A Band like no other

It never fails to amuse me: A band that forged a lasting link between rock and American rural music was four-fifths Canadian.
Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson emerged from north of the border, joining with Southerner Levon Helm to first back Ronnie Hawkins, then Bob Dylan before setting out on their own as The Band.
I watched Martin Scorsese's "The Last Waltz" -- a chronicle of The Band's final gig -- last night (while still flying high after MY BELOVED OREGON DUCKS held off USC for an important college football victory).
I made a big pot of chili this morning while listening to "Rock of Ages," The Band's double-live album account of a gig from New Year's Eve 1971.
All five members were supremely talented musicians and the principal singers -- Manuel, Danko and Helm -- each brought a unique sound to the complex compositions.
Music journalist Anthony DeCurtis wrote in the New York Times in 2002 that The Band avoided the "lengthy jams, rococo arrangements and trippy lyrics" prevalent during the latter years of the 1960s and earliest years of the 1970s.
Rather, DeCurtis wrote, "songs like 'The Weight' and 'Chest Fever' were at once carefully structured and rhythmically loose, plain-spoken and receptive to endless interpretation."
"The group's morally ambiguous songs," DeCurtis reckons, "harked back to the oldest traditions in American music -- to medicine shows and spirituals, to murder ballads and eccentric folk character portraits."
I enjoyed listening to The Band today. Putting on an album such as "Rock of Ages" is akin to renewing a favored acquaintance from the past.