50 years on---the brilliance of The Band and their astounding debut album.

@slaw, sorry for what Steve? No apology necessary, everything you said is fine by me! I agree about $30 being too much for an "RL" pressing of the brown LP (let alone $60!); I’ve had original UK pressings of both MFBP and the brown album since the late 60’s, and recently went looking for USA "RL" pressings (after reading a comment about them by you, as a matter of fact), and found a Mint Minus copy of each on ebay awhile back for ten bucks apiece. You have to know what to look for in LP listings (there is no substitute for experience), and be patient enough to wait for really clean copies to pop up. But I think the $30 n80 paid was for a new Mobile Fidelity pressing, which is a fine price, and money well spent.

@N80, sorry for your confusion over which album is which. Music From Big Pink is the album with cover art painted (poorly ;-) by Dylan, and a photograph on the rear cover of the Big Pink house in Saugerties, NY. The brown album has an almost-sepia-toned photograph of The Band taken outside on it’s front cover. Both albums are imo excellent (to put it mildly), but very different. The brown album is easily digestible on first listen, being not so austere as MFBP. The brown has an "organic" sound---lots of acoustic instruments, and a "down home" recorded sound quality, no studio effects. MFBP was recorded in pro studios in NYC and L.A., the brown album recorded by producer John Simon on a 4-track recorder rented from Capitol Records, done in the pool cabana of a house The Band rented in L.A. They stayed in the house, and went out to the cabana every day to record, set up in a circle facing each other (as they had done in the MFBP sessions, after talking the engineers into the idea). Here’s something else to know about both albums: the singing was recorded simultaneously with the instruments, not over-dubbed later. VERY few bands are capable of doing that.

Don’t fret n80, your experience is part of the LP learning curve! For us older guys who already had LP collections before the CD was introduced, learning about all the different pressings of an LP, and the sonic differences imbedded in their grooves, was part of our evolution as music lovers with an audiophile bent. A good source for that kind of information is Michael Fremer’s Analog Planet, and mastering engineer Steve Hoffman’s website.

If you are interested in getting CD’s of the first two Band albums (as well as the 3rd and 4th, which are also well worth owning), Mobile Fidelity offers them on SACD as well as LP. MFBP and the 2nd album were remastered by Capitol Records in the 1990’s with bonus tracks of alternate takes, mixes, etc. Not essential, but if you can find them cheap they are of interest.

One more point to be made about Music From Big Pink vs. the brown album: the Americana music movement, rightfully said to be heavily influenced (if not actually created by) by The Band, takes it's source material, sound, and style from the brown album (and The Basement Tapes) much more than from Music From Big Pink. MFBP was nothing less than revolutionary upon it's release in 1968, actually changing the course of Pop music for a great number of songwriters, singers, and musicians (less so for the general public, who at the time were just being introduced to Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, ELP, etc.). But the songwriting, singing, and musicianship on that album are quite impossible to emulate, unlike the brown album (very difficult, but not impossible ;-). I hear the influence of the brown in the music of a lot of my current favorite artists, but very little of MFBP. It really is on a pedestal by itself. I am in absolute awe each and every time I play and hear it, and still can barely believe it exists. I cherish it beyond my ability to express in words.

So true n80. 1968 was truly a landmark year, with an abnormal number of either really great or highly influential (or both!) albums. Two Byrds albums (The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Sweetheart Of The Rodeo) came out that year!

1968 saw the debut albums of Blood, Sweat & Tears (the Al Kooper version), The Electric Flag, Tiny Tim, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Steve Miller Band, Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Randy Newman (a really great album), Credence Clearwater Revival, The Jeff Beck Group, Blue Cheer (oy ;-), Three Dog Night, Jethro Tull, Dillard & Clark, Nazz, Traffic, George Harrison (Wonderwall Music), John Lennon & Yoko Ono (double oy), Neil Young, James Taylor, and Spirit. Wow.

n80, is the label lime green? 1969 is only one year removed from the album's 1968 release, which had the old "rainbow" Capitol label. What leads you to believe your copy is a "repress"? I'm not sure the album sold enough in a year to need a second pressing; that would of course be dependent on how many copies Capitol initially pressed. I have seen covers bearing the "Gold Album" emblem, but that took years to achieve, I believe. The 2nd album sold better initially than did MFBP, achieving higher Billboard and Cashbox chart positions.

MFBP was released when Hendrix, Cream, The Who, and the other "guitar bands" dominated most Rock listeners musical tastes and diets, and sounded very odd, not at all familiar or "friendly". Levon Helm recounted in his autobiography that when they took the stage at Woodstock (following, of all people, Ten Years After, a band that bludgeoned Blues music), The Band were concerned they might come off sounding like, as he put it, "choir boys". Before breaking into their first song, Levon said to the audience "Hope ya'll like Country music".