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Waiting For The Punchline

On a great night, the Band grab and mesmerize, so that neither your eyes nor your thoughts can be on anything else. It helps that they look like a society of Viennese doctors, of course, but their magic is mostly in the music — what they are playing, and how it is played.

November 1, 1972
Dave Marsh

Waiting For The Punchline

RECORDS

ROCK OF AGES

THE BAND

CAPITOL

On a great night, the Band grab and mesmerize, so that neither your eyes nor your thoughts can be on anything else. It helps that they look like a society of Viennese doctors, of course, but their magic is mostly in the music — what they are playing, and how it is played. On a great night, the Band’s competition just doesn’t exist.

But on a good night, which they have sometimes, too, a night when the Band is just competent, maybe, or when Robbie is only strangling his guitar every third or fourth song, attention wavers, as it does with a.nyone. Unless you count the few minutes, where the Organ plays its garth hudson solo, there isn’t any show to lean on. If you sit and wait for the punch line a few times, and when it comes, it doesn’t overpower you, the edge of your attention gets dispersed.

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