The Band: S/T and/or Music from the Big Pink

I just again watched the clip of Clapton and Harrison talking about Music From Big Pink. Here's the great quote about it from Eric: "I listened to this album (MFBP), and I thought, this is it---this is where music was supposed to have gone for a long time, and it hasn't really got there. And now it's finally.....someone's finally gone and done it."

The album so effected Clapton he broke up Cream, the biggest band in the world at the time.

Oh (not him again!), one other detail ya'll may (or may not ;-) find interesting: The distinct and huge difference in the sound of the snare drum heard on MFBP vs. the brown album is not from the room, the manner of recording, or anything of that sort. The snare drum on MFBP is a metal-shelled (either brass or aluminum-alloy) Ludwig Supraphonic with metal snare wires, the one on most of the brown album a wood-shelled snare with, perhaps, gut snares (that's what the drum came from the factory fitted with, and is what it sounds like on the album). The difference in sound between metal and wood shelled snare drums is just what you would expect, and indeed what you hear on the two albums.

I think the mics "bleeding" may represent what music is supposed to sound like, as I've heard very few albums from 1969 that have the coherency or overall tone that is as appealing (to me anyway) as the Brown album. Robertson did surprise the Band by grabbing all the songwriting credit (Levon remained pissed off about that forever), but I somehow doubt the pool house had much to do with how hip the tone was…I think it was more about experienced guys paying attention to detail with the knowledge that people were going to be listening pretty close to that stuff, and a remarkable attention to precise song specific arrangement instead of the dense "everybody fill up the available space" sound of lessor bands.

Interesting stuff indeed. I ordered the MFSL Big Pink today. Will soon compare it to my early pressing of Big Pink. I believe mine is a second run, since it's NOT the rainbow Capitol. As I mentioned above, it's a shade of purple to me.

Absolutely. Over-playing was rampant in '69 (actually, it still is)---I have no doubt that's the first thing Clapton heard, the economy and taste with which all members of The Band played, the opposite of Cream (Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker may have had talent, but economy and taste were not in their vocabularies).

And then there are the songs. Bands like Cream used the "song" merely as a platform from which to take off, to display their virtuosity. The Band (and other "good" musicians of that and every era) play in a musical style, their parts created and designed to make the song sound better, not make themselves sound better. That ability is required and expected of studio musicians, but is very rare in Rock Bands.

Last, but certainly not least, is the singing. Three unique singers, all with very different voices, whose parts circle each other, weaving in and out, rather than blending into two and three part chords. Totally unlike any other Group I've ever heard. God I love The Band!