The Band: why were they so revered?*

Completely different kind of bands though, I would never think to make that comparison.

 

3 very unique voices. The ballads (& more) like In a Station, Sleeping & Whispering Pines from Richard. The River Hymn & All La Glory from Levon. The "Basement Tapes" songs like Bessie Smith & Katie's Been Gone. The magical way they would trade verses and sing together in Daniel and the Sacred Harp, The Rumor or Acadian Driftwood. Robbie's guitar style, and the way drums sound when played by Levon Helm. The way his energy drives the song. The way Garth sounds like his playing comes from another time, so unique & fascinating. Amazing to me. Levon, Richard and Rick sing with real soul. Rick is so heartfelt, Richard as well. And he has that amazing range. Levon is sooooooo country. To me, a master. On the level with the Carter Family or Hank Sr. I love Levon's version of When I Get My Rewards with NGDB. I'm gonna go listen to that now. Miles Davis liked 'em too.

 

The Band....just a bunch of excellent musicians playing great songs really well....

 

Wow, that's remarkable footage! Thank you!

 

Multi instrumentalists, multi vocalists, writing songs that nobody else had heard before. That would do it.

You are definitely missing something.

 

Plus the fact that they were sharp dressed men:

Levon and the Hawks.

 

You still don't understand why after listening to the albums ?

 

"Music From Big Pink" and "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" came out at around the same time, and were both much ballyhooed for the same reasons. Both contained brand new (at the time) Bob Dylan tunes, and neither sounded like The Grassroots, The Ohio Express, or much of anything else that was on top 40 radio at the time.

 

They had a unique sound. I can enjoy them in small doses. Was never a big fan though. I live outside of Woodstock so find myself driving on Levon Helm Way (I think it's Way) often. Otherwise known as Rt. 375.

 

I guess another thing that appealed to listeners was how mature The Band sounded. Music fans were signalling rock music had passed its stage of kiddy stuff with sceaming teenagers, and had grown up. Even if you never before heard the name of the group or had seen pictures of them (where they indeed look 10 years older than their real age), when listening to The Weight for the first time you just instantly knew these were not 18-year old kids who started playing a year ago. This was something on an entirely different level.

 

I know what you mean. I've thought the same thing myself. I like them, too, I'm certainly not criticizing them. I appreciate the work they did with Bob Dylan and I enjoy The Last Waltz very much. But, really, only four or five of their songs do I really consider to be...classics; the others are OK to good. They have good, even unique voices, but I wouldn't say great. I just can't elevate them to the status that many people do. Sorry.

 

I think a big part of the allure was just how different they sounded from much of what was most popular at the time. While music was getting increasingly bigger, louder, more "heavy", with extended soloing and all the Hendrix effects and all, here comes a band that was the aural antithesis of all that. Acoustic instruments, no more than one of any particular instrument on a given track (usually), spare, clean production, and those strange voices and harmonies, inimitable, seemingly improvised on the spot on every take. Levon's southern voice was completely unique in pop/rock too. He may have been among the first to wear his southernness so proudly on his sleeve. It was all a nice calming respite from the psychedelic hubbub of the time. Pastoral Americana.

Plus it didn't hurt to have some Dylan cachet at a time when he was largely a mystery man (post motorcycle accident).

Personally I prefer their second album, but Big Pink stood out among the crowd fairly starkly at the time.

 

There are many good points that people have posted and I think there are other a few other things as well.
From the outset The Band was mysterious and they either consciously or unconsciously helped to promote that. They had the cache of being Bob's backing band after touring with him, woodshedding during the Basement Tapes while he recuperated and also working on their own material. Keep in mind Bob was one of the Big 3 at the time and anybody associated with him got some incredible word of mouth and publicity.
The single for 'The Weight' didn't even have the name of The Band on it. It just listed the five members. When 'Big Pink' was released, they didn't have the name of the band on the front or back cover. The spine mentioned The Band. The color inner photo showed them with their 'Next of Kin'. NEXT OF KIN!!!!! Who the hell does that? The black & white photo showed them standing in a field dressed in reconstruction clothing that looked liked it was taken by Matthew Brady. My album doesn't even mention The Band on the labels just like the single. Then you throw in the actual songs on the album, the sparse production, three vocalists, the off-beat musicianship, no flashy solos...everything seemed to fly in the face of what was going on in music at the time. It was a reset. The whole mystique is what hit musicians like Clapton, Harrison, and the rest. It took 4 Canadians and a southerner to present this different view of America. Heck, they didn't even tour in support of the first album, they began working on the second album. The mystery kept building. The music press helped to build the momentum as well...feeding into the myth. And when the second album hit...it was even better than the first album and then they were off. 'The Band' pretty much backed up every claim critically and commercially. Who were these backwoods men making this weird music? :--)

 

The music sounded like it could connect the dots from Appalachia to psychedelia and everything in between. They were obviously skilled but seemingly rockstar ego-less, per the shared vocal duties, photographs with family and/or neighbors, and even the generic name.

The connection with Dylan's most revolutionary and mysterious periods helped and let's not forget the audacity of leading their debut album with a slow ballad.

In short, they ran counter to the prevailing trends of infinite expansion, in a way that suggested to listeners and other musicians that they, too, could reconcile a seemingly limitless, chaotic future with their own personal histories.

 

Few years ago I listened to s/t for the first time and felt very meh about it.

Last week I splurged on Basement Tapes and Music from the Big Pink, I like those a bit better and they are starting to grow on me. You would think they are $3 records but in fact nice pressings seem to be around $15+.

I always loved Clapton stuff and Dylan stuff, still rate those bodies of work higher in my book!

 

Love The Band. I remember playing their first album when it was released and it was like no other music that I was hearing at the time. Truly unique at the time for me. I was hooked.

 

A combination of things.

1. Songs with depth and great perf0rmances = THESE GUYS ARE LEGIT
2. The Dylan "blessing" and association = COOL FACTOR
3. Big Pink...They recorded where?!? = MYSTIQUE and an "outside the system" INDIE AESTHETIC (before "indie" existed)
4. Timing = RIGHT SOUND. RIGHT TIME

The Band starts releasing records in 1965, it doesn't catch on. They are completely overshadowed by the faster, catchier British interpretation of American Music that ruled the day—Beatles, Stones, The Who, etc..... The Band arrives in 1972, and they are just another rootsy Americana band, chasing behind CSNY, The Byrds, James Taylor and many others.

The summer of 1968 was the perfect timing for The Band to strike a chord with maturing music fans and to signal the death nell for psychedelic pop, and boy did they. Clapton, Harrison and many more really revered them. Rightly so. Those first couple of albums are great.

 

I like The Band a lot but the reverence for "The Weight" is borderline offensive. It seems like that "Girl Interrupted" movie (or at least its trailer) elevated awareness of the song into the stratosphere (I think that film/trailer is also responsible for the overuse of "good to know"... finally dethroned as the most overused expression among certain demographics by the SNL-spawned "really?" just a couple of years ago).

 

No one remembers that movie or its trailer, which certainly wasn't contemporaneous with the music anyway. "The Weight" was featured earlier in THE BIG CHILL as well, and that was a much bigger hit referencing its original, aging audience two decades later.

Sometimes a record is revered by and influences musicians far beyond its sales to the general public. BIG PINK was one of them. So was VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO.

Coming to such records decades after the fact -- and after their influence has been absorbed, diffused and diluted -- it's all too easy to go, "Meh," like someone raised on CSI franchises might view SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

 

This. They also sounded authentic.

 

Keep in mind, before "Girl, Interrupted" and "The Big Chill," "The Weight" had first been prominently featured in "Easy Rider" (1969).

 

I love the Band -- "Music From Big Pink" and "The Band" are two of the best records ever, and their work with Dylan on the Basement Tapes is at the very pinnacle of rock music.

And yet, I can somewhat relate to the OP's feelings here. "Stage Fright" was just OK, and all the rest of their studio work after was many notches below that. "Cahoots" was an outright disaster, "Moondog Matinee" was limp and "Northern Lights/Southern Cross" and "Islands" were passable, but bland.

So -- if you can wrap your mind around this -- I'd say the Band is simultaneously one of the greatest bands ever, and one of the most overrated.

 

How could an album that contains Arcadian Driftwood & It Makes No Difference be classed as bland

 

'Cause they were full of Canucks !