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EDIT INFOThe Band - Music From Big Pink
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Album Details
- Artist: The Band
- Album: Music From Big Pink
- Label: Capitol
- Year of Release: 1968
- ME Rating: Indie Classic
- Reviewed by: dscanland on 2003-03-31
RecommendI have been trying to get this album for years now and finally managed to get myself a copy. What the Band did with this album was help mold a brand new sound for country along with Gram Parsons. They actually plug in their guitars with distortion on a couple tracks. Of note "the Weight stands out as the classic on here. Robbie Robertson is at his peak with this album having written 4 tracks. Bob Dylan even lent his songwriting skills with a 3 song contribution. Track this one down because it is an essential album in any collection.
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on 2012-01-12 CharlesMartel Said:
For so many years I was under a couple of misconceptions about the Band. First off, I had always assumed they were American, so quintessentially American is their sound. Second, Someone way back had told me that they got their name because they were Bob Dylan's touring backing band. See how wrong you can be. My excuse is that I was a kid back then.
" Music from the Big Pink" is one of those albums which is often cited as influential. Looking back across the forty plus years since it came out I can see why, though I am not sure its influence is as great as it is made out to be. This album is one of those which define a lot about the sixties. "The Weight" featured on the film "Ezy Rider" and that may account for a lot of the acclaim it gets. But apart from that, and "This Wheel's on Fire" I have to say I find the album to be a product of its time and one that has not aged well.
It has that typical sixties production, not just analogue but almost as if it were done with valves rather than transistors (museum pieces nowadays I know). Robbie Robertson has a voice which really starts to get annoying after a while and the pace of the album never really gets going. That is probably because it seems to lack an aim other than to provide a vehicle for middle class white kids to play at making some roots music. There is a mix of blues, country, Tennesee folk and even gospel thrown in here, all put against a background which is decidedly rock based. The result, I hate to say, is confusion.
I have never been sure why the Band got the acclaim they did. There were plenty of other outfits doing similar music at the time and some of them were a lot better than the Band. "Music from the Big Pink " is one of the (sadly too many) albums I have where I find it hard to raise any enthusiasm for it. It's not that I find it a bad album, its just that it doesn't inspire me, especially it doesn't inspire me to listen to it.
Many of my recent reviews have, it may seem, been deliberately iconoclastic. That is not the intention, but just the way it happened. But just because something is held up as a classic does not mean that it will be so for everyone. Sure, I can understand that many will regard this as a classic, and a must have album from the sixties for any serious music fan, but that doesn't mean I like it.
Rating: 5/10
