The Band: Rock of Ages (2LP, live) [CAPITOL]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set is remastered from the original analog tapes, on 180g vinyl in a gatefold jacket that copies the original. Rock of Ages reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200 and went gold.

This edition

• 2LP set
• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Gatefold jacket

About the album

Four Canadians and an Arkansas drummer booked a residency at New York's Academy of Music for the last week of 1971, and they wanted something special for it. Robbie Robertson asked New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint to write horn charts for a five-man brass section, and the band, Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Levon Helm, recorded four nights from December 28 through New Year's Eve.

Toussaint's horns lift "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)," "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" and "Life Is a Carnival," the song that started the whole idea. The set mixes material from their first four albums with a new original, "Get Up Jake," plus covers of Marvin Gaye's "Don't Do It" and Chuck Willis's "(I Don't Want To) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes." Garth Hudson's organ showcase "The Genetic Method" leads straight into "Chest Fever," and "The Weight" and "The Shape I'm In" sound as lived-in as ever.

It has been reissued and expanded many times since, but the original double album is the one that captured the moment. Toussaint wrote those horn charts twice after the first set vanished with his luggage at the airport, and the second draft, it must be said, came out rather well.

Also at Kops: more The Band on vinyl · browse CDN Pop / Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On Capitol, a reissue of the 1972 live album.