#7 -- The Band

Word Of Mouth

These days we call it 'buzz'.  In the late 1960s an unpublished, buzzworthy recording of songs, taped by Bob Dylan and The Band in their Woodstock-area basement, "went viral", as we would say today.  Fellow musicians, upon listening to these Basement Tapes, were so enthralled that they passed the music along to other musicians, influencing many of Rock's most popular acts, years before a public release.

The music was eerily familiar, but like little else being recorded at the time.  Its familiarity was due to it being 'roots' music: a songbook that Americans of a hundred years before might have felt comfortable with...except for the rock 'n roll adaptation.

Eventually, the backing ensemble behind the basement tapes, The Band, were recognized as headliners in their own right, recording musical Americana well into the mid-'70s.  Their highlighting of strong suits within pop music's historical record is what makes The Band not only one of our immortal top-14 stars, but ushers in the redemption of popular itself.  As with all great art, if one honors, with thorough study, those who have gone before, and if one adds something new to that foundation, it's hard to go wrong, and indeed, quite easy for 'buzz' to eventually find you.

Getting down to their songs, here's the first number of theirs I ever heard--as a high schooler listening in on AM radio: "Up On Cripple Creek"  

"Now me and my mate were back at the shack, 

we had Spike Jones on the box;

She said 'I can't take the way he sings, 

but I love to hear him talk'.

Well that just gave my heart a throb

to the bottom of my feet,

and I swore as I took another pull

my Bessie can't be beat!"

The song is carefree, light-hearted and whimsical.  The lyrics paint vivid scenes.  There's great fun being had.  There're even hidden levels of understanding one can sink one's teeth into on subsequent hearings.  For example, it's quite natural for someone to say "I can't take the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk" and actually be referring to a companion who is present.  That the music is Spike Jones obscures this second story delightfully.  It's these multiple layers and overall solidity, that make the musical styling itself--what might be 'rock 'n roll' as tipsy stumble--many times more powerful than the artless power chord and high-decible summons to recklessness that often passes for 'real' rock 'n roll.

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Each band or performer is graded on four things:
  1.  Innovation
  2.  Influence in my life--as a typical American
  3.  Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)  
  4.  Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

8/9/10/8 = 35 out of a perfect 40

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A second take:  As with the second story in the Spike Jones example, the iconic "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" seems to be lamenting the fall of the South in the civil war, until one considers the chorus:  "and all the bells were ringing."  Which, I would suggest, would be nigh impossible, or at least unlikely, for a bombed city in defeat, but all but certain in every major city of that era in the North, as word of war's end spread via church bells and of course ...the buzz that is word of mouth.