THE BAND IN WOODSTOCK

Sure, we love jazz, blues, rock, indie, pop, classical, hip hop, electro, folk, house, hardcore, punk, glam, ambient, country and bluegrass, but once in a while you need to listen to some good old fashioned music from The Band. We've posted them before, but now there is a cool little documentary about the boys--formerly "The Hawks," Dylan's back-up band--so that's our excuse. Holed up n a basement in Woodstock (West Saugerties, actually) they forged timeless Americana that looked backward at a time when everyone else seemed lost in a purple haze of fuzz-toned psychedelia. It was the Summer of Love, after all, but this sounded more like Civil War music, old-timey, out of time, echoing a bygone era. This was The Band.



Man, these cats could play! Some people remember the exact moment they heard their first album, Music from Big Pink, and probably everyone remembers when they heard their second, that eponymously titled record that looked like it was made out of wood, or tooled leather, commonly referred to as The Brown Album. Maybe you were up late listening to an underground FM radio station, after lights out, when in between the heavy groups came some music as old as the hills and twice as dusty. The lyrics were great short stories, with a plaintive feeling to make a grown man weep. Mandolins, fiddles, some brass...Tears of Rage, Long Black Veil, The Weight, King Harvest and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Who was that? That was The Band.