1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 164. The Band – The Band (1969)

 


Some more Americana from The Band, continuing the theme of music no longer falling neatly into genre categories. Although “folk/country” is an inevitable label, The Band’s music blends in so much more – pulling in “juke joint” African-American elements, all played by a bunch of mainly Canadians. As usual, Garth Hudson’s keyboards are what give The Band their distinctive sound, over and above the rest.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down could have been done, for example, as a pure Bakersfield country sound, being the lament of a former train driver from the Deep South who has lost his brother and his livelihood to the Civil War. Although Virgil Kane, the narrator, lives in the Confederacy, he doesn’t come across as especially sympathetic to the cause, even while he remains proud to be a Southerner. But the sound is distinctively The Band.

As is Up On Cripple Creek, somewhat reminiscent of Little Feat in sound, a little bit funky, a little bit honky-tonk.

And that, I think, is the pleasure in The Band. You can call them Americana, and get an idea of what that is, but pinning them down is hard- they are what they are.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Atheist Explores the Qur'an Part 73: Self-Demolishing Logical Fallacies (Sovereignty (al-Mulk))

Sovereignty (al-Mulk) 1-30 Self-Demolishing Logical Fallacies. Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Qur’an version). In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Qur’an, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology. For more detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/2ApLDy0 For the online Qur’an that I use, see here http://al-quran.info and http://quran.com Sovereignty (al-Mulk) 1-15 “Blessed is He in whose hands is all sovereignty, and He has power over all things.” To begin, “ mulk ” to me is what a Glaswegian would call what you get out of a dairy cow, but no matter. For a change, because this surah is thirty verses of moderate length I’ve split it down the middle with two chunks of fifteen verses each. Chunk the first, Allah is praised as being the creator of all things, “ who created death and life that He may test you [to see] which of you is be...
Read more

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. 3. Elvis Presley – Elvis Presley (1956)

Image
Dr Simon Reads... Listens... to the 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.   Here’s a new concept. Inspired by the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (compiled by Robert Dimery) I intend to do just that. Since an album is usually around about an hour at most , and I can listen to them while doing something else, and I suspect the majority of them wi ll be on Spotify, hopefully I will be able to do them before I die. Even at the rate of 1 a day, that’s three years.   3. Elvis Presley – Elvis Presley (1956)   A tiny album of just 28 minute s (but then those 50s rock ‘n roll tracks usually top 2 minutes at most, short and sweet). Released in May 1956, this is a very young King, all fresh-faced and beautiful, performing what I can assume are mostly covers of existing rock and roll, and country- ish , son gs. Blue Suede Shoes is the big one off here; Tutti Frutti is probably better known for the Little Ri chard version. Elvis does a hauntingly soulful versio...
Read more

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 10. Fats Domino – This is Fats (1957)

Image
  The only famous one on here is Blueberry Hill (itself a version of a song from 1940 that Domino made his own). But if you like that sound, you’ll like the rest. I don’t have much else to say about the other songs on the album. Fats (real name Antoine) is pretty much doing blues , bringing it into the rock and roll sound, but his distinctive voice really carries it , and the track The Fat Man shows off his piano playing skills as he solos, almost jazz-like, around the song . As with Little Richard’s similarly named album above, it drips exuberence , although Domino was apparently quite a shy and unassuming character. Surprised to learn that he only died in 2017.   Oh, and 10 down, so that makes me 1% of the way through this endeavour . Nearly finished....  
Read more