Customer Reviews

More a Legend Than a Band

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Flatlanders may be "more a legend than a band," but this album is a legacy that will always live on. The group uses a wide array of instruments and vocal techniques to create a sound that is both layered and elegently simple. "Dallas" may be one of the best country/folk songs ever recorded. Even if you don't like country music, you owe it to yourself to pick up this album. You will be won over.

13 soulful twangy perfect gems. Yes, there's a saw being played amongst the other instruments, but it just adds to the feeling of other-worldliness on this legendary recording. I was delighted and moved by this CD; so much so that it is high up on my list of essential recordings, and I listen to A LOT of music. Perhaps not for everyone, but for anyone who likes great songs and great performances, and anyone who wants to be swept away to the lonesome plains of West Texas.

Those who liked it when country went pop need not apply. This is for folks who like *real* country.

I bought this a few years ago based on reading a review. I was not really into country all that much or altcountry. I have since become a fan of alt country. But there are songs on here that make your mind reel. "Dallas" and "I think I'm gonna go downtown" are two really great songs sung in that Jimmie Dale Gilmore seemingly 1920's vocal style. He sounds like the guy that Willie Nelson is trying to grow up to be. It's hard to explain really the effect that Gilmore's voice has. I understand that Gilmore has sung and played with Nelson, but it really should be the other way around. In any case, this is a must own.

There's a lot of nice music on this album, and the two cuts everyone alludes to, Dallas & Tonite I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown, are really terrific. The musical saw is a huge detraction tho. It reminded me of Brian Wilson's use of the bicycle horn on Pet Sounds' You Still Believe In Me; it's a great touch, comes out of left field and adds dimension to the song, a great idea. That's how I felt about the saw when I heard it on "Dallas;" then, the band proceeded to use it again and again, and it got to be a drag. Brian knew how to be inventive and creative with this stuff without overdoing it (and I don't mean to belabor the Wilson connection here, cuz that connection is pretty tenuous here, obviously), but the Flatlanders wayyyy overdid the novelty instrumentation here.

I grew up listening to Jimmie Dale Gilmore (and a few Joe Ely)albums, all of which I loved...but not as much as this album, which I did not hear until just about a year ago. This album has the best versions of "Dallas" and "Tonight I Think I'm Gonna Go Downtown," (which I would personally rate even higher than Dallas as a song); I especially like the musical saw -- it adds an eerie but very interesting dimension to the music. This album is definitely a classic.

If I could only listen to 10 albums for the rest of my life, this would definetely be one of them.

Like many others, I got turned onto The Flatlanders by Don Imus and bought Now Again. It whetted my appetite for more and I found a copy of More Than A Legend Than a Band on Amazon. If anything, it is better than Now Again. Starting with Dallas and Tonight I'm Going Downtown, the album takes us through a gamut of emotions from joy to despair. Bhagavan Decreed is especially poignant. The story behind More a Legend Than a Band is fascinating. After changes from the 8-track issued in 1972 and more fits and starts, it was finally released as a CD in 1990. The success of Now Again has lured us back to "retro-country" music of Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. My thanks to the I-Man for the lead.

This album is an absolute classic. There is not a bad song on this CD. The lyrics are well written and the music is energetic and original. The city of Dallas is perferectly described by the song of the same name. If you think you hate country music, listen to this CD. It will change your mind.

Although Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock were all destined for alt country greatness, for some unfathomable reason the band of which they were all members was not. They recorded an album in 1972, but it only received widespread attention in 1990 when it was rereleased with additional cuts on Rounder. I remember seeing the title when it was released thinking it the most pretentious I had ever seen. Only upon reading the back and learning that it featured both Gilmore and Ely, two performers I tremendously loved, did I realize that the title was almost certainly not hype.

The problem with the Flatlanders is that they were a band before their time. The concept of playing traditional country songs without the overproduction typical of Nashville and Billy Sherill was unheard of at the time. Gram Parsons work was just beginning to reach a wider audience and Emmylou Harris was still singing with Parsons and would do so until his death in 1973. So, the Flatlanders truly was a revolutionary band. By the time this repackaging of their work was released, however, all three primary members of the band had established themselves as major forces in the burgeoning alternative, anti-Nashville scene. What is especially amazing is the fact that Gilmore, Ely, and Hancock formed the band in Lubbock, Texas, a town that has produced far more hometown musicians than anyone could have had a right to expect. Starting with Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings, the town has produced more than its fair share of musicians since the fifties including Delbert McClinton, Mac Davis, and Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, while Roy Orbison and Bob Wills came from not too far away. Must be something in the water.

The songs on this album are absolute gems of simplicity. They pretty much anticipated much of what would happen in country music in the next thirty years. Jimmie Dale Gilmore, blessed with one of the great male voices in country music (perhaps the greatest of the past thirty years), sang most of the songs in his exquisite tenor, while Ely and Hancock provided guitars and back up vocals. Unfortunately, their friend Steve Wesson played musical saw on a number of the cuts and it can't be said that this was much in the way of a positive contribution. It would be hard to say whether the cowbell or the saw was the single most irritating "musical instrument" to see its way onto a musical recording. Both have their vices and little in the way of virtues. Neither requires much in the way of talent.

But if one can get past the saw, the songs are simply spectacular. The album begins with three glorious songs, beginning with Gilmore's lovely "Dallas." His voice is so clear and pure on this one that someone previously unfamiliar with his work could instantly understand why he is so esteemed as a vocalist. The song is one of Gilmore's best, in which Dallas is personified over and over in the verses. "Tonight I'm Gonna Go Downtown" is just so simple with the kind of stuff that was being recorded at the time in Nashville. Contrast it with Charlie Rich's dreadful BEHIND CLOSED DOORS (mind you, I love the many bits and pieces that Rich did before he ever met Billy Sherill, such as THE FABULOUS CHARLIE RICH, but artistically meeting Sherill was his doom). It sounds almost like country minimalism by comparison. The album then moves into two wonderful Butch Hancock compositions, "You've Never Seen Me Cry" and "She Had Everything." The rest of the album is also very good, but for me those four songs stand out.

If one loves Alt Country, this is one of the essential albums. By any measure it is one of the truly great discs in the genre, but quite apart from that, it is simply great music.

I discovered this album only a few years ago, and have since purchased each of the Flatlander's albums (and many of their individual albums) and have seen the band in person three times at the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia. When I listen to Flatlanders, I feel like I'm not just listening to a band, but to the guardians of a distinctly American culture and of a code defined by artistry, integrity, wisdom, and understated good humor. I also appreciate their deep empathy with people on the move, whether immigrants, homeland refugees, or the spiritually restless. Hills and Valleys, their most recent album, is their best, but More a Legend Than a Band is a classic and the Flatlanders didn't need the New York Times to call it one of the 50 best albums of the 20th century to make it so. Woodie Guthrie and Hank Williams have long since passed, but the Flatlanders continue to gift us, and I would rather listen to them than any currently active band or artist, much less those on the airwaves. We should all be grateful that the Flatlanders (unfairly) did not achieve commercial success with this first album because it allowed them to mature as individual artists and collectively. If you haven't heard the Flatlanders, you're in for a treat: you gotta reap, just what they sow.