The Band: why were they so revered?*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by PsychedelicWheelz, Feb 21, 2017.

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  1. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    Ooops yikes! Apologies to all American and Canadians hear. Let's say "that great continent's closest thing to The Beatles" !
     
  2. elaterium

    elaterium Forum Resident

    It's Levon Helm Memorial Boulevard. Was on it today.
     
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  3. Top Three:
    1. Cause they were good.
    2. Cause they played on all those great Sixties & Seventies songs.
    3. Cause they played w/that Zimmerman guy.
     
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  4. Steve G

    Steve G Senior Member

    Location:
    los angeles
    must be something in the air. A couple of weeks ago I just HAD to listen to the Band and Stage Fright - something about it was calling me. then a couple of days later the Wild Honey folks announced that this years fundraiser/concert will be all of Big Pink and The Band with special guests like Jackson Browne et al. it's zeitgeist - don't question it!
     
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  5. Wright

    Wright Forum Resident

    Hmm, I'm not sure I agree. John Wesley Harding is not entirely dissimilar to Dylan's original material from the Basement Tapes. It has that mythical/mystical quality, dealing with people and places. But again, I'm not sure that you can credit The Band specifically for any influence on Beggars Banquet. I'd argue that the Stones stylistic shift came about as a natural career progression. And there are still traces of psychedelia on that album, as well as on the B-side of the immediately preceding single. If there's any influence from the Basement Tapes on that album, it comes from Dylan ("Jigsaw Puzzle").
     
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  6. Wright

    Wright Forum Resident

    Except they weren't hits. "The Weight" only reached #63, and "Dixie" was not even a single.
     
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  7. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Musicians' musicians. I remember Joe Boyd saying that Fairport Convention were obsessed with the Band and getting their own records to sound like that. I just found this quote from him:

    "When we recorded Liege and Lief, Dave Mattacks wanted to match Levon Helm's snare sound on The Band's Big Pink. Drummers usually want their snare to have a lot of 'edge' so the backbeat jumps out of the mix, but Levon had gone the other way, producing a sound that resembled an expensive cardboard box being struck with a pair of velvet slippers. John [Wood] would impatiently explain that you can't just create sounds, you had to actually play like that."
     
  8. Wright

    Wright Forum Resident

    I'd question that narrative. The Beatles had already gone back to basics with the "Lady Madonna" single, and that impulse was pursued further on the White Album. Where specifically do you see the Band's influence here?
     
  9. davmar77

    davmar77 I'd rather be drummin'...

    Location:
    clifton park,ny
    [​IMG]
     
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  10. Wright

    Wright Forum Resident

    I never got what's so original about opening an album with a slow song. There are plenty of examples of that from the same year as Big Pink: Simon & Garfunkel's Bookends, Jefferson Airplane's Crown of Creation, Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, the Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun...
     
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  11. Wright

    Wright Forum Resident

    Was this something that was released to capitalize on Joan Baez's hit version?
     
  12. davmar77

    davmar77 I'd rather be drummin'...

    Location:
    clifton park,ny
    Not sure but that might be an import.

    [​IMG]
     
  13. Fender Relic

    Fender Relic Forum Resident

    Location:
    PennsylBama
    I found an American copy last summer at a flea market. It was on my mental list of..." things to find at a flea market" for years.

    I think The Band ,like The Beatles,did some of their best work in bars and dance halls before they became famous. At least, that's where they earned their toughness,swagger and sharpened their musical craft in front of all kinds of people in all kinds of circumstances. Once they got the time and opportunity to blend that experience with their listening likes and history of music they grew up with, and playing and hanging with Bob they got too good for the room and set the bar way high not only for the competition but themselves. The first four albums are of such a fine quality,yes,even Cahoots. I'm a Cahoots enjoyer not a criticizer. Just because it didn't measure up to the first three doesn't mean that it's any less unique. Nobody...nobody but The Band could have made Cahoots. If anybody else in the world would have released that album it would be hailed as a quirky masterpiece today. The critical and ongoing updated history of The Band by pundits,reviewers,forum pontificators,etc. clouds the uniqueness of Cahoots.
     
  14. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Well we know Harrison visited Dylan in Woodstock in Nov. '68 and in the promo clip for "Hey Jude" in the summer of '68, they sing "Take a load of Fannie" in the "Hey Jude" outro choruses (listen to McCartney at about 6:25 of this clip -- ). Clearly, like it was for many of the rockers of the time, and especially it appears the British ones, the Band and the whole sound and vibe of the Woodstock/Basement tapes was on their minds in '68. I mean I'm not sure you can always hear it in the specific work...During an interview with Howard Stern a couple of years ago, Roger Waters talked at length about the impact of Big Pink on him, I'm not sure it's something you'd necessarily pick out from a song and say, oh, there it is.
     
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  15. Arnold Grove

    Arnold Grove Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Big Pink flying high:
    [​IMG]


    ;)
     
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  16. Rhythmdoctor

    Rhythmdoctor Well-Known Member

    Count me as someone who also doesn't 'get' The Band. They have some fine songs but nothing that I would consider special.
     
  17. medium Rob

    medium Rob Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Virginia
    Because they're good--they had good feel, and they made good-sounding songs. I'm not even a fan and I enjoy listening to them.
     
  18. rbp

    rbp Forum Resident

    Just inspired me to go and play Animals.
     
  19. Arnold Grove

    Arnold Grove Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Fair enough... ;)
     
  20. jaxpads

    jaxpads Friendly Listener

    Location:
    Baltimore
    Just watched The Last Waltz for the first time in years. It is amazing that 5 guys were creating so much sound yet there's enough space between the instruments that one can hear each musicians' contribution -- not to mention the vocals where voices echo one another or delay so choruses are often a bit ragged, but I only mean that in the sense that rather than singing exactly on the same cadence they're willing to fall off slightly and avoid adhering rigidly to lockstep diction.
     
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  21. jaxpads

    jaxpads Friendly Listener

    Location:
    Baltimore
    Exactly and you get that evocative guitar solo too!
     
  22. posnera

    posnera Forum Resident

    They definitely had the "loose but tight" thing down.
    I think having played together for years before recording their own stuff contributed to their sound feeling very fresh but from an older era.
     
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  23. jaxpads

    jaxpads Friendly Listener

    Location:
    Baltimore
    For the most part I agree with your comments on the studio output, but I'd be a little more charitable towards "Northern Lights". There are some clunkers (Hobo Jungle and Rags And Bones come to mind) but for me "Acadian Driftwood" is a truly moving performance (as is "It Makes No Difference")with classic Band vocal trade-offs. I think Levon's vocals on "Ring Your Bell", "Ophelia" and "Forbidden Fruit" are all solid and then Garth gets to go crazy on "Jupiter Hollow". Obviously solely my opinion -- to each his own.
     
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  24. Wright

    Wright Forum Resident

    Well, I'm well aware of that "Hey Jude" performance, but really, it's just an adlibbed quote of a contemporary song. I wouldn't read too much into it. And "Lady Madonna" still predates Big Pink.
     
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  25. Hey Vinyl Man

    Hey Vinyl Man Another bloody Yank down under...

    This is a perfect example of how people can like or even love the same album while having completely different perspectives on it. "Hobo Jungle" is easily my favorite song on NL/SC and probably in my top ten for their whole catalog, while I have never liked "It Makes No Difference". (It's kind of a running joke with me: every time there's a new Band compilation, my initial response is "They should have replaced "It Makes No Difference" with "Hobo Jungle" - and I say it before looking at the track list. I have yet to be wrong in assuming any such collection includes the former but not the latter.)

    I do like Levon's vocals on "Forbidden Fruit," but the musical arrangement is depressingly close to disco. If that's the direction they were headed in, they picked the perfect time to quit!

    I think that's probably because the Band were new to most listeners. Yes, they'd been playing together for years and had put out records as early as 1965, but how many people who heard "The Weight" on the radio in 1968 knew that? As far as most fans knew, they were a fresh voice. The Beach Boys had not only been around for a good six years, but most of the crowd you're referring to here associated them with their adolescence and with teenybopper music (regardless of the fact that they were no longer making such music by then). Whether they deserved it or not, the Beach Boys simply didn't have any hipster cred, whereas the Band had buckets of it.
     
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