! - flew up to Toronto. Dylan came to a couple of gigs and after the customers left they all played Dylan material together to see how it went.

His version is sufficiently detailed to have the ring of truth, mostly, factoring whatever Robbie-centricity one attributes to him.

In the documentary they only mention Mickey Jones, no Bobby Gregg as a Levon substitute, never mind Sandy Stranger, which was confusing.

Couldn’t figure out who that Williamson was, James Williamson?

One of my favorite Robertson bullshit anecdotes, related by Heylin, is that during the Basement Tapes period, Robertson claimed he got Dylan to realize that the early Sun Records recordings had a certain sound, man. Like Dylan wasn't familiar with Sun Records for more than 10 years at that point having grown up on that stuff.

There's a bunch of stuff like that in Testimony, can't recall any others right now.
Reminds me that Dion DiMucci sometimes makes some similar claims, believe he says he is the one who gave Dylan the idea to go electric.

Watched about a half-hour of that Louise Scruggs Mary Martin event. Good stuff. She confirms The Band's car-wrecking propensity, just in case we didn't already have enough evidence. Also tells a good story aboutLeonard Cohen doing a demo tape in her bathtub, presumably not the same tub Sylvia Tyson used to write her most famous composition, for which Garth Hudson prepared some really ornate lead sheets that she wishes she still had.

'The Band' is a perfect album... and 'whispering pines' is just about the most beautiful, desolate song i've ever heard in my life, it never fails to move me to tears. (i have an MP3 of elliott smith stumbling through it somewhere, and it is chilling)
― stevie (stevie), Wednesday, 11 February 2004 10:52 (sixteen years ago)

That 1970 footage linked me to this 76 show - Manuel's voice seems a bit shot, but kinda surprised how much all of them are still putting into the performance - the clothes have got much worse

Haven’t gotten to this part of the Mary Martin interview yet:
In her job capacity, Martin also saw several rock bands, including the New York Dolls and the Ramones. She regrets not bringing Tom Verlaine’s band Television to Warner Bros

Sandy Stranger
By which I mean Sandy Konikoff. Who, when he arrived in NYC "looked like a beatnik from central casting," says Robbie, even though he was being trained by Ronnie Hawkins to replace Levon. Hawkins, annoyed at losing another band member to Dylan, threatened to break his legs, according to Konikoff. He, along with another guy from Buffalo with a Band connection, Stan Szelest, was also in the band Grinder's Switch with Garland Jeffries, which backed up John Cale on Vintage Violence before releasing their own album.

I guess he is mentioned in that Wikipedia article dow posted last night.

You mean you didn't read it?! Awww---yeah, Stan was in the Hawks before Manuel, came back to the Band after Manuel's suicide, then he himself died of a heart attack. His song "Too Soon Gone" was finished by Jules Shear, and included on Jericho, with dedications to Szelest and Manuel (found this when I was looking for backstory on Vintage Violence):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Szelest

I did read it, last night! But in the morning I act like I never have read.

let’s get you two on a throbbing gristle thread and call it the dow james industrial

Heh. You could also just post that here: Create a Super-ILXer!

You’re still there, huh?

Robbie’s version of the story as told in Testimony is that they first met Dylan briefly through Hammond, that Mary Martin was working in the Grossman office and pushing for the Hawks, at some point Robbie was asked to come to meet Dylan at the office, they then took some guitars from the Grossman office and went to Grossman’s house to play a few tunes together, Robbie realized this was an audition and said “but I already have my own band!” Then there was a further meeting with some other management in which a full band audition was discussed and Robbie mentioned the Toronto gig, so Dylan- and Sara! - flew up to Toronto. Dylan came to a couple of gigs and after the customers left they all played Dylan material together to see how it went.

― ABBA O RLY? (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, September 20, 2020 5:56 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

His version is sufficiently detailed to have the ring of truth, mostly, factoring whatever Robbie-centricity one attributes to him...
― ABBA O RLY? (James Redd and the Blecchs)

Yeah, and seems plausible to have this kind of process: Dylan took chances, but as calculated risks, often enough. He knew these road vets had mad skillz, but that they were from all around the boondocks, and, in at least one interview I've Robertson freely copped to their not really knowing much about him, and esp, not knowing that they were about to be "going around the world getting booed"---so he didn't warn them? Maybe he was hoping it wouldn't be so bad (and/or not wanting to think about it), and maybe it wasn't really *so* bad (by some eyewitness accounts, also earwitness to bootlegs of the show, Newport was a bit of a hype, booing-wise).
But apparently they weren't expecting it, and it became more predictable than a rando night in a rando dive past Moose Jaw, where there might at least be chicken wire giving them some sense of stage security---no, this was the Big Time!

“Big Time, Bill, Big Time!”

Finally figured out he was talking to Bill Graham.

Took John Simon’s book out of the library. Good stuff.

Not so great typesetting and proofreading but good stuff anyway.

You're still there, huh?

So one interesting thing I learned I didn't know was that Miles Davis opened for The Band at least once around the time of Bitches Brew. Levon had some troubles that night but that didn't seem to stop Jack DeJohnette from becoming a friend and a fan, playing at the Ramble and recording a pretty good version of "Up On Cripple Creek" with his Hudson project.

Oh cool, will have to check that.
Speaking of John Simon, think I saw this one a long time ago, always wondered about it--- from Xgau's 70s Guide, also on his site:
John Simon's Album [Warner Bros., 1970]
Somewhere beyond the plaintive quaver, rootsy supersession rock is mixed with pre-WW2 touches in a series of homely sketches--many of them about outsiders trying to make something of their lives, a theme to which a plaintive quaver is well-suited. Highlight: "The Song of the Elves," in which outsiders brag about how tall they are. B+

That's the book version, I guess, but the original column is also archived, more qualified at first, then more enthusiastic and specific about the album's higlights:

JOHN SIMON: John Simon's Album (Warner Bros.) If you can get past Simon's plaintive quaver, which took me three months and at least a dozen plays, this is almost as extraordinary as its reviewers claim. At least two sensibilities involved in the mix: the best pre-WW2 pop (Gershwin, Porter) and post-Pepper studio rock. Highlights: "The Song of the Elves," "Railroad Train Runnin' Up My Back." B PLUS

I learned that from Robbie's book but John's book is good too and I am curious about his solo material.

John Simon made a circuit of local (Hudson Valley, upstate NY) public libraries a few years ago, basically doing a q&a. While he stated up front that his memory isn’t great, he did say the following: he's on Robbie's side on the authorship dispute with Levon; Antonioni originally wanted the Band to do the music for Zabriske Point; Bob Dylan asked Simon to be his "musical secretary" for Renaldo & Clara (Simon declined); and he singled out Prince's "Erotic City" as a song that really knocked him out production-wise. He also played (piano) and sang a song from one of his solo records. Someone in the audience had a copy he wanted John to sign; John joked, “Ah, so you’re the one who bought it!” but also seemed genuinely appreciative that someone was into his solo work.

been playing that Richard Manuel's The Band playlist ever since UMS shared it, and i've been consistently knocked out by "in a station," which i'd always thought of as a minor track on big pink. no longer.

Seems like Antonioni wanted everybody in Rock in 1969 to do music for Zabriskie Point. Of course, this Band thing kind of explains him hiring the even more off the wall roots mavens (US) Kaleidoscope later.

Oho. I've never heard it---saw the film on tcm long ago, don't remember the music, but this says a lot gathered/recorded for soundtrack didn't make it to the screen---but Roscoe Holcomb and John Fahey tracks are listed, seems like The Band could fit somewhere in between:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabriskie_Point_(album)

Pink Floyd ended up doing most of it, Jerry Garcia scored the love scene (which Floyd attempted, their effort rejected), and as mentioned in that article, the Doors wrote a song that was rejected, and supposedly prior to that they were considered for more.

Kaleidoscope got brought in extremely late in post-production, delivering the two songs on the album. After the work had been submitted and approved, one of the Kaleidoscope guys reported that upon receiving their paychecks, someone from MGM apologized for their small size, as "this project has gone on so long that there was barely any budget left for music: these checks are the absolute bottom of the barrel."

Those checks were the biggest payout Kaleidoscope had every gotten for their work up to that point.

...and probably after as well!

IIRC Dave Gilmour couldn't understand why Antonioni wanted them to write Country-oriented material, "because we were in L.A., where there were tons of great bands playing that kind of material."

Some of the stories Robbie and John Simon tell are exactly the same, like the one about Antonioni and Clare Peploe sitting on the edge of Levon’s bed to listen to the playback of “Across the Great Divide” and Antonioni perking up when he heard a word he recognized and making a finger gun and saying “pistole!”

Haven’t read the article yet so wondering which Kaleidoscope it was.

Correction: they tell similar stories with different but not contradictory details. Robbie mentions Clare Peploe, John Simon mentions the pistole.

Simon describes Robbie as “canny,” and this being a “consistent” quality of his.

xxp Think it was the Cali K-scope, most appropriately for the film---although, since he was trying to get Pink Floyd to go country, why not the UK or "Mexican" (actually mostly Caribbean, best I recall from promo sheet).

canny, cunning, why not.

wondering which Kaleidoscope it was.

<cough>

Seems like Antonioni wanted everybody in Rock in 1969 to do music for Zabriskie Point. Of course, this Band thing kind of explains him hiring the even more off the wall roots mavens (US) Kaleidoscope

D’oh, sorry! Can’t read/too much coffee/too late/too old/wishful thinking/zing/couldn’t resist bad joke et.

Thinking about the “canny” thing in comparison with a friend of mine. One time somebody accused him of some sort of fabrication and I asked him later “you didn’t make that up, did you?” and he said something like “no, of course not.” Some people can advance their case without actually factually dissimulating, it’s like a magician’s trick of emphasis and misdirection and concealment, which can be mildly infuriating if you have to deal with them enough. So even if Levon’s most outrageous claims were false, I understand the feeling. Also, Levon was more of a take-me-as-I-am life of the party kind of guy, whereas Robbie was more of a guy who could fit in at the sophisticated soirée, so I am starting to believe that he really was the impromptu best man or “very good man” at Bob and Sara’s wedding.

Even in Robbie’s own book a lot of the best lines belong to Levon. Maybe I should go through and post a few of them. So even if Ronnie Hawkins and John Simon are correct in asserting that Robbie wrote those songs, I can understand it still might irk the guy whose voice was being channeled. But then again Robbie said he split the publishing five ways, which Albert G. told him he didn’t have to do.

Levon didn’t want to join me in these new experiences with Bob, which put me in a hard place. I knew he felt somewhat alienated. He was becoming uncomfortable with the “show biz” aspects of rock ’n’ roll; he didn’t even like people taking his photograph. The music, the people, the lifestyle, even the private Lodestar plane we traveled in bothered him. “I ain’t that interested in touring in a Buddy Holly special,” he’d tell me. “Sometime, if the weather’s bad, that sucker could get blown right outta the sky.”

When I sat down with the guys to talk about how this music felt to them and their take on working with Bob, Richard offered, “He seems like an okay guy to me, but that run-through wasn’t very good on our end. We have to start by really learning these songs.” Bob had asked Garth to play some of the organ parts from his record, but these didn’t necessarily fit Garth’s style or aesthetic. Levon shrugged. “So far it’s sounding rough as a cob to me.”

Robbie says he got his very good memory from his bootlegging predecessors on his father’s side, or so his uncle told him.

A lot of the stuff about Dylan hooking up with The Hawks is synthesized in the book That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound, by Daryl Sanders, whom I’ve never heard of except for this book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuxefsE9bkc

Hawks spotted on Singing Drummers thread, but not in most predictable way:
"Moulty," by the Barbarians, is thee autobio of their drummer, who lost a hand, but gained a hook. "Now all I need is a girl." Other Barbarians: "Moulty!" (That's the chorus.) Prob on the 'Tube, but I no longer trust ilx to let me post it.

― dow, Monday, October 26, 2020 12:14 PM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

That was actually a session gig where Moulty was backed by members of The Band (when they were still the Hawks), not the Barbarians. He reportedly was mortified by that track.

― Chris L, Monday, October 26, 2020 12:21 PM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh yeah, forgot about that, sorry. It was released as by the Barbarians, and incl. on Lenny Kaye's 70s-refreshing comp, Nuggets, which is where I heard it--wiki sez:

Originally, the song was only intended to be released under the consent of Moulton, who was opposed to its distribution. However, Laurie Records released "Moulty" along with "I'll Keep On Seeing You" in February 1966 as a single. Upon discovering the distribution of the song, Moulton was infuriated with president of Laurie Records, Robert Schwartz, reportedly quarreling with him, and destroying some copies of the single.[6] Regardless, "Moulty" managed to peak at number 90 on the Billboard Hot 100, remaining on the charts for four weeks.[7] The song became somewhat of an inspiration to the band's younger followers, insisting them to "never give up no matter what the odds". However, The Barbarians were so disgruntled with management for releasing the song, despite Moulton's insistence against it, that the band soon ceased relations with the company.[6] "Moulty" was later immortalized in the compilation album, Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968,[8] and included as a bonus track in the 2000 Sundazed Records reissue of the group's debut album.[9]

― dow, Monday, October 26, 2020 1:00 PM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think my favorite recordings of them may actually be these rehearsal studio clips that I've come across on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaKD1Vdarnw

That one is fun.

Incredible--thanks for the heads-up.

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. It's from the DVD that was included with that box set Robbie Robertson curated, A Musical History. Probably the best clip on that DVD too.

I’d always assumed it was Levon Helm singing that

There was quite a bit of that poolhouse footage used in the Classic Albums documentary, would watch the crap out of a full-length version of whatever's there.

Robbie Robertson: So are we sure it should be old depressing music cuz—

Levon helm: Right. Its just we made the words “went down ta Naz’reth” so the music kinda has to be old themed now—

Robbie: totally and we go “load off fannie!” So it’s all

Levon: All old timey words. Right

— jeremy levick (@jeremylevick) February 3, 2021

in what dreadful millennial thirsty-twitter reality is the weight "depressing"?

Wikipedia: Although it has long been believed that the reason for Helm's refusal to play [The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down] was a dispute with Robertson over songwriting credits, according to Garth Hudson the refusal was due to Helm's dislike for Joan Baez's version.

I wouldn't blame him in the slightest. I heard the Baez recording for the first time last week and it actually made me angry. Has anyone ever fucked up a cover version as badly as she did with that monstrosity?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB9vvxYocW0

I had managed to avoid hearing that until now, but yes, it's spectacularly horrible. Baez's fifty-year record may have been broken. That said, at least JBJ gets the chords right in his cover version.

Just came across this via Variety - rare live footage from 1970 (filmed for a Dutch TV broadcast).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFgyD3Uk1JQ

Just a regular gig compared to The Last Waltz, they didn't film any of Richard Manuel's numbers but he looks like he's in much better health. (We do hear him thank the audience on the band's behalf.) It looks like Robbie does harmonize a lot with the group even though he's clearly not pushing himself in the spotlight. There's no sense of any individual standing out, it's clearly a far more democratic picture of the Band, just as they were meant to be.

wow great footage

as far as I can tell Robbie's mic is always pretty much turned off or mixed so far low I can't tell if he's singing or just wanted the image that he was singing

nothing in his solo material would indicate he could sing harmony

He may be mixed a little low, but you can definitely single him out during the whoops at the end of "Cripple Creek," when his voice doesn't overlap with others (plus he may or may not interject an audible and quick "thank you" immediately after a performance, like he does here at one point, and it wouldn't make sense to turn on-and-off his mic like that).

Listen to "Bessie Smith" (on the doctored Basement Tapes and later re-located as a bonus track on Cahoots), his voice was more ordinary and less whispery back then. He's not going to sing harmony like the Beatles of the Everly Brothers, that's for sure, but the Band's harmonies have often been called ragged and individualistic, with the voices sung together but not quite together as if emphasizing the idea of community without leaving behind personal identity. Within that context, it works for him to fill out those harmonies.

He sings lead on "To Kingdom Come" on the first album, and in each part of the song, each of the other singers alternates harmonizing with him, as far as I can tell.

getting irrationally angry at that tweet lol

yeah being a dismissive dummy is really rewarded on Twitter

xpost

wow I always thought To Kingdom Come was a combo of Manuel and Danko straining high on their range

Here's how I hear it:

1st verse: Robbie and Richard in unison
1st pre-chorus ("So don't you say a word..."): Rick, Robbie doing low harmony
1st chorus: Rick and Robbie, Levon doing low harmony
2nd verse: Robbie, then Robbie and Richard in unison
2nd pre-chorus: Rick, Robbie doing low harmony
2nd chorus: Rick and Robbie, Levon doing low harmony

I can't tell if the chorus is in three-part harmony, or who's on top if so!

Now listening to the remixed version, it seems to be Richard instead of Robbie doing the low harmony on the pre-chorus? And all this is assuming they didn't double-track any voices.

Viney on "Bessie Smith" and the Robertson treatment of '75 Basement Tapes---says Heylin seized on it as (among) evidence of Robertson's plot vs. Manuel's memory (as songwriter)!
https://theband.hiof.no/articles/bessie_smith_viney.html
Most interested in this:
There is a circulating tape of Band-only basement sessions, which was due to become the sixth volume in the bootleg series The Genuine Basement Tapes. It was never released. This includes unreleased items, like a guitar instrumental version of Ruben Remus as well as other versions of Orange Juice Blues and Yazoo Street Scandal. Any of yall heard it?

That link is pretty interesting, thanks.

Viney really tears down the core of Heylin's accusations. Heylin is often a good reference - he's a thorough researcher - but he can undermine that work with a tendency to lash out at people. It can be refreshing when he calls someone out for something they did, but he also does that when the evidence doesn't warrant it. It's kind of amusing - whenever I see him in a photo or an interview, he's jolly and all smiles, but in writing, he comes off as a real curmudgeon.

though I wanted to be mad at Robbie, the new Stage Fright remix sounds great and the new tracklist does work pretty well

His new Rolling Stone interview reported that "The Rumor" was always intended as the last track, even before the rest of the Band pushed him to re-sequence it, and it acknowledged without explanation that it was moved to the end of side A even though that wasn't the original intention. Whatever, he can do what he likes, but for the most part, the new tracklist does work very well. The one exception is that "Sleeping" doesn't quite work as a closing track, and I think it flows better if you swap it with "The Rumor."

yeah agreed, I do think Sleeping does feel more like a middle song

TBH the new mix feels a little too polished and too airtight for my tastes. The previous mixes felt a bit more open and loose (more on that later). Something about the new mix sands away a bit of the character that made it sound like the Band.

The Royal Albert Hall show is excellent. Someone mentioned that this is the first time a complete "regular" show has ever been officially released, whereas their other live recordings were organized like special events - the Toussaint-arranged horns on the Academy shows and the big farewell (also with horns) of "The Last Waltz." The Academy shows are still my favorites though, so if you want to own just one live album, that's the one to get (especially the box set if you can splurge - I really like the "soundboard"-style mix that was done to the final show).

The Calgary hotel room recordings are actually my favorite bonuses here - they're kind of like Basement Tape-style recordings, but done in cozier surroundings. The riff on "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show" sounds great on an acoustic guitar - if you didn't know better, you'd swear it was lifted from a down home blues standard. They do more covers than originals, and it kind of highlights how they're able to play any genre of roots music without breaking a sweat.

This may be too much detail for some, but anyone who's a collector or a huge fan of Stage Fright will probably know that it was already released in different mixes before this set. It wasn't until 2000 or so when some sense was made out it, but I wouldn't rely on anything Robbie's told in the interviews promoting the new set - I don't think he's lying, most likely he doesn't remember all the details (partly because he wasn't there when the rejected mixes were made).

Ken Scott (i.e. the engineer and producer behind Bowie's Ziggy Stardust recordings and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass) apparently wrote this in late 2006:

If my memory serves me correctly, members of the Band asked George Harrison for his recommendation as to who might be good to mix the album Stage Fright, as they, and this is the only part where my memory may be a little askew, didn't want Todd Rundgren to complete the project. Because of the work we had done together he named me. Time was booked at Trident for me to mix. Before starting I was informed that Glyn Johns was going to be mixing the same material (at a different studio) and may the best man win. Tapes were delivered to both of us.

As I started to set everything up for the first mix in walked Mr. Rundgren who promptly relegated me to gofer. Much to my regret I never got to do any more with the tapes...

---

Rundgren gave an interview to Relix, and here's what he said:

The Band made an agreement with Glyn Johns to have him mix the album. Since I had recorded the whole album, they figured I should have a shot at mixing the album as well. So they sent me, with the tapes, to London and put me in one studio and I would mix...Then I came back with two versions of the record (my mix and Glyn's mix). As it turned out, they weren’t completely happy with either one so we went into the studio and did a whole other series of remixes while the Band was there. So those were essentially the Band’s own remixes.

With you and Glyn both there?

No, no. Just me. Glyn Johns was too busy to leave England. So we went back (into the studio in New York) and essentially went through a very long, torturous remix process again because it was five guys. We spent all day mixing a tune and then they would take the references back and come back the next with all new ideas or sometimes start the mix all over again. So it took a terrifically long time because you had to satisfy five guys. So in the end, I have no idea actually which ones went on the original record or which ones might be on the reissues of the record because in the end they made decisions about which ones would go one. I’m pretty sure that on the original release, it was a combination of the three...they’re might have been one or two mixes I did, a couple that Glyn Johns did, but also many that we done in the third mix session with The Band all there. So the album that was re-released, I haven’t gone back and listened to it. I probably couldn’t tell you anyway which one was which. I felt a little uncomfortable in my own mixing situation because I was sent into a strange place with speakers I had never worked with before and so I was just kind of trying to make my way through it and hoped that I was getting it right. Just kind of following my instincts.

---

Andrew Sandoval produced the 2000 reissues, he found all of the mixes, the multi-tracks and paperwork, and he says he was able to identify which mix is which via the paperwork. But some have expressed doubt about their accuracy (they could've been misfiled or mislabeled) because Rundgren's own music has some very distinct characteristics that appear on the Stage Fright mixes identified as Johns's whereas the ones identified as Rundgren's kind of sound like Johns's work. (Specifically, many of the alleged Johns mixes have some egregious distortion and a graphic EQ pattern that's typical of, say, Rundgren's "I Saw the Light.")

maybe helpful for some context abt that tweet, his humor is largely abt him being “bad” at humor, his Trump impersonation is just him rambling in his own voice.... it’s not meant to be a hot take, wouldn’t take it too seriously

I do find the “old-timey” notion funny, however misapplied to The Weight, but obv ymmv

xp That recalls a Rolling Stone reporter's checking in on the Stage Fright sessions: Rundgren said their laid back demeanor was a cover for chronic indecision---he kept running around the studio, doing stuff to shake them up, get them pissed off and on their feet, talking to him, but the most he got during the reporter's visit was when one of them said, without looking up from his whittling, "Todd boy, if you don't settle down, you can't be in our band." "I couldn't be in your band anyway. I can't grow a beard."
(Haven't heard it, but seems like reviewers tended to consider that Cahoots was where they really went off the rails---there was a mention "the unimaginable mess" in one track.)

That reminds me of a story of Levon chasing Todd around the studio, yelling "I'm gonna kill him!," after Todd said something insulting to Garth.
Rick and Levon liked him enough to play on one of the songs on Runt, though.

Cahoots is where Robbie's songwriting took a dive, though I enjoy "Last of the Blacksmiths" and the much-disliked "The Moon Struck One", which has the same hazy Great Depression feel as Altman's Thieves Like Us.

like the song, but "w.s. wolcott's medicine show" is the first time Robbie's old weird Americana feels forced and put on, or at least feels like the beginning of the problems his later stuff had

Xgau's take on both---thought he might haaate Cahoots but no, just not that interested:

Stage Fright [Capitol, 1970]
I've gone both ways with this group--if Music from Big Pink didn't tempt me away from my urban fastness, The Band did manage to make me jump around in my apartment. What gets in the way of this follow-up, however, is neither natural alienation nor critical overanticipation--it's the music itself, which simply overmatches the words. The tunes are so bright and doughty, and the musicians pitch in with so much will, that the domestic banalities of side one seem out of place in a way those of Delaney & Bonnie, say, never do. And if the settings are too complex for what Robbie Robertson knows, they're too unfocused for what he doesn't know, as the confused politico-philosophical grapplings on side two make agonizingly clear. Memorable as most of these songs are, they never hook in--never give up the musical-verbal phrase that might encapsulate their every-which-way power. Which perhaps means that they don't have much to say. B+

Maybe a little too tough, but I guess lack of hookiness on an Age of Rock album can make the diff between A- and B+---fair enough, if you really must issue a letter grade, jeez.

Cahoots [Capitol, 1971]
Whew, these fellows can really play. They cook on "Smoke Signal," and you should hear the guitar solo on "Last of the Blacksmiths." Seem overly worried about the passing of the world as they know it, though--not just blacksmiths, but eagles, rivers, trains, the works. B-
Seems even more like a legit worry now, and people were talking bout ecology and planting Earth Day etc. back then.

That's a good point about "Walcott", and it and "Daniel and the Sacred Harp" are the only songs on Stage Fright that really have that "old-timey" conceit.

Rick and Levon liked him enough to play on one of the songs on Runt, though. Didn't know this! So they were in on TR's window of opp for those, like Chilton, who glimpsed the proto-jangle-power-psych-pop etc. possibilities ( indeed, as I mentioned on the main Big Star thread: "a note to self on Twitter:
In radio interview on @BigStarBand's Live at Lafayette's Music Room, AC worries that forthcoming #1 Record is too much like Rundgren...") Would like to check out more of their guesting pop-rock gifts---they certainly sparkle 'n' burble on Bobby Charles's '72 s/t, released on Bearsville, their and Rundgren's neck o' the woods---and they showed up on at least one of Ringo's albums, right? With for instance Nilsson in there somewhere--?!

Energetic new review of Stage Fright---dunno that it was really "small stakes," seems fairly ambitious to me, w some of that making-of stress sublimated, or subliminal, but "they would never sound so happy again"---so overall happy, in sum of alb---seems plausiblehttps://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-band-stage-fright-50th-anniversary-edition/

Robertson says he's working on Cahoots next. It'll be interesting to see how he'll try to rehabilitate it, but I'm not expecting a salvage job on par with Dead Man's Pop. To be fair, even though it's mediocre by their standards, but there's some good stuff on there. I'd like to say they should have held off until they came up with more, but it would have been a four year wait.

The title of "Life Is a Carnival" alone is too corny, but it's still a fun track with a great horn arrangement from Toussaint. "4% Pantomime" with Van Morrison is a lot of fun, and "When I Paint My Masterpiece" is another excellent Dylan cover. I never liked "Smoke Signal" until I heard it again on the newly mixed Academy shows where it held its own - it's probably better on there, but it's not a complete reinvention of the album version, just a better recording and a better performance. "Don't Do It" should have been included, it's one of my favorite Motown covers and would've helped a lot.

FWIW, it sounds like Greil Marcus really likes the new version (i.e. new mix and new order), which surprised him because he actually hated the remix of "The Shape I'm In" when it was released ahead of the rest. It's supposed to come up in his next column.

I'm sort of amazed by how much I dig this new mix/track list, like I really love it and I've always really liked the record even if it always felt a bit confused? I dunno like a funny joke that someone kind of screws up the set up when they are telling it to you.

The Calgary Hotel stuff is amazing and the live set is great.

I've always had a weird soft spot for Cahoots, album cover aside

And I've also never really dug any of Robertson's other remix jobs over the yrs

Love those Calgary Hotel sessions, immediately make me think of the Tom Waits + Replacements songs that padded out the Dead Man's Pop box.

Almost forgot about those

Now that I think about it, those 'Mats/Waits sessions took place at Bearsville. Must be something in the water up there.

drugs

fluoride

re: Robertson's bad singing… "to Kingdom Come" is leagues, miles better than "Knockin' Lost John" or "Out of The Blue." And while Cahoots has issues, I don't understand how anyone can belittle "the Moon Struck One."

Can anyone think of another example of a songwriter —who comes up with everything, particularly melodies made to be sung by really good singers— who is a legendarily bad singer? Like obviously there are Leonard Cohen/Mark E Smith-style singers who render their limitations artfully, and I've never encountered anyone alleging that in fact Manuel, Helm or Danko came up with those melodies… the songs for which Robertson is credited, he wrote every bit of them…whereas Manuel and Danko (very seldom) wrote or co-wrote with Zimmy the songs they are credited for… so Robertson had to say "OK, this is how the vocal melody to "Stage Fright" goes," to the other three, and yet everyone agreed at the time that the composer of these often really fantastically challenging melody lines shouldn't sing them… are there other examples of this? Not including pure, non performing songwriters…like did I heard that Duke Ellington kinda sucked as a singer?

Some might say Randy Newman?
I guess Robertson's vocal perceived shortcomings have to do with his somewhat whiny tone, rather than singing out of tune or having an especially limited range?

he probably worked out the melodies on his guitar

Irving Berlin?

Sorry. Was actually thinking something similar to voodoo chili.

Boston. Tom Scholz wrote music and lyrics for almost all of their songs but never sang, not even back up.

Where can I find the xpost Calgary Hotel sessions? Also still wondering about where to find this, mentioned in the Viney post I recently linked upthread: There is a circulating tape of Band-only basement sessions, which was due to become the sixth volume in the bootleg series The Genuine Basement Tapes. It was never released. This includes unreleased items, like a guitar instrumental version of Ruben Remus as well as other versions of Orange Juice Blues and Yazoo Street Scandal. Any of yall heard it?

The Calgary Hotel sessions discussed above are the ones tacked onto the recent Stage Fright reissue.

just listening to the 2020 mix and "sleeping" does sound like it could be on something anything or the ballad of todd rundgren

Nice catch! For sure--"Sleeping" particularly isn't worlds away from Rundgren's "The Range War."

indeed.. the use of those sustained* chords at the end of each stanza* bring to mind "the range war" and "torch song"... plus maybe the way the piano is mixed, as birdistheword mentioned above.

*not sure if correct terms

I guess you could call them flat 7 triads over a tonic pedal bass (D/E in "Sleeping") or 11 chords.

I love the chord progression at the start of the song, that reappears in each refrain:

C#m/B B "Where else on
Bm/A A Earth would you
F#m/E E Want to go?"

Another similar Todd song is "Boat on the Charles". It might even be the same piano the Band used at Bearsville studios.

I only know "The Range War" from a good cover version on one of DBT Patterson Hood's solo albums, Murdering Oscar (and Other Love Songs). It surprised me, considering that Lester Bangs once reported asking Rundgren what he thought of country music: " 'AH'M DUMMB, AND AH'M STEWW-PID,' he brayed, but not everybody is."

I got that there was maybe a Band influence:
Your daddy runs sheep and my uncle runs cattle
Nothing can keep us out of this battle
They wage as it burns up the plains till no one is left in the saddle
Your ranch is upstream and they've dammed up the water…
There were such wars, and may be again, as the water situation out there incl. more and more drought. (Of course it's also meta, if you like.)

The Band opening for CSNY @ Wembley in '74 (#onethread)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7CniLlueBI

WARNING: Robbie's microphone <is on>

halfway into this, pretty fun, thanks for the tip.

the sound mix starts glitching at certain points, resulting in some fun weird moments such as garth's organ being about 3x louder than everything else during dixie

man backstage must have been a drug scene for the ages

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.

Many, Many (seems like not quite all?) albs that members of The Band played on:
http://theband.hiof.no/albums/major_involvement_albums.html I did not know about their friendship with Charles Lloyd during The Hawks' "Cannonball Adderly Period, or that Robertson seems to have played on at least a couple of his tracks---see, he could have gone back in that direction, or a similar one, as an instrumentalist, if he'd cared too, at least as a prestigious guest, now and then.But he's not that socialible, or maybe I just haven't read far enough.. Fave entry in early years:
The Bauls of Bengali were a family of itinerant street troubadours that Albert Grossman had met on a visit to India, and he invited them to stay in a converted barn in Bearsville in 1967. The brothers Luxman and Purna Das (that also can be seen posing with Bob Dylan on his John Wesley Harding album) became friends with the Band in Woodstock, and often visited them in Big Pink to inhale illegal substances and jam with the guys. One night, the Bauls wanted to jam, and Garth Hudson wanted to record, with Rick Danko and Levon sitting in with the Das brothers. The music was a bit too weird for the guys from the Band ("they were wailing in their own language, in their own world, Bubba"), so they left while Garth's tape machine rolled for hours. The tapes were released, years after, as Bengali Bauls at Big Pink.
-- extracted from Levon Helm's This Wheel's on Fire

[Dylan and the Bauls]
Luxman Das, Bob Dylan and Purna Das, on the cover of John Wesley Harding, 1967
Band guys can be heard saying "that's nice" after one track, they don't actually play. The album is produced by Garth Hudson. It was recorded in the basement of Big Pink on an Ampex 400 tape recorder using two Altec Lansing 1567A mixers with Norelco D-24 microphones. Engineered at A&R Studios, New York, by John Kryda. Purna Das of the Bauls also appears on Garth Hudson's 2001 solo album The Sea to the North,(linked to solo albums section)

In the Bob Dylan magazine The Telegraph, issue 51, there was an article on the John Wesley Harding LP cover with some info on the Bauls of Bengal. Below are a four-part scan of this article, that also mentions The Band's, and in particular Garth Hudson's, relationship with the Bangali Bauls links are incl. here, though I haven't tried 'em :
http://theband.hiof.no/albums/bengali_bauls_at_big_pink.html

Oh yeah, the links in there (to The Telegraph) def. work! The Ginsberg connection to the Bauls (sent Grossman to India to check them out), and I sure hope their tape with Dylan turns up, or maybe it has? As to thee JWH cover...

Yall I just listened to the xpost Rhino Handmade 3-CD expansion digital ghost on Spotify (also available as downloads, like maybe all the Handmades; I've noticed Fugs, Beefheart, Television: two more LPs-worth of good-to excellent tracks, which hopefully he still had the rights to put (w/o re-recording) on yon self-released albums, when he reportedly fled Woodstock Babylon for Sweet Home Louisiana(nuthin weird goin' on down there, nuh-uh). Listening this way, I don't have the CD booklet, but who specifically played what on what has always been conjectural, according to my not-very-extensive research, and a lot of this sounds as Bandy as the original s/t; also, several cuts sound like they might incl. Garth *and* Dr. John, ideally enough. Anybody looking for cover material should def. check this out, "You Were There" def. rec. to Willie

Listened to Moondog Matinee. I was never really a fan of it before - it's tough getting excited over a "covers" album. Skipping around, I thought there were only two, maybe three distinguished tracks ("Share Your Love With Me," "Mystery Train" and maybe "I Ain't Got No Home"). It's a short album so I started over and let it play start-to-finish. Then I played it yet again and for some reason it really clicked. Hard to say why, but when I focused on the group, it sank in that if this was a Last Waltz situation where they were backing other singers, they'd be doing a damn fine job. But on the second play, I learned to appreciate all the vocal performances more, not just the few that stood out. I know it already had its fans (I think Gary Graff, Greil Marcus, the late critic Robert Palmer, Robert Christgau sort of) but I think I finally hear what they were hearing.

It's interesting that this record, Pinups by Bowie, and These Foolish Things by Bryan Ferry all came out in October of 1973 (although the Carpenters had released their oldies tribute Now and Then in May of that year). Had songwriters (or groups that usually did originals) done entire albums of old songs before this?

I was flipping through Levon and Robbie's books (interesting to skim them concurrently) and it's pointed out that Lennon was in the midst of recording Rock 'n' Roll at the same time and they were definitely informed of that while they were still recording Moondog Matinee.

Anyway, so many artists who became songwriters released a LOT of covers at the start of their careers (like virtually every major artist in the UK), so I don't think the concept was considered novel in that respect. It's been suggested that it was a logical extension of the "going back to your roots" philosophy that came up towards the end of the '60s.

There's got to be more, but at the moment Paul McCartney's Run Devil Run is the only covers album that feels like a major work, at least in relation to his post-Beatles career. It's not purely covers, there are three originals, but they shore up the whole idea behind it. The cliché is that "going back to your roots" can be a bad sign of careerist desperation, like you have no idea where else to go artistically. But in this case it's not about his next artistic move, it's purely personal with McCartney recovering from his wife's death. Reportedly he hadn't even sung or performed a song since her passing and those rehearsals were indeed the first time he belted out a song since then. The fact that it's music from his youth feels appropriate because it's naturally what a lot of people do when they need solace in the face of grief - it could be music or people in your life, but it's basically retreating into the familiar and what's brought you the most peace of mind and happiness.

The original vision for the Stones' It's Only Rock'n'Roll album was half-live material/half-studio covers, from the latter of which only "Ain't To Proud To Beg" making the final album, while a version of "Drift Away" is pretty easily found online.

Oh, and don't forget Nilsson's mostly covers Pussycats, and then a couple years later ... That's The Way It Is.

There's also A Touch of Schmilsson In The Night and Nilsson Sings Newman, but those are slightly different things than what we're talking about.

Closer to the Moondog/Pin-Ups thing is Laura Nyro's It's Gonna Take A Miracle, her classic R&B covers LP recorded with LaBelle in '71.

Love Pussy Cats (I prefer its original and too-outrageous title Strange Pussies), but six of those ten cuts were originals. I also love the Newman album, but yeah, that is a big different - kind of a throwback to songbook albums based around one particular writer.

The Nyro album is a great example - Nov 1971.

I don't know if Dylan's Self Portrait really counts.

Dr. John's Gumbo: April '72

Often a sign of a band/artist contractually having an album to make but not having enough new material to make one, ditto double live albums.

i guess no one is bringing up ferry’s these foolish things because that one is actually great?

It was mentioned, but the Ferry covers albums are perhaps a little too eclectic for what we're talking about? Moondog and the Lennon: '50s-'60s Rock'n'Soul. Pin-Ups: '60s Brit Rock. Gumbo: Nola R&B. It's Gonna Take A Miracle: Vintage Soul.

Whereas Ferry is all over the map, taking in almost all of that stuff plus Country and Standards.

Tim Hardin's Painted Head from 1972 is one of these. Guy was probably too zonked out on H to write songs at this point

i guess no one is bringing up ferry’s these foolish things because that one is actually great?

I would definitely include that. I love that album, and the string of others built on covers though These Foolish Things would be my favorite of those LP's.

As much as I love Bowie, I've never been a big fan of Pin Ups. I'll revisit it again, but it's never really did it for me. I LOVE the covers he's dropped into my favorite live sets (the Santa Monica show from 1972, the Nassau show from 1976, etc.), but in the studio they feel really hit-or-miss to me.

I took about three listens to Pin Ups from start-to-finish and it didn't take. There are covers elsewhere that I really enjoy - "Kingdom Come," "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday," "Waiting for the Man" from different eras and "White Light/White Heat" - but the only one here I really like is "Sorrow," and it's probably no coincidence that it's the only "quiet" number. There's something about the band that's a little stilted on all the rockers here, and I don't think Bowie makes those numbers his own like he does with those other covers.

Anyway, back to the Band, I've given Northern Lights-Southern Cross a good listen too. It's a nice, pleasant album, but it left me with the feeling that Robertson is really hit-or-miss as a lyricist. "Acadian Driftwood" is beautiful - perhaps a little too meticulous and a little too academic compared to their earlier classics, but I don't think it would feel as powerful to me if it weren't so richly detailed. On the other hand, stuff like "Forbidden Fruit" is really clunky - the chorus alone on that one is kind of insipid. It's a real credit to the performances and the music that I can enjoy the whole album even when the lyrics sound wildly uneven under close scrutiny.

At one point, given how well they backed everyone in The Last Waltz, I wondered if they should've cut a studio album loaded with guests, except with NEW material written by said guests or perhaps in collaboration with them. Levon, Richard and Rick would still handle the lead vocals, but I figure bringing in someone like the Staples or Paul Butterfield could add some welcome elements to their music (see "The Weight" or Butterfield's playing on "Mystery Train") while someone like Joni Mitchell could shore up the songwriting where it needs it most.

The production is very wispy on Northern Lights-Southern Cross, but I like a number of the songs. "Ophelia" is very charming, and sounds like rock-and-roll if it had been invented by white people in 1890. I acknowledge "Forbidden Fruit"'s clunkiness, and enjoy it anyway, though it's a pretty lame response on Robertson's part to a majority of his group being substance abusers.
The title track of "Islands" sounds like the perfect theme music to a mid-70s Sunday afternoon travel show, and I love it.

The "big three" off of Northern Lights are all keepers - "Ophelia," "It Makes No Difference" and "Acadian Driftwood." The rest are tuneful and wonderfully played, but in terms of what they have to convey, they don't feel all that memorable or compelling. I really chalk that up to the songwriting, especially when there are only eight songs on this thing - they needed better material or at least continue developing the songs they had.

I can revisit Islands - it's probably best to approach that for what it is, an odds 'n' sods compilation, rather than a full-realized LP. I know "Georgia on My Mind" is nice...fans should hear their SNL performance where Richard's vocal tops the otherwise fine studio version. I have a soft spot for "Livin' in a Dream" - it's a bit light but it sounds like it would've been perfect as a great B-side to an awesome single.

That SNL performance is grebt!

Nice! Glad you know it - it was definitely a brilliant inclusion on that Musical History box set.

Forgot to mention, "Twilight" is also a real gem...but surprisingly, none of "The Band" versions are any good. Some diehard Band fans directed me towards Rick Danko's solo renditions, and there are a ton on Spotify, all live. They range from full-band arrangements to mostly solo renditions, and the one I ended up liking the most is the one on The Best of Mountain Stage Live, Vol. 1. It's possible most people will prefer one of the solo renditions, and I definitely think the full band arrangements are often too much, but the one on Mountain Stage finds a perfect balance - drums, bass, keyboards, a steel guitar (or pedal steel?) solo and even a harmony vocal are all there, but they're very soft, very tasteful and spare. Unlike the other full-band arrangements, the other elements always complement Rick's vocal and never threaten to overwhelm him, much less do just that.

Someone posted that Georgia on My Mind from SNL on Vimeo - enjoy!

This is definitely nice...forgot it was also included on the Musical History box. Another smart pick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBL_1aKFhaM

And here's that later "Twilight" with the quieter full-band arrangement. Both Rick and Garth play on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIxH1KaI0Pg

FWIW, apparently it dates from 1989 - more from NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2019/11/06/776941566/rick-danko-and-garth-hudson-on-mountain-stage

Kind of went down a rabbit hole, but apparently Robbie was going to play in the 2013 Grammy Award tribute for Levon following his death in 2012. At the time, Jonathan Taplin posted this on his blog: “As angry as I was that Levon’s wife (Sandy) kept Robbie Robertson off the stage (it’s a long and sad story of paranoia), Zac, Mavis, T Bone and the Mumfords did a wonderful version of ‘The Weight’, which was a fitting end to a great night of Americana.” It got reported in Glide Magazine, but I guess it started a shitstorm because when I tried to dig up the original post on archive.org, any mention of Levon's wife was gone, with an added note by Taplin that said "Let’s see if we can just talk about the music."

That SNL Band performance is the first I've seen where any of the vocalists weren't also playing!

Good point!

Don't think I've mentioned this 'un on here----haven't listened in a long time, but liked most of it a lot---thanks again, wiki!

Endless Highway: The Music of The Band, a tribute to the Band, was released on January 30, 2007.
Released January 30, 2007
Recorded July 19, 2005 – August 1, 2006
Genre Rock, Americana
Label 429 Records
Track listing
All songs written by Robbie Robertson unless noted otherwise.

"This Wheel's on Fire" (Bob Dylan, Rick Danko) performed by Guster - 3:24
"King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" performed by Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers - 4:03
"It Makes No Difference" performed by My Morning Jacket – 6:19
"I Shall Be Released" (Dylan) performed by Jack Johnson with ALO – 4:11
"The Weight" performed by Lee Ann Womack – 4:48
"Chest Fever" performed by Widespread Panic - 6:34
"Up on Cripple Creek" performed by Gomez – 4:37
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" performed by the Allman Brothers Band – 5:03
"Stage Fright" performed by Steve Reynolds – 3:44
"Rag Mama Rag" performed by Blues Traveler – 3:18
"Whispering Pines" (Richard Manuel, Robertson) performed by Jakob Dylan – 4:05
"Acadian Driftwood" performed by the Roches – 6:20
"The Unfaithful Servant" performed by Rosanne Cash – 4:56
"When I Paint My Masterpiece" (Dylan) performed by Josh Turner – 5:03
"Life Is a Carnival" (Danko, Levon Helm, Robertson) performed by Trevor Hall – 4:09
"Look Out Cleveland" performed by Jackie Greene – 3:13
"Rockin' Chair" performed by Death Cab for Cutie – 5:31
Bonus disc included 4 extra songs.

"Across the Great Divide" performed by Lucas Reynolds
"Ophelia" performed by ALO
"Bessie Smith" performed by Joe Henry
"The Shape I'm In" performed by Gov't Mule
References
Jurek, Thom. "Endless Highway: The Music of The Band - Various Artists". Allmusic. Retrieved March 21, 2012.

xxxpost Run Devil Run was so intense, even harsh at times, as he seemed to break through his usual limits: I even thought of it as more like John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band than Rock n Roll Dr. John's Gumbo was equally revelatory in its own way: the originals of those songs were waaay OOP and I hadn't heard most (the early 70s were pretty shitty for historical reissues, even for stuff like from early 60s)

Also: Kelly Hogan (and Jon Langford. eventually), "Whispering Pines":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBAWPXVbcoE

Someone just sent me this in response to that SNL video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZqMlhdUoSM

Has anyone read Jonathan Taplin’s recent book?

It's supposed to be really good. I skimmed through it really fast just to pass the time and it is filled with amazing stories that go all over the place (beyond the rock 'n' roll world), so to be clear, it's not just a book on the Band - it stretches into politics and the '60s, Hollywood, the rise of corporate America and the digital age.

Here's what Greil Marcus wrote on it for his column:

10. Jonathan Taplin, The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock-and-Roll Life (Heyday). This is a unified story, from Taplin’s time as road manager for Bob Dylan and the Band to movie producing to investment banking to technology writing, and what makes it so is thinking: someone always wondering what’s behind the curtain, if only because what’s behind it is almost certainly going to make a better story than what’s in front of it. So in a concise and burrowing manner, he tells you about the music business, with Meyer Lansky behind both MCA and Warner Communications; Michael Milken as the architect of the media landscape that Donald Trump harvested; how with their version of Marvin Gaye’s “Don’t Do It” the Band, having “trapped themselves within a sort of puritan destiny,” at least for a few minutes “shed the hair shirt”; or for that matter why Gaye’s What’s Going On “was as politically symbolic as track star’s John Carlos’s raised fist at the 1968 Olympics.” And a hundred other tales and grace notes — but, for me, nothing matches what Taplin excavates from his time as a volunteer in Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, where he turned after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., just a paragraph from a speech at the University of Kansas: “Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion a year, but that Gross National Product — if we judge the United States of America by that — that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and it counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. […] It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.” And the echoes of that speech, which was even tougher than Taplin’s quotation encompasses — the Gross National Product, Kennedy said, “counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife” — run all through the book.

Cahoots Expanded Deluxe
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/the-band-cahoots-50th-anniversary-box-set/

It's funny to think that when I was discovering records like this one 35 years ago, they were practically forgotten in public libraries and dollar bins. Certainly the Band weren't forgotten, but the idea that individual albums like Cahoots were going to be refurbished, remixed and re-released in fancy packages wasn't anybody's prognostication.
That said, I'd like to hear the remixes of the two good songs on this.

Concert might be good.

They still did great shows on the Cahoots tour. (Hell, Rock of Ages was essentially compiled from several of those shows.)

I gave this another chance earlier and hated it. It's really a good EP that didn't have the material to make it a full-length LP.

The EP:
1. Life Is A Carnival
2. When I Paint My Masterpiece
5. 4% Pantomime

Should've made it:
Don't Do It

Potentially good had they done a better recording:
7. The Moon Struck One
9. Smoke Signal
11. The River

"Bessie Smith" would have been good but I think their recording is actually from 1975 and doctored to sound older. (It was written in 1967, so they had the chance to record it for Cahoots.)

*The River Hymn

I bought Rock of Ages on CD many years ago and the sound was muddy and awful. Guess I need to see if it’s been remastered.

I bought Rock of Ages on CD many years ago and the sound was muddy and awful. Guess I need to see if it’s been remastered.

It was mixed poorly, a remaster alone won't cut it. You need to get Live At The Academy Of Music 1971 (released in 2013) either in the 2CD version or the 4CD + DVD box set (which is OOP and very expensive).

The 2CD version will have every performance (same song and take) from the expanded 2001 reissue of Rock of Ages except in a sequence that reflects their actual setlists, newly mixed by Bob Clearmountain. It's THE definitive live document of these concerts.

The box set includes a DVD for a 5.1 mix and what little film footage they have of the tour (it's only a few songs IIRC), but it also has two CD's of just the New Year's Eve show in its entirety, newly mixed by Sebastian Robertson (Robbie's son). Some may prefer it, and I kind of do, but it's a very different mix - it's called a "soundboard" style mix, but to me it's like if you're sitting with the band while they play a full show for posterity in a studio. A whole different feel. Clearmountain's show sounds like a rock concert in the best seat of a concert hall, and they arguably picked the best takes across all shows.

hey thanks for the recommendation, done.

So birdistheword and I were discusssing D.A. Pennebaker today, over on the Velvet Underground Trainspotting thread: when I met him in '93 (he was bringing his Clinton doc, The War Room, around to l'il indie theaters in the boondocks), he told me about some things he'd been filming lately, like he'd been up in Canada with Danko, Manuel, and---Bjorn Feldman, does that sound right? Somebody like that, think I'd heard the three of them on NPR, like maybe Mountain Stage, but not seeing it listed there, or anywhere---anyway, anybody ever hear them, or see any of that footage? (Maybe Hudson instead of Manuel; Garth and Rick were on Mountain Stage in '89, but not a third guy listed)

ilxor tylerw comes through yet again:

The Band - The Music Inn, Lenox, Massachusetts, September 26, 1976

I’m trying to will some of that autumn feeling into existence by listening to this late-September Band gig, just about 45 years ago — listen to the rice when the wind blows ‘cross the water. In a few short months, The Band would be dancing its Last Waltz, but they all sound as good as ever at the Music Inn, as captured on a very nice audience tape. Danko in particular is on fire, vocally and instrumentally, and the mix gives us a little bit more of Manuel’s piano as a treat. Some relatively rarely played tunes, too — the opening “Ring That Bell,” “Twilight,” and a version of “Forbidden Fruit” that threatens to get a little bit jammy at the end. Stay til the very end to hear a dog in the crowd barking his approval as the final curtain closes …
show is linked via title of this post on his invaluable blog:
https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/6617

Twilight is an underrated song. I think I have heard the Shawn Colvin cover way more than the Band's version

You need to get Live At The Academy Of Music 1971

So I did and it's spectacular

watching once were brothers: first moment out of the ordinary is when i'm startled to discover that ronnie hawkins is very much still with us

(and looking good, as of 2019 anyway)

Rompin' is one of the greatest correlations to longevity.

i mean this is totally on me for not paying attention obv but if you asked me this morning "when did ronnie h leave us?" i wd have guessed like three decades ago -- at least if the question didn't seem a bit sus

eight months older than jerry lee (who will outlive us all lol)

not a new point to make itt but robbie is not an exciting or a trust-inducing teller of his own tale: every time he recounts something that surprised or excited him he pitches it wrong and it rings rehearsed and fake (even tho some of it probably isn't) (i am for example prepared to believe that he did find rock and roll life-changing and ditto dylan's approach to words in a song -- but as he sets it out in this doc he turns everything into ad copy)

haha second moment of being genuinely startled is discovering that david geffen looks like that

now i mean

Taking sides: rompin' vs. chooglin'

ok that had some great clips i suppose but it wasn't very good

My impression is that Robbie to some degree talks or writes like whoever he is hanging around with, so when he was spending a lot of time with Levon he was able to write all those songs and now…

Has anyone heard the Cahoots remix/remaster? I saw it the other day but didn't get it

Yes. I only listened to three tracks (i.e. the ones I like) because I'm not a fan of the album but "Life is Carnival" drops out the entire band except the vocals at one point and "4% Pantomime" has a lot of new, weird-ass reverb on the vocals in some spots. The clarity on "Life is Carnival" was pretty amazing, but I still prefer the charm of the old, vintage mix. (The new mix sounds like it would be a new digital mix. Too clean.)

The studio version of "Don't Do It" also got a new mix, but it feels a lot weaker than the fresh mix that was made for A Musical History. (Andrew Sandoval found the multi-track when he worked on that box set around 2005 and gave it a brand-new mix, unlike the old Cahoots reissue he produced around 2000 which used a audibly worn acetate.)

Pitchfork review is thoughtful and seems fair: reviewer 'ppreciates at least some of the changes, esp. elimination of what's considered messy arrangements, but still thinks most of the album is inherently flawed, esp. because of Robertson's stiff, self-conscious historicism ("book report"), and some unenthusiastic (also hungover) instrumental responses---carefully detailed here, incl. context of band history, situation:
Pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-band-cahoots-50th-anniversary-edition/

Well not elimination, but clean-up on Aisle 7 etc. Also some new overdubs are perceived, I think?

I can see Robbie doing new overdubs - I don't think the previous remixes had any but he did it for the 1975 release of The Basement Tapes (and even kept them in the new stereo mixes for A Musical History...fortunately Dylan's camp didn't keep them when they issued the whole thing later).

Just listened to samples of this remix and everything is simultaneously unpleasantly booming and trebly.

Found this guy:
So birdistheword and I were discusssing D.A. Pennebaker today, over on the Velvet Underground Trainspotting thread: when I met him in '93 (he was bringing his Clinton doc, The War Room, around to l'il indie theaters in the boondocks), he told me about some things he'd been filming lately, like he'd been up in Canada with Danko, Manuel, and---Bjorn Feldman, does that sound right? Somebody like that, think I'd heard the three of them on NPR, like maybe Mountain Stage, but not seeing it listed there, or anywhere---anyway, anybody ever hear them, or see any of that footage? (Maybe Hudson instead of Manuel; Garth and Rick were on Mountain Stage in '89, but not a third guy listed)

― dow, Saturday, October 23, 2021
Wiki sez:
Jonas Fjeld(born Terje Lillegård Jensen; 24 September 1952) is a Norwegian singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known in the English-speaking world for two albums recorded by Danko/Fjeld/Andersen, a collaboration with Canadian Rick Danko of The Band and American singer-songwriter Eric Andersen. Fjeld also recorded three albums with the American bluegrass group Chatham County Line.
(Then Judy Collins teamed up with Fjeld and CCL!)
First DFA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danko/Fjeld/Andersen
Second: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridin%27_on_the_Blinds
Also that he was comedy rocker 'til heard Andersen's Blue River.

(which looks like it might be good, but 0 The Band input apparently):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_River_(album)

I have Blue River. Pretty solid folk rock album

There's a funny scene with Eric Andersen in Les Blank's documentary on Leon Russell, A Poem Is a Naked Person. Eric is visiting Leon's compound/studio and musing about music history: "we owe so much to older guys like you...what are you, forty? Forty-five?"
Leon, offended: "I ain't but turned thirty!"

yeah i saw that, Leon was pretty brutal

Eric's behaviour (in the scene) was pretty pompous in general.

yeah, i remember that as well

Wiki entry on Blue River led me to main article: didn't realize he'd done so much, looking pretty ambitious at times, tho might be pompous--albs w Danko aside, I'm most intrigued by this: You Can't Relive The Past, which included original blues numbers as well as a selection of songs co-written with Townes Van Zandt.. Cane out in 2001.

Don't know what to make of this:

https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/274935619_4615307798591608_7328288680451892607_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s1080x2048&_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=2vKyixJbL6QAX_smFt8&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=00_AT_k68yLhFkyDEROfwGljdSXSpxTMRiibQe40HgDs7L55A&oe=6221F466

Also related, I guess Garth's wife died today.

i love garth, obviously an incredible keys player but i think my fav contribution of his might be his sax solo on "it makes no difference," which always brings a tear to my eye. idk if it would hurt to drop him a line

I honestly didn't know he was still alive.

Uh-oh, this says he doesn't want to be flooded by cards and letters, is "incredibly private person," certainly didn't want personal address shared online---also a lot of musical activities I didn't know about, incl. with his wife, whom I'd never heard of, and for inst that all-Canadian The Band tribute alb, with Neil Young etc.; have any of yall heard it??
https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/garth-hudson-of-the-band-not-forgotten-during-difficult-time/

I hope he's being taken care of and not taken advantage of.

I hope so too. It's tough to say how he's doing because details that have leaked periodically about his personal life paint him as fairly eccentric. Nothing monstrous, but it'll be stuff like a landlord he hasn't paid in over a decade selling off his stuff from a storage unit he's apparently never bothered to visit either. And this was before he actively helped on that "Basement Tapes" box set where they even filmed him visiting Big Pink. I guess the guy who originally posted that plea would say something if Garth wasn't being cared for.

hope garth is ok

in more cheerful news, i watched the rick james documentary. after he flees the draft to toronto, one of the first nights he decided to go out on the town in the hippie district, this kid calls him the n-word, and they start to scrap. rick is really skinny and small and is taking the worst of it until a group of white kids come in and start beating the racist kid up and saving rick. said group of white boys was...the hawks.

Just got served an ad about The Weight Band, "featuring members of the Band and Levon Helm's band" or some such formulation.

They may be fine people and musicians but their branding, um, seems a trifle exploitative.

Looking forward to ads for the W.S. Walcott Medicine Show Band, "featuring members of The Weight Band."

Average Weight Band

LOL

Weightsnake

Guess we won't be seeing any of you guys at Camp Cripple Creek this summer.

They may be fine people and musicians but their branding, um, seems a trifle exploitative.

When Roger Daltrey does solo tours, he has musicians from the Who’s touring band in his group…and it’s billed as “ROGER DALTREY! With members of The Who band!”

When I saw him solo it was him and Simon Townshend from "the Who band," but I don't think anyone else from the Who.

Tonight:
Norman Hewson, Alistair Evans, Barry Mullen, and Seth Clayton

(God I’m ashamed to know their full names)

The Who Band

https://i.gifer.com/K1Eb.gif

Robbie Robertson tells the story of The Band's classic song The Weight
By Matt Frost published 1 day ago

"I said, ‘Well, it’ll just be a back-up song in case some other things don’t work out’”

Does he mention Buñuel in that interview?

No, he barely mentions the lyrics.

Thanks. For a while there it seemed like there was nothing else he could talk about.