Album Reviews

Looking at the sepia toned cover photo, listening to the Civil War era Americana-themed lyrics and unraveling the thick, dark, tuba-tinged instrumental atmospherics, you might easily imagine the recording venue to have been a log cabin in the woods.

Instead, the group set up shop in sun-splashed Los Angeles, more specifically at 8850 Evanview Drive just off of Sunset Plaza, in Sammy Davis Junior’s pool cabana. There’s a Rhino-released, BBC produced DVD on the making of the album that hardcore fans will find worth watching.

With the windows boxed off and stuffed with blankets and baffles hung on the walls, the group set about recording most of what is arguably the group’s second best album after their magical, mysterious debut Music From Big Pink. Three songs, “Up on Cripple Creek,” “Jemima Surrender,” and the always astonishing “Whispering Pines,” were recorded later at New York’ Hit Factory.

While it’s clear an attempt was made to reproduce the pool cabana’s singular, warm, muffled, powerful sound, there was no way to re-create the cabana’s steam and shower room derived echo chamber!

Robbie Robertson envisioned “…a woody, thuddy sound,” for the record and that’s what he got, aided in great part by the antique $130 wood-rimmed drum set Garth Hudson picked up in an L.A. pawn shop and Levon Helm played throughout. Though producer John Simon is credited as engineer, Robertson placed the mikes and mixed at the board.

When this thick, woody-sounding album was first released, even reviewers not concerned with sound quality condemned it for being murky and cloudy. Most of them then, like reviewers now listen on shitty gear because, “man, they’re into the music, not the sound.” Just as film critics are content to screen new movies on bed sheets. NOT!

Even on a decent turntable back then, the record’s bass energy overwhelmed to the point where the drums, bass and occasional tuba parts congealed to produce a thick bass stew.

Going back now to the Robert Ludwig mastered original (look for “RL” scribed into the lead-out groove area), if your turntable and cartridge can deal with the bass energy and your speakers can produce the goods and your turntable is sufficiently isolated to resist the feedback, this record continues to overwhelm, but this time the senses more than the stereo!

The power unleashed by Manuel’s kick drum is simply astonishing. It will knock you over. But the bass and tuba lines will be easily separated in the mix. What’s more, the bass will not overwhelm the clarity and sheen of the guitars and not cloud the vocals.

I compared this reissue to a number of “RL” originals, an original UK Capitol pressing (E-ST 132), the 1997 EMI UK Centennial edition cut “analogue from analogue tapes,” and the 2000 CD 24 bit re-master.

First things first: the whereabouts of the original, assembled master tape is in question. JVC was going to issue an XRCD of this album but according to my sources the master tape could not be found. The Band’s own website (www./theband.com says the 2000 CD reissue (with bonus tracks) is said to have been “…produced (mostly) from the original master tapes…” (http://theband.hiof.no/albums/the_band.html).

So unless it was somehow found in between then and now, this reissue was most likely produced from the (hopefully) 24 bit master produced for the 2000 CD. It certainly exhibits greater depth and spaciousness than does the CD, though vinyl detractors will tell you all of that depth is an “artifact” of the inferior vinyl playback format. What Audio Fidelity will be using for their upcoming (as of winter 2009) Steve Hoffman mastered gold CD, I have no idea!

So what did EMI UK use for it’s 1997 all analogue reissue? Probably the same tape copy sent to the UK back in 1969 for the original UK issue. That’s what it sounds like when I compared them. Perhaps a copy of the original was used as a source for that re-mastering job.

Here’s the deal: if you can find a clean, original Bob Ludwig mastered original, grab it. I always buy clean copies of this masterpiece when I come upon them. You can never have too many copies of The Band and you can never listen to this album too many times. Aside from the music’s brilliance and complexity, the better your system, the more you will uncover in the mixes.

There’s pressing variability, of course and some of my originals are not quite as exuberant as others, but all beat the new reissue in many fundamental ways, particularly in terms of musical textures and sheer spatiality.

The rich bass textures heard on the RL original and on both the original and reissued UK vinyl are reduced to deep, powerful blobs on both the CD and reissued Capitol vinyl, though the LP definitely sounds superior and I played the CD back on the DCS Scarlatti stack, which ain’t exactly digital swill!

On the CD and to a lesser degree the Capitol LP reissue, the mystery and majesty found on the original is greatly diminished, along with the textures, which are homogenized and marginalized.

That said, the Capitol LP is very good, believe it or not. It does exhibit a good deal of depth and instrumental separation, whatever was the source and mastering engineer Ron McMaster managed to get all of the deep bass energy into the grooves. The depth and extension are there. The textures are not, nor is the rich atmosphere found on the original.

If you’ve never heard a clean original, I think you’ll be happy with this reissue, which is very nicely packaged and pressed (at Rainbo, which seems to be upping their quality) until you find one. Until you hear an original RL pressing, you won’t know what you’re missing and if you don’t own this album on vinyl, you’re missing a lot.