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The Band’s Moondog Matinee was their reaction and response to the 50’s revival that was going on in the early 70’s. As The Hawks (both backing Ronnie Hawkins and on their own) from 1960 until Dylan hired them as his (heh) band for his 1966 European tour (Bob hired them away from their then-current employer, John Hammond Jr.), they were a working band playing in Canada, up and down the Eastern Seaboard, the Midwest and South in bars, lounges, dancehalls (including the one in Dallas owned by the man who shot JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby!)---dives of all types, performing hits and misses from the 50’s and first half of the 60’s. It’s the same material that what are now referred to by Rock ’n’ Roll historians as Frat Bands were playing on the West Coast (I was in one named The Squyres. Classic Frat Band name!). Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other original Southern R & R, Rhythm & Blues, Country & Western, Pop classics, Brill Building Soul, instrumentals from movie soundtracks, novelty songs---you name it.

What The Band heard coming from Sha Na Na and the other nostalgia acts of the early 70’s was such an insult to the music they decided to do it themselves, correctly. Moondog Matinee is comprised of songs they actually performed on stage as The Hawks in their bar band days. Damn would I like to have seen them then! I have two friends who saw them live with Dylan in ’66, at The San Jose Civic Auditorium. I had yet to "get" Dylan, and passed :-(.