The Band (1969)

I like the second album from the Band (or “The Band”) more than the first. It’s definitely a big-brother album in my life, in this case the big brother of a neighborhood friend. I felt pressure to like it even as I never connected much with it. In the aftermath of 1968, a lot of the counterculture-oriented groups seemed to be seeking a kind of downhome comfort-rock. Sometimes it works. It’s easy enough to just play the album and try to let it come to you, though it’s often boring. Sometimes it hits in spite of my larger misgivings about the project. I have never liked the song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” for example, not by Joan Baez, not by the Band. It was written by Robbie Robertson—within the confines of the copyright disputes among the Bandmates—and always struck me as unattractive pretend-old stoic warbling. I’ve cringed though it so much I can’t even tell you. At one time you could not get away from it. The Baez version went to #3 in 1971 and I’ve had friends and read the critics who are into the whole Bob Dylan / Band industrial complex and made it part of the air we breathe. Yet the last time I played through The Band I found myself singing along with “Dixie.” Go figure. It might mean I’m in denial about liking it or it might mean I sing to cope when I should be just using the skip button. I’m not sure why I have so much resistance to skipping songs when I listen to albums. Somehow it feels like cheating. Anyway, the only song I actively like here is “Up on Cripple Creek” (a #25 hit in 1969), another good singalong, but even then it’s not like I love it. I give it maybe a 7 of 10. “Jawbone” is another song I like enough to notice; specifically I like its deliberateness. But most of the rest of The Band just passes me by like wallpaper. I will say one of the most interesting things about the Band is the range of strong lead vocals, provided on different songs by three of the five players, working and interweaving distinctly but within a range. Only Garth Hudson (my favorite) and Robbie Robertson abstain from singing (or yowling, as the occasion warrants). Last point: In recent years I’ve seen the album referred to as the “Brown Album” (presumably because it’s self-titled in the middle of their career like the Beatles’ White Album or a crayola rainbow of self-titled releases from Weezer). Maybe The Band has always been the Brown Album, but I have never in my life heard anyone refer to it that way. Brown like the loamy earth, I’m going to guess, not brown like shit.