After a wait of too many years, MotD is happy to finally feature a tune by a legendary band whose name likely created more than a few promotion challenges: “After many tours of duty backing the rockabilly legend Ronnie Hawkins and providing the muscle behind Bob Dylan’s move towards electric rock, the four Canadians and one Arkansan comprising the Band were pedigreed to a legendary extent even before making their first album,” (Pitchfork). “By the time they issued the twinned masterpieces Music From Big Pink in 1968 and The Band in 1969, their polymathic command of multiple genres, and self-conscious embrace of traditional American folk, country, bluegrass, and zydeco had established them as the thinking fan’s alternative to the diminishing returns of psychedelia and the counterculture … For critics, audiences and no-lesser peers than the Beatles, they had come to represent authenticity personified. So. How do you follow that up?
The answer came in the form of Stage Fright (1970), a charming, loose-limbed collection that elides the chore of living up to the previous records by basically not even trying. If their first two LPs inspired the Beatles and Stones to return to basics, Stage Fright connotes an entirely different sphere of influence: it’s a nonpareil boogie album, whose in-the-pocket playing establishes the Band as the equal of groovemaster peers like Booker T. and the Meters and sets a predicate for followers like Little Feat and NRBQ … What Stage Fright lacks in history lessons it makes up for in palpable joy. They would never seem so happy again.”
The album’s title track shows off the group’s unique songwriting sense; at times it’s often difficult to predict what might be coming next in terms of either overall form or harmonic progressions. G major holds sway overall, but between 1:47 and 2:41, there’s a clear shift in emphasis to the tune’s relative minor, E minor.
