Lately I’ve found myself becoming obsessed with a new (read: old) band.  This happens quite regularly and friends/family are frequently subjected to my sermons on famous music which I’ve only just discovered.  This has included Creedence, Jackson Browne and The Hold Steady amongst others.  But this month it’s The Band.  The mighty troubadours known for backing Bob Dylan on The Basement Tapes and for their Scorsese directed concert film The Last Waltz.

Over a decade ago some 'reputable' music magazine ran a ‘best live albums EVER’ feature and being young and impressionable I naturally went out and snapped up everything I could get my hands on.  One of the albums that really stuck for me was Before The Flood by Bob Dylan & The Band, recorded in ’74 on their co-headlining tour.  I’d already fallen in love with Bob’s oeuvre and I believe there’s nothing better than a live record to hear the songs you love really breathe.  As is the case with many a great album, before you even hit play on this album you know it’s going to be good - the cover is a see of people holding their lighters in the air before it was a cliché and the crowd seem to stretch on forever in the hot summer heat.  It's just one of those shots you wish you could live inside.

Back in the mid-00’s when I first picked it up, the country tinged stylings of The Band didn’t really capture my adolescent furore and nine times out of ten I would skip through them to get to Bob killing it solo acoustic on Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.  As with all albums, slowly it fell out of my regular rotation and became something I’d go back to occasionally, though didn’t think about much.  Recently however, something changed.  Surfing Netflix for something new and inspiring to watch I stumbled across ‘Ain’t In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm’.  I had no idea who Levon Helm was, but I figured I’d throw it on having had a good time randomly selecting the Harry Nilsson documentary last summer.  I wasn’t disappointed.  The film itself is a great piece about The Band’s drummer in his twilight years battling cancer and working on some of his last music, a watch which I would highly recommend.  On the topic of today’s post, though, it specifically made me revisit my old friend Before The Flood, and finally give The Band’s tracks on the album a chance.  Through hazy remembrance I realised I HAD listened to these songs before, and was more than a little baffled as to how I hadn’t realised their true greatness before this moment.

For this week’s Friday track I’ve selected the absolutely stomping Up On Cripple Creek.  On this live cut Levon sings and growls his heart out a little more than on the studio LP, and lays down a funky backbeat whilst doing it. The whole group lock into a real dirty 70s groove with Garth Hudson playing the clavinet through a wah-wah pedal in one of the coolest fills ever, and all before Stevie Wonder had even thought about laying down Superstition.  I think the real beauty of this song is in the space the group leave for each other to shine.