I don't know about you but what kind of review is that supposed to
be? Sure it is all well and good to show off a fancy vocabulary and
use sweeping statements to describe the Band's music, for example "it
is music whose ersatz nature, conservatism and ill-disguised fakery
attains a crushing critical mass of boredom." Wow, he must have been
up all night in with his Thesaurus coming up with that little gem. He
has obviously done his homework and knows enough about the Band and
their influences to write such an authoritative review on their
anthology (yeah, right!). In short I would expect nothing more than
this kind of ill-considered, piss-poor rambling from a burnt-out hack
who knows next to nothing about The Band or their music and writes
for a liberal, anti-American, piece of shit newspaper like the
Guardian. What does everyone else think?

--- In thebandfanclub@yahoogroups.com, roaringblind <no_reply@y...>
wrote:
> Good to see we're still busy! Caught this review from The Guardian.
> Any views? Anyone out there? Anyone other than me got the box set?
>
>
>
> The Band, A Musical History
>
> (EMI)
>
> David Peschek
> Friday September 23, 2005
> The Guardian
> If ever there was an argument for the occasional pernicious evil of
> the CD reissue, this five-disc-plus-DVD box is it. A Musical
History
> is certainly comprehensive: it runs from the Band's early backing-
> band days - first for Ronnie Hawkins, then the newly electric
Dylan -
> through seven albums that document their evolution into trad-rock
> behemoths. And, for completists otherwise at a loose end, it
> includes 37 unreleased tracks.
>
> Critical consensus has it that this is seminal and hugely important
> music. But it's clear - especially over five CDs - that it is music
> whose ersatz nature, conservatism and ill-disguised fakery attains
a
> crushing critical mass of boredom. Creating a plodding, hybrid
> Americana from borrowed blues and country, the Band have squatted
> over a certain kind of North American music ever since their
heyday.
> But painfully evident in their cod-soulful straining for gravitas
is
> the lack of the vitality of their influences, smothered as it is by
> the deadening weight of heritage. And does anyone need to hear The
> Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down ever again?