Not Just Any Band -- The Band (4 1/2 out of 5 stars)

In the late 60s, nearly every group was concerned with its look as it was its music. Mark Farner of Grand Funk was instantly recognizable because of his bare chest and lion’s mane of hair – ditto Led Zep’s Robert Plant. David Crosby had his walrus moustache and Buffalo Bill Cody jacket; Arthur Brown, singer of the incendiary hit “Fire,” wore outfits that were flame retardant; and Paul Revere and the Raiders played up their name by dressing up as colonial soldiers. As for David Bowie…Well, we’re still not quite sure what the alien look was all about…

Then there was “The Band,” comprised of four scruffy Canadians (Richard Manuel, Rick Danko, Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson) and the son of a dirt poor Arkansas farmer (Levon Helm). They were multi instrumentalists: Manuel played piano, drums, organ, and sax; Helm drums, mandolin, guitar, and bass; Danko bass, guitar, trombone and fiddle; Robertson, guitar and piano, and Hudson was adept at organ, piano, sax, synthesizer, and accordion. They looked like their music – rustic and grizzled, like some faded sepia photo taken by Matthew Brady. They may have been 4/5 Canadian, but their music embraced the roots of the American South – folk, country, blues, rock and R& B. They sang songs about the Depression, the Civil War, and sitting on the back porch with the kinfolk. In an age when songs were drenched with seven minute guitar solos and overt drug references, these guys told stories. There was nothing like them on the airwaves; their closet contemporary was storyteller Gordon Lightfoot – another Canadian. How ironic that Americans were learning about their country from musicians born north of the border.

Nearly every cut on the group's self-titled second album is a Band classic. Sure, there’s a much better version of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” on the “Rock of Ages” album, but at this point no one even knew there was going to be a live Band album. Levon sings “Dixie” with a bit too much nose and throat, resembling an Arkansas Dylan, which ain’t that pleasing to the ear. Bless his drumsticks it’s a tone he seldom used.

The album is as rich with images of flim flam men, carnies, droughts, floods, grifters, drifters, loose women and the hard drinking men that love them. “The Band” is a forty minute history lesson -- America set to music.

As with the group's first album ("Music From Big Pink"), Richard Manuel is the first and last voice you hear. He opens with “Across the Great Divide,” a tale of no nonsense, pistol packin’ Molly and her man, who remains optimistic their luck will change (“Try and understand your man the best you can.”) Typical of the band’s most memorable songs, it features Manuel’s pounding Fats Domino piano as part of its underpinnings, robust horns from Garth Hudson and producer John Simon, and a descriptive, easy-to-sing-along chorus: “Across the great divide, just grab your hat and take that ride. Get yourself a bride, and bring your children down to the riverside.”

The most astonishing performance comes from the already troubled Manuel, who nearly cries his way through “Whispering Pines.” A deceptively talented pianist, early in the band’s career Manuel was every bit the composer Robbie Robertson was. He just wasn’t as prolific and that seemed to gnaw at him, as did his inability to express himself in words. By the second album, he was already relying on Robertson to help him draft his lyrics. His frustrations as a songwriter would lead him to shut down completely by the time “Cahoots,” their fourth album, came out.

“Whispering Pines” features a droning, understated lick on the piano by Manuel, who purposely knocked it out of tune so it would give his playing a more desperate texture. Manuel sings in an impossible falsetto that further captures the ache in his heart: “Foghorn through the night, calling out to sea. Protect my only light, ‘cause she once belonged to me. Let the waves rush in, let the seagulls cry. For if I live again, these hopes will never die. I can feel you standing there, but I don’t see you anywhere.”

“Whispering Pines” is an early cry for help from a truly tortured soul who finally took his own life to end his suffering. He sounds hopelessly adrift against the waves of Garth Hudson’s organ, even toward the end of the song, when Levon Helm’s counter vocal reaches out to try and guide him to shore. It’s unbelievable that no one in the group could figure out how far gone this guy already was.

If Manuel was the group’s dramatic voice and chief balladeer, then Helm was The Band’s Goodtime Charlie, the one who seemed to be enjoying his lifestyle and the music the most. “Rag Mama Rag” is one of The Band’s best toe-tappin’ classics, a vehicle for Garth Hudson’s Dixieland piano rolls and Rick Danko’s dead on Doug Kershaw Cajun fiddle playing. Richard Manuel chips in on drums, providing the loopy, topsy turvy beat. The mood is cheeky and playful with Levon taking on the role of a hayseed Romeo sniffing around for some afternoon delight: “Rag mama rag, now where do you roam? Rag mama rag, bring your skinny little body back home. Well its dog eat dog and cat eat mouse, you can rag mama rag all over my house.”

Levon revisits his roguish side in “Jemima Surrender,” a nonsensical sideshow of double entendres directed at a potential conquest: “Jemima surrender, I’m gonna give it to you, ain’t no pretender gonna sleeve my tattoo. I hand you my rod and you hand me that line (every time), that’s what you do, and through we ain’t doin’ much fishin’ or drinkin’ any wine. Sweet Jemima if I were a king, I’d fix you up with a diamond ring.” The music is handled by the Band’s “B” team: Instead of Helm on the drums, its Manuel whacking out an ad hoc country stomp, as Hudson (who doubles on piano) and John Simon back Levon’s sly vocal inflections with Madi Gras horns, while Robertson steps up to provide a snappy Carl Perkins-like solo. “Jemima Surrender” has the same loafing guitar intro as Shocking Blue’s “Mighty Joe” (the follow up to “Venus”), but no, it’s not a love song to the lady on the pancake box.

Perhaps Levon’s finest moment in The Band is “Up On Cripple Creek.” The group’s only hit single, it reached #25 on the charts in November 1969. Its success is even more of a surprise when you factor in the group’s lack of enthusiasm for the song. Early takes are lethargic, later ones are hurried, as if the boys wanted to catch the next crop duster out of Cripple Creek. It wasn’t until they hillbillied it up with a few “he-he’s” and added a make-shift Jew’s harp that the boys began to have fun with it and finally nailed a take. Hudson’s “Jew’s Harp” that ends the choruses is actually a clavinet run through a wah-wah pedal. The thick bottom provided by Levon’s drums and Rick’s bass coats the arrangement in a Motown meets the Ozarks vibe. The Band’s most recognizable tune, “Up On Cripple Creek” is stuffed with good time imagery – there’s Spike Jones “on the box” (jukebox), the hefty, forgiving mistress (Miss Bessie), and sketchy activities (betting on the ponies).

Danko gets a rare opportunity to sing a pair of songs, perpetrating his best Buddy Holly hiccup and rubber band bass during the bouncy “Look Out Cleveland,” and adopting a Winwood-esque choir boy vocal in “Unfaithful Servant.” Buried amidst the brilliance of Manuel’s performances on “The Band,” “Unfaithful Servant” would become a defining moment for Danko on the live “Rock Of Ages.”

In giving perhaps his greatest performance in “Whispering Pines,” Manuel nails three other performances that on the album that affirm Helm and Danko’s claim that he was the real lead singer of The Band. The mandolins pluck happily and Hudson’s accordion hums like a finely tuned Model T in “Rockin’ Chair,” a back porch ballad about an old salt longing to retire and return home to live a simple life with his family in Virginia. Manuel laces his baritone with a sense of longing that draws you in and makes you sympathize with his character, who knows his life is just about used up: “Slow down, Willie Boy, your heart’s gonna give right out on you. It’s true, and I believe I know what we should do. Turn the stern and point to shore, these seven seas won’t carry us no more. Oh, to be home again, way down in old Virginny, with my very best friend, they call him ragtime Willie. I can’t wait to sniff that air, dip’n snuff I won’t have no cares, that big rockin’ chair won’t go now where.”

Manuel takes a pass at playing the rogue in “Jawbone,” only his career criminal character is more focused on money than women – “I’m a thief and I dig it!” Robertson’s rips out one of his knife-like solos and Helm’s crisp pock shot drumming guides the others through some tricky time changes. Manuel and Robertson continue to show a talent for Depression era lingo: “Pull of a job with an inside man, who needs the cash and likes your plan. And you know just who to thank, when you land right back in the tank!”

Next to his lovesick loner in “Whispering Pines” (which is too close to the bone to be anyone but Manuel himself), his portrayal of a dirt poor dust bowl farmer in the album’s closer “King Harvest (Has Surely Come)” is one of his most riveting characters. When Manuel’s voice rises, pleading to the skies (“Please let these crops grow tall!”) or takes stock of his wretched financial situation (“Long enough I’ve been on skid row, and it’s plain to see I’ve got nothin’ to show), the conviction in his voice will propel you back to the 30s when banks foreclosed on farms and too many Americans were transients. It’s one of Robertson’s all time great compositions highlighted Manuel’s frantic farmer, Danko’s fretless fingering, and frenzied guitar work from Robertson that sounds as if they stuck his hands in a bees nest. Take note of Levon’s muffled drumming during the revved up ending. He sounds as if he’s having a punch out with drum set. The reason for the deadened beat is the kit itself. Instead of plastic or metal drums, Levon’s kit was made of wood, like the type of drum sets more common to bands that played in the south at the turn of the 20th century.
The group’s self titled transformed the humble country gentlemen into media darlings. Their third album, "Stagefright" explored the darker side of fame…