| Jim Henson

The Band. In comparison to Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, the Band are hardly lauded as all-mighty and influential. The thing about the Band is, either you're wildly devoted, or you don't know a thing. Due to this fact, the Band feel more intimate, they're mine. I'm sure someone could psychoanalyze my constant need to label groups as my own, but there's a keen intimacy in music. These people baring their souls, and you being right there with them, feeling all of their feelings. It's a definitive closeness that you can so strangely feel with a person you've never met. But the Band takes that to a whole other level. Unlike Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and countless other acts of the era, the Band never came off a showy rock stars. Bronzed guitars and Malibu beach houses aside, the Band's music leads you to believe that they lived an organic lifestyle with not a care. Their later albums don't exactly give off that fresh air of the Catskills, but still, they will always represent an unknown world. A world that is timeless, and has nothing to do with the present. It's a world where your biggest woes stem from problems with your crops or when you're told to keep moving on when you cross land that isn't your own. Still, when such trouble hits, you're consoled by good friends and sweet harmonies. If the world was the Band's catalog, we'd live a blissful existence. It would be occasionally problematic, but it's a tender struggle, and there's hope. When there isn't hope, it's still sounds too beautiful. It's the type of melancholy you'd love to wallow in. The Band aren't just a BAND. They're a feeling, a mood, and a place to visit. "Once I climbed up the face of a mountain, and ate the wild fruit there. Fell asleep until the moonlight woke me, and I could taste your hair. Isn't everybody dreaming? Then the voice I hear is real. Out of all the idle scheming, can't we have something to feel?" Where such a thing can occur, and you can have your fortune read in tea leaves. "I'll bring over my Fender, and I'll play all night for you." Where spitfires named Bessie roam, tossing out lines like, "I can't take the way he sings, but I'd love to hear him talk." The Band are an illustrious location, that doesn't quite exist. Heaven might sound like the Beatles, but it feels like the Band. "Oh, to be home again, down in Old Virginny. With my very best friend, they call him Ragtime Willie. We're gonna soothe away the rest of our years. We're gonna put away all of our tears. That big rockin' chair won't go nowhere." But it isn't just Old Virginny and Ragtime Willie, it's where and whoever you please. It's you, it's anonymous, but it's thorough. They provide every detail, yet you can fill it in for yourself. They're funky, they're raw, but it sounds full. All of the components for a perfect band are there. Not one, or two, but THREE incredible voices. All unique and extraordinary in their own way. I've tried so many times to determine my favorite voice in the Band, but it's too difficult. Levon Helm can howl and moan, ooze sensuality, but always keep that down-home ease. His chuckle in "Up on Cripple Creek" provoked Ralph J. Gleason to deem it, "surely the nastiest, dirtiest, evilest sexual snort in the history of the phonograph record." What an accomplishment! But on an equally momentous recording, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", Levon FORCES you to sympathize and get into his shoes. Rick Danko could be frisky, childlike, and maintain an aura of funk and soul, a la "Volcano". But occasionally, he could break your heart in a way his rambunctious grin didn't convey to you at first. In The Last Waltz, one of the first things you hear him say (the pool table scene aside), is "Happy Thanksgiving." It's really goofy, and it makes you giggle. But as each singable tune passes, you're met with "It Makes No Difference". Hail my favorite Band song of all time. Thanks most of all to who? Rick Danko. There is such raw emotion there, it's unbelievable that he didn't pen those words himself. With that stunning performance, he endures the emotions in a remarkable way. My belief is that through recordings, we feel the way the artist did as they performed it. Despite years passing, times changing, and life moving on, those records never fail to hit us in the way that they hit the performers that very day. If a musician was having a bad day, or the band was breaking up, you can feel that. Just as much as you can feel their contagious excitement, or in this case, terrible heartbreak. Whatever it was, Danko clearly identified with the words Robbie Robertson had written out, and he delivered one of the most honest and heart-wrenching vocal performances I've ever heard. Then you have Richard Manuel... In contrast to Danko, who was known for the funkier performances, Richard Manuel was known as the heart breaker. He'd make people cry with his soulful performances, and it was his strong point. The example are endless, "Lonesome Suzie", "Whispering Pines", it's all there. But he also had a infectious groove, and that Band versatility. Take "Across the Great Divide", you go on that romping adventure with him! He carries it along with a leisurely ease, yet does not lack compassion. The Band are just it. Not only did they have 'it', they epitomized it. It's intangible and impossible to place, but somewhere between those five vastly different souls, lied a kinship. Between those three voices, eternally distinctive and multifaceted, you had magic. But together... Oh, together. These were not squeaky clean Beach Boys harmonies, and it wasn't fucking Crosby, Stills & Nash either. You couldn't throw any of these voices on anything that sounded even remotely Phil Spector-esque. Because while the Beach Boys and CSN send off a delightful aroma of California, the Band is rooted somewhere deep down in America, far away from the sunny beaches and misty canyons of southern California. They provoke history, and when those three voices unite, you feel there's probably nothing they haven't seen. The Band takes it beyond lyricism. These are not just lyrics to a song. These are full-fledged stories, filled to the rim with experience and wisdom. That's where the mastermind called Robbie Robertson comes in. Robbie Robertson is an alright guitarist. He gets real sloppy at The Last Waltz, but it's a raunchy sound, and it works. But as a lyricist, Mr. Robertson excels. While the stories were usually rooted in either history, fantasy, or Levon's hometown, he took them beyond that atmosphere. His easily-imaginable words are so much a part of that mystical Band realm. The music is the scenery, but he provides the story lines. If the music is the scenery, then Garth Hudson is fucking Mother Nature. With his whimsical and descriptive musicianship, Garth Hudson paints panoramic visions. While each member of the Band could play at least two instruments (I'm pretty sure Robbie stuck to guitar, but as mentioned, he prevailed as a lyricist), I'm pretty sure Garth Hudson can play anything to handed to him. While Garth never sang (not even once!), his versatility was in his fingers. They move like spiders and can create the most stirring and unusual results. But also, as showcased on many-a Band tune, Garth can blow a mean sax. Whether clean and melodic, or the brass equivalent to Robbie's raunchy ways, Garth provided the necessary 'umph'. This was similarly accomplished with Garth's imperial accordion.

Despite causing George Harrison to deem them, I paraphrase, 'the greatest band of all time', the Band have reached only underground iconic status. Praised by mostly musicians and music critics, the Band are probably the best band to ever emerge from America. Our relationship does not compare, in length, to that of Led Zeppelin or the Beatles, but it's so difficult to imagine life without the Band. They're comforting, they're my cozy sanctuary. They take me away and encourage me to dream. When I say nobody loves the Band like I do, I'm kind of confident in that statement, mostly because nobody I know really grasps that love. But it doesn't make me feel ashamed or like the odd one out, I feel part of an exclusive club. I don't know what led me to fall so deeply for this strange combination of five men. But as I said, I can't imagine not falling. They've become a part of me, and unlike other bands, didn't fade into the abyss of my iPod, only to be occasionally rediscovered. So often I just let the Band's entire catalog roll on shuffle, and I get giddy over songs I haven't heard in a while. (Even if that was mere months prior.) There is a warmth in their catalog that lies nowhere else. It hasn't been the lengthiest musical romance, but I can promise it will be an eternal one.

P.S. Looking at these photos, for the first time in a LONG time, I'm reminded that this magical world did exist. Photos by Elliott Landy, with the exception of the Bob/Band '74 tour photos, which are Barry Feinstein, I believe. Way to go!