Whats playing on your system today?

Thanks for the history lesson, bdp.  Whatever their motivation for making it, MDM is an enjoyable recording.  The Band on track after track in this recording and others displays excellent "musicality"...wonderful arrangements, soulful vocals, technical execution that illuminates the composition and, with the exception of the occasional "over the top" quirkiness of Garth's keyboards/organ registrations, restraint and good taste.  No wonder that going on 50 years now, their music still communicates.  

Bdp - you're like a music group encyclopedia ....:^)

Jerry Bergonzi- Sprung.

Indigenous - Live from Pachyderm Studio

You are so right, ghosthouse. The Band imo (and I'm not alone) are the finest self-contained (writing the songs, playing the music, singing the lyrics) Rock 'n' Roll ensemble the genre has produced. Three great singers (especially Richard Manuel), world-class musicianship (playing in a manner so as to benefit the song itself, a concept in advance of most R & R bands. To play thusly requires maturity and taste, a rarity in the field ;-), and excellent material. I've said it before and I'll say it again---The Band revolutionized Rock 'n' Roll when Music From Big Pink was released in early 1968, and that album and it's follow-up (S/T, aka the brown album) set the bar so high that it has yet to be equaled. Those two albums are a Master Class in how to play the music, and how to be a band.