THE BAND: MOONDOG MATINEE (1973)
1) Ain't Got No Home; 2) Holy
Cow; 3) Share Your Love With Me; 4) Mystery Train; 5) Third Man Theme; 6) Promised
Land; 7) The Great Pretender; 8) I'm Ready; 9) Saved; 10) A Change Is Gonna
Come; 11*) Didn't It Rain; 12*) Crying Heart Blues; 13*) Shakin'; 14*) What Am
I Living For; 15*) Going Back To Memphis; 16*) Endless Highway.
Apparently, Robbie Robertson got tired one day
from waking up and looking out of his window to discover the rest of The Band
picketing his apartment with large signs reading «ROBBIE WE NEED MORE SONGS
FROM YOU» and «ROBBIE GRACE US WITH EVEN MORE OF YOUR EGO». In order to teach
those guys a lesson, he decided that from now on — for a short while at least,
enough to record one whole LP — The Band were no longer The Band, but would
revert back to The Hawks, the barroom/shithouse-playing backing band for
Ronnie Hawkins back in their early «Swinging Toronto» days. Alternatively, this
may have been a collective decision,
but who can tell now? It ain't 1973 any more, and they all lie in their
autobiographies anyway.
Cover / tribute albums were not exactly all the
rage in 1973, when the world was still young, but they were beginning to
coalesce as a separate form of art — the other well known example from the same
year is Bowie's Pin Ups — and with Moondog Matinee, The Band ended up
playing a serious part in that coalescence. Since, at any point in their
post-Basement existence, The Band could have leisurely changed their name to
The Academy, Moondog Matinee is no
exception: it finds our merry bunch of bearded musical intellectuals
«institutionalizing» the lightweight entertainment that they originally grew
out of. On a sheerly technical level, they succeed; on a more abstract artistic
one, they utterly fail.
At least the choice of material is exquisite.
Instead of sanctifying early garage-rock à
la Bowie (which would be silly, since The Hawks were never garage-related),
or early rockabilly, which would make them look like a British Invasion band,
or Chicago blues, which would make them into a second-rate Butterfield Blues
Band, they go for a diverse selection that does involve a bit of rockabilly,
but generally concentrates on old school soul, R&B, gospel, and New Orleans
party muzak — and very few of these songs even begin to come close to «radio
standards».
If anything, Moondog Matinee is priceless for its edutainment value. If you
squint at the credits hard enough, you might want to find out about Clarence
«Frogman» Henry and his throaty croak (which no one in The Band, shameful as it
is to say, was able to reproduce — so they just put an electronic distorted
effect on Helm's voice), or about The Platters, or about LaVern Baker — or you
just might want to shift gears and go watch The
Third Man, which is a really good movie, although perhaps just a tad
overrated in terms of significance and quality by today's gourmet hipsters,
according to whom, almost everything
with Orson Welles in it automatically turns to gold... but we were actually
talking about The Band here.
To tell the truth, this is not really a «bad»
album. The Band honestly try to «Band-ify» the originals — in fact, come 1973,
they were so much one with their general style already, they could not have
really gone back to their bare roots even if they wanted to — making this, at
the very least, into an intriguing modernization of the freshly dug-out
«non-classics». However, that is also the root of the problem: some of these
songs yield quite unwillingly to the «Band-ification», and some just plain
rebel and turn into uncomfortable small puddles of embarrassment.
I am talking first and foremost about the
«rock'n'roll» numbers — in one of his monologs on art philosophy in The Last Waltz, Robbie said something to
the effect of "been there, done that, could do that along with the best of
'em, got bored and moved on" about their early days playing rock'n'roll,
and listening to these tepid, languid takes on Chuck Berry's ʽPromised Landʼ
and Fats Domino's ʽI'm Readyʼ (which happens to be one of my personal
favorites from the early boogie era, so I take this as a personal offense) sure
confirms that stance. Actually, the prime culprit here is not Robertson, but
the rhythm section of Helm and Danko — a clear-cut case of «overcooking it»:
not content to play simple four-fours and minimalistic, but steady boogie
lines, they give both of the tracks a «swing» attitude that completely robs
them of their basic point, because if one cannot properly headbang to these
tracks in a clear, metronomic fashion, what good are they? Completely no good.
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky — if anything, Chuck Berry should be left to the care
of the Rolling Stones, and Fats... Fats can probably take good care of himself.
They do a better job with Junior Parker's /
Elvis Presley's ʽMystery Trainʼ, which gets seriously
funkified without completely losing the vibe of the original — and also turned
into a playground for Hudson, who is busy unfurling a little electronic /
proto-IDM symphony in the background while Robbie and the boys are merrily
hacking away. The weirdness of the combo alone would be sufficient to make it
passable; unfortunately, the groove goes on well past its welcome, because
even Garth runs out of creative ideas a couple of minutes into the song.
Likewise, everything else is randomly
hit-and-miss. One upbeat tune may reach the right spot because of the proper
amount of party flavor and tongue-in-cheekiness (ʽAin't Got No Homeʼ, even
despite the lame attempt to electronically compensate for the lack of a proper
«Frogman» voice) — another one may be a shy, tentative recreation of a much
more energetic and overwhelming original (ʽSavedʼ — somebody tell these guys
to stay away from African-American parishes). One Manuel-sung ballad may be
sweet and touching (ʽShare Your Love With Meʼ), another may attempt to squeeze
his free-roaming style into a rigid waltzing doo-wop arrangement where his
attack loses focus (ʽThe Great Pretenderʼ). One side-closer may be the
completely unexpected rearrangement of the ʽThird Man Themeʼ, now a
lazy-summer-day Band-style chillout polka (no zither!), another side-closer may
be a moving, but totally expendable Sam Cooke cover (ʽA Change Is Gonna Comeʼ
is, I believe, one of those few tunes that are so personal, you'd really have
to live it out before adding it to your repertoire — no reasons to doubt
Danko's sincerity, but he is not living it out here, he is just paying a humble
tribute to Sam).
Thus, it ain't all totally without redemption,
but I would never in my life call Moondog
Matinee a «success» — certainly not if the goal here was to «update» all
the songs for the modern age, nor if the goal was somehow to prove The Band's
«authentic» status: ʽThe Weightʼ and ʽThe Night They Drove Old Dixie Downʼ
assert their authenticity and heritage far more effectively than a million
Chuck Berry and Sam Cooke covers ever could. And this is a thumbs down — still a must-own
for the serious fan, an «important trifle» in the legacy, but, nevertheless,
also an album which The Band's discography could definitely skip over.
The CD reissue adds a whole bunch of bonus
tracks from the same sessions, most of them completely passable (particularly
a lame-o-licious acoustic guitar cover of Chuck Willis' ʽWhat Am I Living Forʼ,
with a subtle melody change that totally kills off the smooth flow of the
original) — including one and one only original track: the studio version of
ʽEndless Highwayʼ, which, to tell the truth, would later be done with far more
verve and energy on the joint Dylan/Band live album Before The Flood. No surprise here, though — like main course, like
bonus.
Check "Moondog Matinee" (MP3) on Amazon
Band-ifying these songs ruins them in my opinion, it sucks the life out of them. I think The Band/Hawks do old rock and roll songs well live by playing them energetically and with some sloppy guitar, this album is just lifeless but a way to discover a couple of songs you might not have ehard before.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that just about anything _created_ by Orson Welles was gold (though frequently soiled by interfering parties) but "The Third Man" is not, by any means, an Orson Welles film, of which I am sure you are aware.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I find it entertaining, but unsatisfactory as art (which it, to be fair, never really strived to be), as well as suffering from that usual Graham Greene problem, "distingué damnation" as George Orwell put it.
And Welles in the film is "cool" in that post-modern apolitical irresonsible Tarantino way, but surely that is just about the absolute opposite of Welles' own artistic persona?
Oh I do go on about my pet peeves don't I. Some day I'll get a blog of my own and not bother you no more George.