Artist	Song
the band	long black veil (3:03)
the band	hobo jungle (4:12)
the band	ruben remus (3:13)
the band	king harvest (has surely come) [live] (3:43)
the band	across the great divide (2:52)
the band	jupiter hollow (5:17)
the band	high cotton (3:25)
the band	sleeping (3:16)
the band	stage fright (3:41)
the band	ferdinand the imposter (3:58)
the band	young blood (3:11)
the band	life is a carnival [live] (3:57)
the band	atlantic city (4:53)
the band	twilight (3:15)
the band	when you awake (3:12)
the band	in a station (3:32)
the band	the genetic method [live] (7:48)
the band	chest fever [live] (4:54)
the band	don't wait (4:10)
the band	book faded brown (4:13)

Comment:

If the title I've chosen for this compliation is reminiscent of my last single-artist mix -- The Mighty KRIM -- that might be no coincidence. The Band and King Crimson have several salient points in common: Both began their careers with astonishingly creative debut albums in the late '60s (Music from Big Pink (1968) and In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) respectively); both were shockingly broken up by their perhaps overly-controlling lead guitarists / main writers (Robbie Robertson and Robert Fripp) in the mid-'70s, despite the protests of their other members; and both were eventually reinstated with new members in the '80s. Both of them, also, were by the mid-to-late '70s considered quite unexciting rock bands, exemplars of rock excess just waiting to be swept away. As a matter of fact, both King Crimson and The Band loved to focus on craft; and in The Band's American career that nearly exactly parallels that of King Crimson and many other British art rock bands, one can see something of the same impulses reflected in a very different cultural environment. Listen to Garth Hudson's nearly eight-minute live organ solo "The Genetic Method" from the live Rock of Ages (1972), and tell me there wouldn't have been a place for him in The Moody Blues.I've highlighted some off-center tracks here in this Band compilation, hopefully to enhance a sense of just how wide-ranging this ensemble truly was. "Jupiter Hollow", from Northern Lights - Southern Cross (1975), is far and away the strangest Band track ever, featuring two drummers plus drum machine, two separate types of electronic keyboards and no guitar, and lyrics that concern themselves with Greek mythology, time machines, and madness in a way that clearly makes dyed-in-the-wool Arkansas country-boy singer Levon Helm highly uncomfortable singing them. Robertson never aligned himself more with the British prog contingent; I'd actually love to hear Jon Anderson singing this, and even in its current form I'm suitably impressed with its daring.Pianist / lead singer Richard Manuel, who would eventually commit suicide in 1986, always looks somewhat uncomfortable in his own skin in Band photos, and his solo composition "In A Station", from Big Pink, at times tabbed for its "Can't we have something to FEEL?" lyric, puts all other aching ballads to shame in getting my vote for the best Band song of all time, as well as for being criminally neglected in the history of classic rock. Its successor is "Sleeping", this time cowritten with Robertson, only one iota less beautiful and far and away the best track on 1970's Stage Fright; the fact that this is the ONLY Stage Fright track that Robertson failed to include for his recent five-disc Band box set smacks of a practical rewrite of history. NLSC's "Hobo Jungle" completes this trilogy, this time written completely by Robertson and with more of a story element than ever before, but still sung by Manuel as if nothing had ever changed.I've also included five tracks from the Band's glorious return to the studio in the '90s. Their final album, 1998's Jubilation, from which I've taken three tracks, is the work of a gloriously released ensemble, now completely out of the peevish Robertson's shadow and free to work on their own; outside of their debut it's my favorite Band album. Most of the tracks on their '90s albums were covers of some sort or another -- though so is this collection's opener, as solid a Big Pink track as there ever was -- but on "Don't Wait", the no-nonsense Levon Helm finally finds his own spiritual voice. "I've known high times," he sings, "more than once / Now I stick strictly to the honky-tonks. / I've known danger, and I've known defeat; / I've seen whole generations fall asleep." It's a miracle that this track exists. If they make music like this, any ancient rock bands had better be free to reform as many times as they want.

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