(2021) The Band - Cahoots (50th Anniversary Edition)  


Review:
The Band and Capitol/UMe are in Cahoots for a deluxe 50th anniversary reissue of the group’s fourth studio album. On December 10, a remixed and remastered Cahoots arrive in various formats including a Super Deluxe 2CD/BD/LP/7-inch vinyl box set, 2CD, 180-gram half-speed-mastered black vinyl, and digital download/streaming. All of these formats have been overseen by Robbie Robertson and feature a new mix of the original album by Bob Clearmountain from the original multitrack tapes. A highlight of the box set, CD, and digital iterations is Live at the Olympia Theatre, Paris, May 1971 featuring 11 songs culled from the Paris concert. Other bonus tracks include outtakes and alternates, instrumentals, and more. The campaign follows similar sets for The Band’s first three albums originally issued between 1968 and 1970: Music from Big Pink, The Band, and Stage Fright. Following sessions for Stage Fright, The Band – Garth Hudson (keyboards, accordion, horns), Levon Helm (drums, vocals, mandolin, guitar), Richard Manuel (keyboards, vocals, drums), Rick Danko (bass, vocals) and Robbie Robertson (guitar, piano, vocals) – took to the road.  After a brief sabbatical over the Christmas holiday, the Bandmates regrouped at their manager Albert Grossman’s new Bearsville Sound Studio in Bearsville, New York – just a couple of miles away from Woodstock.  But tensions ran high.  “It wasn’t a good time for us to be working together,” Helm confirmed in his memoir.  Danko told author Stephen Davis that “Richard seemed to be tired of the whole thing” and added, “Levon wasn’t that interested, either.”  For his part, Robertson admitted to historian Rob Bowman that “the unit of The Band was getting more and more dispersed and our personal and musical ties were not as tight as they once were.” Yet Robertson persevered in penning an album’s worth of new material, almost entirely by himself.  He found inspiration in cinema (pointing the way towards his future collaborations with director Martin Scorsese) as well as in the theme of extinction, or the loss of persons and objects that once held value or significance.  Cahoots was crafted and developed entirely in the studio, a first for The Band, over a period of several weeks in which the members might record for only a day or two each week. Levon, Robbie, and Rick co-wrote the most enduring Band composition on Cahoots, the funky “Life Is a Carnival.”  Robertson had the notion to enlist New Orleans great Allen Toussaint to write the horn arrangement for the song which set it apart from any of The Band’s past recordings.  “Carnival,” influenced by the Marcel Carné film Les Enfants du Paradise (1945) as well as by Robertson’s own youthful experiences, was the only single to be released off Cahoots.  It remained in The Band’s setlists through their Last Waltz sendoff.  Toussaint wasn’t the only special guest.  Then-Woodstock resident Van Morrison dropped by to co-write “4% Pantomime” with Robertson and sing the lead vocal with Manuel.  Another friend, Bob Dylan, contributed his song “When I Paint My Masterpiece” to the sessions. Cahoots arrived in stores on September 15, 1971, reaching No. 21 on the Billboard 200 to give The Band its fourth consecutive top 30 album.  Bob Clearmountain has remixed it in stereo (in standard resolution on CD 1 and the LP as well as high resolution on the Blu-ray) and in surround (DTS-Master Audio and Dolby Atmos) on the Blu-ray.  Clearmountain writes in the liner notes, “Robbie told me, ‘Just think of the original mixes as rough mixes. Pretty much don’t pay attention to the mixes themselves.'” Robertson adds, “In the beginning of these sessions, we didn’t know if we were making another Basement Tapes where nobody would hear the music or if we were actually making a real record…I told Bob, ‘There are no rules. So, every mix we do, I want to start from scratch. I don’t even want to listen to the original. I want to listen to the way we hear it now and be fearless and experimental with it.'” The first CD of the box set adds five bonus tracks including new mixes of “Endless Highway,” an alternate of “When I Make My Masterpiece,” and the studio version of Rock of Ages live single “Don’t Do It.”  Earlier mixes were included on the 2000 Capitol expanded edition.  The outtake “Bessie Smith” is reprised from that edition, and the disc is rounded out with Takes 1 and 2 of “4% Pantomime.”  All but “Bessie Smith” are included on the Blu-ray, as well. The second CD rewinds to The Band’s May-June 1971 tour of Europe, their first there since famously touring with Bob Dylan in 1966, for Live at the Olympia Theatre, Paris, May 1971.  Robbie Robertson states in the press release, “We hadn’t been back to this place since playing there with Bob Dylan, when the Paris show was a complete disaster.  We wanted so much to do a special performance for the French. We wanted a certain kind of feeling in the Olympia. When we played the show, I felt like we did it.”  The show was filmed by French media and recorded for radio, but only the second set has survived.  Still, the 11 tracks include such Band staples as “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Rag, Mama, Rag,” and “The Unfaithful Servant,” plus covers of Motown classics “Don’t Do It” (a.k.a. “Baby Don’t You Do It”) and “Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever” and Little Richard’s “Slippin’ and Slidin’.”  CD 2 also includes three previously unreleased bonus tracks:  instrumental tracks of “Life Is a Carnival” and “Volcano,” and a new, stripped-down mix of “Thinkin’ Out Loud.”





Track Listing:

CD 1: The Original Album and Bonus Tracks
01.Life Is a Carnival
02.When I Paint My Masterpiece
03.Last of the Blacksmiths
04.Where Do We Go from Here?
05.4% Pantomime
06.Shoot Out in Chinatown
07.The Moon Struck One
08.Thinkin’ Out Loud
09.Smoke Signal
10.Volcano
11.The River Hymn
Bonus Tracks
12.Endless Highway (Early Studio Take, 2021 Mix)
13.When I Paint My Masterpiece (Alternate Take, 2021 Mix)
14.4% Pantomime (Takes 1 & 2)
15.Don’t Do It (Outtake – Studio Version, 2021 Mix)
16.Bessie Smith (Outtake)

CD 2: Live at The Olympia Theatre, Paris, May 1971
01.The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show
02.We Can Talk
03.Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever
04.The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
05.Across The Great Divide
06.The Unfaithful Servant
07.Don’t Do It
08.The Genetic Method
09.Chest Fever
10.Rag Mama Rag
11.Slippin’ And Slidin’
Bonus Tracks
12.Life Is A Carnival (Instrumental)
13.Volcano (Instrumental)
14.Thinkin’ Out Loud (Stripped Down Mix)


Media Report:
Genre: country-rock
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits