Stage Fright, the Band's third album, sounded on its surface like the group's first two releases, Music from Big Pink and The Band, employing the same dense arrangements with their mixture of a deep bottom formed by drummer Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko, penetrating guitar work by Robbie Robertson, and the varied keyboard work of pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson, with Helm, Danko, and Manuel's vocals on top. But the songs this time around were far more personal, and, despite a nominal complacency, quite ...
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Stage Fright, the Band's third album, sounded on its surface like the group's first two releases, Music from Big Pink and The Band, employing the same dense arrangements with their mixture of a deep bottom formed by drummer Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko, penetrating guitar work by Robbie Robertson, and the varied keyboard work of pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson, with Helm, Danko, and Manuel's vocals on top. But the songs this time around were far more personal, and, despite a nominal complacency, quite troubling. Only "All La Glory," Robertson's song about the birth of his daughter, was fully positive. "Strawberry Wine" and "Sleeping" were celebrations of indolence, while "Time to Kill," as its title implied, revealed boredom while claiming romantic contentment. Several of the album's later songs seemed to be metaphors for trouble the group was encountering, with "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show" commenting on the falseness of show business, "Daniel and the Sacred Harp" worrying about a loss of integrity, and the title song talking about the pitfalls of fortune and fame. "The Shape I'm In" was perhaps the album's most blatant statement of panic. The Band were widely acclaimed after their first two albums; Stage Fright seemed to be the group's alarmed response, which made it their most nakedly confessional. It was certainly different from their previous work, which had tended toward story-songs set in earlier times, but it was hardly less compelling for that. [The 50th anniversary edition of the Band's Stage Fright offers an alternate version of the 1971 LP along with a host of live outtakes, some taken from a Calgary hotel room guitar pull in 1970, most captured at a concert at Royal Albert Hall in June 1971. The new Bob Clearmountain remix and resequencing of the album is less dramatic than it first appears: the sides are swapped and shuffled, so the record opens with "The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show" and closes with "Sleeping," the new track listing helping draw attention to the individual songs, which are, by and large, quite strong. A couple of alternate mixes follow -- versions of "Strawberry Wine" and "Sleeping" that did not appear on the 2000 CD expansion -- then the deluxe edition dives into a set of rough-hewn recordings from a hotel room. These fall somewhere between jam sessions and rehearsals, which is their charm: it's fun to hear the tentative harmonies on a cover of Huey Piano Smith's "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu" and the relaxed groove on Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me." The Band sound much bolder on the live show that pulls nearly equally from their first three albums, adding covers of the Motown chestnuts "Loving You (Is Sweeter Than Ever)" and "Don't Do It." All told, this may be the best released representation of the Band as road warriors: they're vigorous and vital, giving even the softer tunes a bit of an edge.] ~ William Ruhlmann & Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
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