The Band – The Band [50th Anniversary Edition] (2019)

When The Band’s seminal eponymous second album was released fifty years ago on September 22, 1969, not much more was known about the reclusive group than when they released their landmark debut, Music from Big Pink, to widespread critical praise and bewilderment, just the year before.
The Band, made up of four Canadians and one American, was still shrouded in mystery, allowing for listeners and the music press to let their imaginations run wild about who these men were and what this music was that sounded unlike anything else happening at the close of the psychedelic ’60s. Dressed like 19th century fire-and-brimstone preachers and singing rustic, sepia-toned songs about America…

373 MB 320 ** FLAC

…and the deep south, The Band – Garth Hudson (keyboards, piano, horn), Levon Helm (drums, vocals, mandolin), Richard Manuel (keyboards, vocals, drums), Rick Danko (bass, vocals, fiddle) and Robbie Robertson (guitar, piano, vocals) – was an enigma, unlike any group that came before or after. And their self-titled “Brown Album,” as it would lovingly be called, cemented their status as one of the most exciting and revolutionary bands in years, on the strength of now-classic songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up On Cripple Creek” and “Rag Mama Rag.”
Capitol/UMe celebrate The Band’s pioneering self-titled album with a suite of newly remixed and expanded 50th Anniversary Edition packages. All the Anniversary Edition releases were overseen by Robertson and feature a new stereo mix by Bob Clearmountain from the original multi-track masters, similar to the acclaimed 50th anniversary collections of last year’s Music From Big Pink releases.
Clearmountain and Robertson’s approach to remixing the beloved album was done with the utmost care and respect for the music and what The Band represents. “The idea was to take you deeper inside the music, but this album is homemade,” Robertson says in the liner notes. “You can’t touch up a painting. It has nothing to do with what you get when you go into a recording studio.” When he expressed his concerns to Clearmountain, the renowned engineer and producer reassured him: “We’re just trying to overcome the original technological limitations in order to bring you closer into the room,” he explained. “I’m going to do everything in my power not to get in the way of this music at all.” The result is a new mix that allows listeners to hear these classic songs in stunning, and often times startling, clarity, packing more of a sonic and emotional punch than ever before. The included early and alternate versions offer fans the ability to hear the evolution of these tracks or as Robertson says, “That’s us trying to teach ourselves how to play these songs.”
After more than eight years of playing together, first as members of Ronnie Hawkins’ backing band, the Hawks, then as Levon & the Hawks and then as Bob Dylan’s backing band on his infamous 1965-66 tour, where they were booed nearly every night as they helped Dylan transition from folk to electric rock on his pivotal tour, Robertson, Danko, Manuel, and Hudson found a sanctuary in West Saugerties, New York at a house they dubbed “Big Pink.” Here they were able to get away from the chaos of the Dylan tour and work on their own music, often in the company of Dylan, who lived in nearby Woodstock. Over the next year, the foursome woodshedded songs and in this communal house had a relaxed, productive environment where they were free to create whenever the mood struck. In October 1967, Helm, who left the Dylan tour to return home to the south for a stint, re-joined his friends and The Band was born. The group wrote new music and prepared to record their first full-length album. Out of this also sprung “The Basement Tapes” with Dylan.
Released in 1968, The Band’s game-changing debut album, Music from Big Pink, seemed to spring from nowhere and everywhere. Drawing from the American roots music panoply of country, blues, R&B, gospel, soul, rockabilly, the honking tenor sax tradition, hymns, funeral dirges, brass band music, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll, The Band forged a timeless new style that forever changed the course of popular music.
Shortly after the release of Music From Big Pink, bassist Rick Danko broke his neck in a serious car crash and was in traction resulting in The Band’s inability to tour. This only fueled the mystique as they had yet to play live and had only done a few mysterious interviews, including a Rolling Stone cover story featuring a photo of them with their backs to the camera. Once Danko was healed, the guys relocated to Los Angeles to record their follow up album. Searching for the same clubhouse vibe they had at Big Pink, they eschewed a traditional studio and moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills that had previously been owned by Sammy Davis Jr. The place had enough bedrooms that the group could reside there with their families and a pool house where they set up the studio. While Capitol Records was dumbfounded the guys didn’t want to record in one of their state-of-the-art studios down the street, they ultimately relented and paid for the shipment of their equipment across the country. Recording here was not without its obstacles as getting an upright piano up to the house proved trying and since they were in a residential neighborhood, the pool house needed to be soundproofed from the outside, which was quite a sight.
Following dinner together with their families in the main house, The Band, joined by co-producer John Simon who helped shape their sound, as on their debut, would shuffle off to their makeshift studio to write and record their masterpiece, working through the night and stopping around dawn. Listening to these dusty, rural songs, it’s hard to believe they weren’t written in the Appalachian Mountains but instead perched up in the hills overlooking Los Angeles… [PRNewswire]

CD1 (Tracks 1-12 originally released as Capitol STAO-132, 1969)