Customer Reviews

Music From Big Pink

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Before I bought this CD I had only heard The Weight and it was the main reason I bought this CD. To put it simply I was blown away by it. This album is the reason Eric Clapton disbanded cream and it is easy to see why. Every aspect of this album is beautiful and every song is great, not one stands out above the rest. I have since compiled a large collection of The Band, but this one will always be my favorite. The blending of the three voices is heard most on this album, with Richard Manuels standing out the most. In my opinion his voice is one of the most beautiful ever, and one listen of I shall be released should convince anyone of this. The album is a drastic departure from anything being recorded around the same time. It starts of with a slow song, Tears of Rage, very uncommon for the day. The songs all have a very old feel to them, and there is a lot of gospel flavor incoporated into them. It is basically the perfect album. Every band member was equally important to every song and each is one of the best at their respective instrument. In my opinion this is one of the best albums ever and this new remastered version is even better. The bonus tracks are pretty interesting especially if you don't already own the basement tapes. If you are looking to get into The Band start with this album and work your way through their catalog. It is the kind of album that gets better each time you listen to it and no music fan should be without it.

It's great to see such a terrific album finally get the treatment it deserves-remastered sound quality, an expanded CD booklet, and the real "gravy"-all the bonus tracks! This is the album that created a musical revolution in 1968 (no small feat for the 60's!) Influencing everybody from the Beatles to Eric Clapton (whom even went so far as to make a pilgrimage to Big Pink to hang out and jam!) This was honest, well-written (by Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan , Richard Manuel, Rick Danko) well-played (three superb singers), just plain great music! The classics are here "The Weight", "I Shall Be Released", "This Wheel's On Fire"-but others in the original line-up are just as good: "We Can Talk", "Long Black Veil", and " Tears of Rage" also standout. The bonus tracks are reason to buy this CD alone!-These are rare songs that only collectors have been able to hear: "Ferdinand The Imposter", "If I Lose" and "Orange Juice Blues" are finally available in pristine CD quality! Can we give this album 6 stars?!!

Allow me to preface this review by saying that I'm not any sort of Band scholar, more of just a casual patron of the arts...but hot damn, is this one hell of a CD. In my vast collection of albums, I can't think of one that boasts instrumentation as innovative as "Big Pink." Each song's a symphony in itself, seemingly composed by a roots-rock Phil Spector or something. There's not a single bad song on here, although they're all very different; if you're only familiar with the acoustic sound featured on "The Weight," you may be surprised to hear the lush organs, synths and strings on all of the other tracks. Believe me though, it works perfectly. The scope of this album is so vast that you wouldn't believe it was possible to achieve, but The Band really pulls it off. Truly, The Band is the superlative example of a band, where each member contributed equally to the group effort. This reissue is so clutch, too: the sound is great, and the bonus tracks add what is essentially a companion album to the original tracks. Whomever was in charge of compiling the tracks really knew his stuff. Kudos for including "Ferdinand the Imposter," a terribly recorded favorite from "The Genuine Basement Tapes," because it is such a damn fine song.

A highly respectful remix and repackaging, with great liner notes. The Band declined rather quickly once the 60s ended, but "Big Pink" and the eponymous followup album "The Band" are essential recordings that everyone should own.

A word about the bonus tracks: in my opinion, these are rarely a good idea with CD re-releases. The artists chose a song lineup and song order with a particular flow, and the bonus songs tend to feel rather jarring. Surely a lovely silence should follow the majestic "I Shall Be Released"!

In addition, about half the outtakes here are songs that appear in very similar versions on the seminal Band/Dylan collaboration, "The Basement Tapes". In all, I would have preferred a simple repackaging of the original lineup of songs.

Having said that, this is a record everyone should have.

This album changed my life, changed the way i think about music, and opened my musical horizons. From the first song, "Tears of Rage", i was blown away by the passionate, tortured, and beautiful vocals of pianist Richard Manuel. Some of the other highlights are the rocking "Chest Fever", the emotionally powerful "The Weight", and the crazy "This Wheel's On Fire".

The musicianship on this album is incredible from all 5 members, with Garth Hudson on organ, Robbie Robertson on guitar, Rick Danko on bass, and Levon Helm on drums, including when they switch around instruments. This album captures so many emotions and successfully merges so many American traditions in music.

In addition, the bonus tracks are great too. It's cool to hear alternate versions of songs, as well as songs that weren't even on the album. "Orange Juice Blues" is great, as well as "Long Distance Operator".

This album has great liner notes which really provide insight into the workings of this (at the time) pretty mysterious band. This album is well worth the cost, and the extra stuff you get makes the deal even sweeter.

This album might take a few listens before you really get into it, but it is well worth it, as this album is one of the greatest albums of the late 60s, and remains one of my favorites.

Largely influential on the currently voguish Americana and alt. country scene, this first album grew out of the music the Band were creating with Bob Dylan at the house Big Pink, near Woodstock NY in 1967, and includes several new Bob Dylan songs - I Shall Be Released, This Wheel's On Fire and Tears Of Rage, the latter two co-written with the members of the Band who sing them. Probably the best known song was the single The Weight, which also appeared in the film Easy Rider (but was not licensed for the soundtrack album). There is one cover, Long Black Veil, which was influential on Robbie Robertson's writing style, and which he learned from Lefty Frizell's version.

If you need to own one Band album, this is the one to go for. It was hugely influential, an album unlike any other, and caused huge ripples across the music fraternity, changing the way people like Eric Clapton experienced and created music.

Beautifully re-mastered this new edition has copious notes and is almost doubled in length with bonus tracks, mostly appearing for the first time. It is fascinating to hear alternative arrangements of some of the songs, such as Lonesome Suzie which turns up with a big band horn arrangement. Musically, it sounds great, but was discarded, rightly, for being inappropriate for the song. A couple of covers recorded for fun, never intended for release on the album, are included - the Stanley Brothers' bluegrass If I Lose, and a less successful stab at the Jazz Allum and Big Bill Broonzy blues standard, Key To The Highway.

Some of the songs were included on The Basement Tapes, the Bob Dylan and the Band album of demos and home-recordings made at Big Pink. Orange Juice Blues and Yazoo Street Scandal are alternative versions, but of especial interest are Katie's Been Gone and Dylan's song Long Distance Operator. These are presented here as full stereo studio recordings, but are clearly the same takes that appeared on The Basement Tapes, demonstrating that the eight tracks by the Band on that album had not been recorded at Big Pink at all but had been muddied up to sound as if they had. Long Distance Operator now spawns an extra verse, but unfortunately there is a mistake in the editing so that the first line of the last verse is missing. Clearly these and other Band tracks from that album and any others from the same period need to be rounded up and given a proper release in restored sound quality

One of the greats, absolute must have. Also needed to accompany this is Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" and "The Basement Tapes". Beside these 3 albums the rest seems no more than background noise. Songwriting, singing, musicianship par excellence, how come it has gone so far down in the USA since this? Maybe because these musicians were from Canada in the first place?

PS some of the best tracks on this CD IMHO are those missing from original vinyl - "Yazoo Street Scandal", "Katie's Been Gone", "Long Distance Operator", "Orange Juice Blues" - so even if you have the original vinyl, lucky person, you need this CD too :)

If you can call it a debut, considering that The Band had been playing together for ten years when "Music From Big Pink" was released, functioning for more than three of those years as Bob Dylan's nameless backing group (no name, just "the band").

This is apparently one of those albums that you either love or just don't get, and I doubt if very many other reviewers have dared give it only FOUR stars. Well, if I could give 4 1/2 I would, because "Music From Big Pink" is a terrific, idiosyncratic record. But what can I do? The Band's second album is even better than this one.

When this record came out in 1968, it was like nothing else which had ever been made at the time. Guitarist Robbie Robertson and bassist Rick Danko are the main songwriters, and Danko, pianist Richard Manuel, and drummer Levon Helm (the only American in the group) share lead vocals. There are vocal harmonies here, sure, but The Band were not the Beack Boys...the three singers' unschooled delivery makes "Music From Big Pink" sound fresh and sort of raw, almost like a jam session, with the role of lead vocalist passing between Manuel, Danko and Helm seemingly at random.

The various instruments, which include both piano and organ, take turns being up front, although the dominant one on most songs is classically trained keyboardist and occational saxist Eric "Garth" Hudson's icy Lowrey organ. The many highlights include the profound "Tears Of Rage", a remarkable take on Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released", the swinging "We Can Talk", and a cover of the country ballad "Long Black Veil", which stands alongside Johnny Cash's haunting rendition as the best version of this song ever recorded.
And then there's "The Weight", of course, one of The Band's best-known songs, and one of their very best as well. A mainly acoustic tune with a superb folkish melody, the surreal Luis Buñuel-inspired lyrics are sung first by Levon Helm and then by Rick Danko, before Helm and Danko finally join forces on the fifth and last verse.

Blending rock, folk, country and R&B into a singular, rootsy and virtually inimitable mix, The Band's debut album immediately caught the attention of the critics (not least because of their association with Bob Dylan). And it is almost as remarkable today as it was way back when Rolling Stone Magazine could not seem to heap enough praise upon The Band.
"Music From Big Pink" is one of The Band's two or three finest records, and one of the most interesting North American rock records of the 60s. And this 2000 reissue (which marks the first appearance of the original mix of "Pink" on CD) has been embellished by the addition of no fewer than ten bonus tracks, including several alternate takes and four outtakes, a cover of Big Bill Broonzy's "Key To The Highway" among them. The simple but charming and melodic western swing of "If I Lose" and the appealing mid-tempo folk-rocker "Katie's Been Gone" are also among the more interesting bonus cuts, and I actually prefer the alternate "Lonesome Suzie" which features a prominent piano part by Richard Manuel.

4 ½ stars. Highly recommended.

Eric Clapton in the liner notes of Blind Faith's deluxe edition sums it up when he described this album as having the most significant impact on him "whose versatility and harmonious unity seemed blissfully free of the corrosive intensity which had fueled Cream".
Furthermore, The Band's melodic interplay and the subtle textures created by their exotic instruments whose close association with Bob Dylan only deepened his(Clapton's) fascination. No need to add words BUT all the bonus tracks, Basement Tape versions are grand fully reproduced in these high caliber remasters artwork and all.

Well, it is a little frightening when you realize that the Band's albums defy time altogether and that in one way or another all of their songs are linked (yet they seem like seperate far and away efforts). Like another reviewer stated, this is a record that doesn't hold a certain place in any time, and although you'll get some images in your head, you certainly can't rely on them. This album isn't depressing, or bad, or unprofessional in any way. I find it inspirational and even comforting compared to today's music. Yet it still has a hard edge to it, and it seems like it could even be popular with some folks today (understand why I'm concerned--how did Robbie know how to make these songs both timeless and lyrically on top?). If you have never heard the Band before, and you are used to that standard but shameful FM radio polish that is on other records, then you'll need to give them some time and interest before you start saying (rather estatically) how this is the greatest album ever released, like other people who are balling over themselves to do so. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO LISTEN TO THIS MUSIC, rather than dance to it or put it on for a party (and in that case, it is not destined to be certain folks' road music). The sounds are unlike any other sounds, and you'll need to listen to them a while and adjust to their level (as opposed to those folks who think they are so good that they want their music to adjust to THEIR level). After you understand where the Band is coming from, and after you move to their ideas and sonic land, you too will start calling their stuff the best music ever made. I don't need to ramble about how good the record is, and I couldn't anyway because their is so much depth in it. Plain and simple, it is a work of genius, it belongs to their time and our time and all time, it is a work that is both moving and funny, universal and downhome. Quite frankly, I don't know how the guys did it. Dylan wrote "I Shall Be Released", a song about a prisoner, that closes the album. Robbie wrote a completely different story about a "Caledonia Mission," in which a woman has to stay locked up inside mission walls. Is that why Manuel is singing so high in the Dylan cover? Is he imitating her voice or is he someone else? Is it a concept or is it not? See? Pure genius. SO MUCH DEPTH, so much richness, and a lot more too. You get quality and smarts for your dollar. Thanks to the other reviewers who have now told the world how good they feel that this timeless and beautiful piece of art really is.