57. The Band, "The Band"

 

I have a theory that for some of their votes, the people who voted on this list told their assistant "Find out what album song so-and-so was on and put that on my list," figuring that whatever album that is, it must be good.  For this album, it's either "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" or "Up On Cripple Creek" because those are both foundationally great songs and the rest of this album is pretty boring.

Look, I'm not dumb, I know this album is revered and whatever, which is fine, I'm not saying it wasn't an important album.  I know enough about music to know that it was!  I'm just saying that it's a shaggy, half-baked affair, a country-folk-rock mashup that just isn't all that interesting.  (TO ME, ok.)

But yes, there are two stone-cold classics on here.  "Up On Cripple Creek" is a magnificent song, written by Robbie Robertson but sung by Levon Helm in his wry tenor, punctuated by a clavinet that is clearly a precursor to Stevie Wonder's clavinet on "Superstition."  Like most of the songs on this album, it's set in the American South (although four-fifths of the band, er, the Band were Canadian), with references to Lake Charles, Louisiana, and the Mississippi and gambling on horses and whatnot.  It's probably the direct ancestor of all those alt-country banging-screen-door songs written by kids who grew up in Manhattan.  But I come to praise "Cripple Creek," not bury it, because I do truly love this song.  I mean, who doesn't want a woman who mends you if you spring a leak or defends you so you don't have to speak?

(Since I'm now freely confessing my misunderstood lyrics, for years I couldn't make sense of the last couplet of verse 3 - "That's when that little love of mine/Dips her doughnut in my tea" - which I somehow heard as "That's when that little love of mine/Slips a doughnut in my teeth."  Dunkin, possible new jingle alert!)

"Dixie," is, of course, also an iconic song but is now, shall we say, more problematic than it was in 1969, since it very sympathetically tells the story of a Confederate soldier:

Like my father before me, I will work the land
And like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand
He was just eighteen, proud and brave
But a Yankee laid him in his grave

Um, the Yankees were the good guys, as it turns out, but whatever.  The music writer Jack Hamilton, who has forgotten more about music than I will ever hope to know, made an interesting point about the song:

I am doubtful that Robertson had read either Woodward or Du Bois—if he had, he’d be a better writer!—but I do think that “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” is a song that attempts to grapple with the experience of war for those who are asked to give themselves up as collateral damage for the powerful, a central concern of the Vietnam-era anti-war movement. To my ears, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” has more in common with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” or Stevie Wonder’s “Front Line”—two explicitly class-based critiques of the Vietnam War—than it does with “Dixie” or “My Old Kentucky Home” or Gone With the Wind or any number of countless other American fictions that glamorize Southern slavery. 

An interesting take, and one worth bearing in mind.

Like I said, none of the rest of the album reaches these heights, and a lot of it just isn't very interesting.  "Rag Mama Rag" is a New Orleans-style stomp with essentially nonsensical lyrics that has promise but never really blossoms.  "Whispering Pines" is a sad, slow ballad that sounds out of tune somehow?  Like there's something off about the whole thing.  "Jawbone" is actively annoying instead of just boring, so that's a nice change-up, I guess.

I don't know.  Even Pitchfork thinks this album is a 10.  I do not.

Is this album in my personal Top 100? No.