Band Last Waltz CD

This 4-CD box set of THE LAST WALTZ includes the complete original album, 24 tracks of previously unreleased rehearsals, performances from the show, film, and studio demo tracks. Includes an 80-page booklet.
The Band: Robbie Robertson (vocals, guitar, piano); Richard Manuel (vocals, dobro, keyboards, drums); Levon Helm (vocals, mandolin, drums); Rick Danko (vocals, violin, bass); Garth Hudson (accordion, soprano & tenor saxophones, horns, piano, electric piano, organ, synthesizer).
Additional personnel includes: Neil Young (vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica); Joni Mitchell (vocals, acoustic guitar); Dr. John (vocals, guitar, piano, conga); Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Roebuck "Pops" Staples (vocals, guitar); Paul Butterfield (vocals, harmonica); Mavis Staples, Ronnie Hawkins, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Bobby Charles (vocals); Stephen Stills, Ron Wood (guitar); Joe "Pinetop" Perkins (piano); Ringo Starr (drums).
Producers include: Robbie Robertson, Rob Fraboni, John Simon.
Reissue producer: Robbie Robertson.
Recorded at Winterland Arena, San Franciso, California; MGM, Culver City, California; Shangri La, Malibu, California; Village Recorders, Los Angeles, California in 1976. Originally released on Warner Brothers (3146). Includes liner notes by Robbie Robertson and David Fricke.
"The road was our school. It gave us a sense of survival; it taught us everything we know and out of respect, we don't want to drive it into the ground...or maybe it's just superstition but the road has taken a lot of the great ones. It's a goddam impossible way of life" - Robbie Robertson, from the movie The Last Waltz, quoted in the box set. Perhaps Robertson's greatest gift is how he can spin a myth, making the mundane into majestic fables. Outside of his songs, his greatest achievement in myth-making was The Last Waltz, where he doesn't necessarily overstate the amount of time the Band spent on the road, but he sure tried to make it all seem like something special, both in amount of time they spent on the road and what they've accomplished. And while he was right on the latter -- the Band did change the course of music, leaving behind records that still sound gloriously rich and out of time -- the former is a bit of a stretch since not only were the rest of the Band not exactly ready to stop touring (they would later reunite without him), it ignores the basic fact that touring is what working musicians do. They make music, they play for audiences, they keep rolling throughout the years, and many of the artists invited to participate in the Band's farewell concert -- Ronnie Hawkins, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Neil Young, the Staple Singers, Emmylou Harris, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan, who legendarily launched a neverending tour in the '80s -- lived the life of a working musician, performing live well past 50. The Band was cut from the same cloth as this, but Robertson realized that the group wasn't doing itself any good by staying on the road -- and the accompanying Martin Scorsese-directed film does suggest that the Band was indulging itself way too much -- and that it was the perfect time to draw the curtain on the Band with a lavish concert that turned their entire career into a burnished myth, nearly as ancient and romantic as photographs from the Civil War.
Hence, The Last Waltz, a farewell concert on Thanksgiving 1976 promoted by Bill Graham and turned into a timeless documentary by Scorsese, was released as a triple-album set in 1978 and finally reissued as a four-disc box set by Rhino in 2002, on its near-25th anniversary (it's somewhere between 24 and 26, depending if you're counting performance or release, so 25 is a good compromise). Many people call this the greatest rock movie and greatest live performance of all time. They're wrong. It could be argued that the film is among the greatest rock films -- convincingly so, actually -- but the music amplifies not just what was great about the Band, bEntertainment Weekly (4/19/02, pp.72-73) - "Time hasn't diminished The Band's uniqueness or mythic mystery..." - Rating: A
Q (May 2002, p.127) - 4 out of 5 stars - "...Ever conscious of their place in history, [The Band] went out in style....full of invention, twists and...moments of other-worldly genius..."
Mojo (Publisher) (1/03, p.73) - Ranked #3 in Mojo's "Best Box Sets & Compilations of 2002"
Mojo (Publisher) (5/02, p.117) - "...The original highlights are highlights still: Danko's heartrending solo turn on 'It Makes No Difference', big Ron's yelping 'big time, Bill, big time' turn on the Diddley-stompin' 'Who Do You Love'; the soulful Staples on the after-the-fact studio version of 'The Weight'..."