Bob Dylan/The Band-Before The Flood (1974)

 

Artist: Bob Dylan/The Band

Title: Before The Flood

Label: Asylum

Format: 2LP

Cat #: AB-201

Year of Release: 1974

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1974 gatefold

Listed Condition: G/G

Sell Date: 4/4/21

Sell Price: $8.99

Discogs Last Sold: 3/30/21 VG+/F $14.25

Low: $5.00 VG/VG

Median: $14.99

Average: $16.84

High: $69.00 M/VG+ sealed

Current low price: $9.64 VG/G

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 37

Have/Want: 5427/577

Where Sold: Vallejo, CA

Time it took to sell: 5 years

Where and When Bought: my grandmother bought it new for me in Norwich CT around 1975 or 6

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go: No 

When I was writing about Real Live, it seemed like I dismissed Before The Flood with a high hand due to  newfound arena vocal bombast in early '74.  I couldn't even get the name right, conflating it with the Steeleye Span album Below The Salt my parents had in their small collection.   I did this despite this having my own copy since the mid 70's, long before Columbia took over the pressing from Asylum.   

Below The Flood, excuse me BEFORE The Flood, isn't really bombast, but vocal assertion of the Band.  It's rock n' roll all the way to hell before Kiss took over that department.  This vocal era matured and peaked on the Rolling Thunder tour.  What makes this important is the ensemble.  

The Band are co-headliners as much as they can be, certainly more than they were in 1966.  Individual Judas-jeerers are replaced with an adoring faceless arena roar and the unit blasts it's way into your heart.   Garth Hudson is the layer of note here.  We open with the Feb LA Forum performance of "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine."  Bob alternates between sarcastic and angry, seemingly not wanting to EVER wallow anywhere Vegas territory.  No way.  No how.  In this world, The Band take a victory lap years before The Last Waltz for a job well done.

The '74 approach works well with his ballads: "Lay Lady Lay" and "It Ain't Me Babe" take on a new passion.  A lacerated sky appears on the horizon, but the tracks are still bloodless.  My introduction to The Band over Side Two insured I would always know "Up On Cripple Creek" and "Stage Fright."  I might have even known this version of "I Shall Be Released" first,  as I had this before I got Greatest Hits Vol. II on cassette sometime shortly after.  

"That's an expensive record!" said my grandmother, but didn't succumb to her desire to refuse my desire to pick this two record set in her local mall.   My mother would probably make some sort of argument that I know all those songs and the cost was outrageous and talk me down to another, cheaper album.   "David you already have all these songs, don't you want something a little more current?" I can hear her saying, trying to talk me out of a more than $10 record in 70's money.

I got this in the mid-70's before I briefly switched to cassettes in '76/7 to attempt completion of the Dylan records not passed down to me.  I still have a caseless tape of the Basement Tapes in a bag in storage somewhere.  Before The Flood was bought soon enough to make the cut to play on my parents new turntable since the old mono records got trashed by pre-school me and they didn't want to ruin the new needle.  I remember torturing a friend that wanted to hear Saturday Night Fever by deciding we were going to listen to my "turntable approved" albums in order of purchase as we played Checkers or Monopoly or whatever board games 7 year olds play after they tired of playing in the snow while wet boots are cast aside and hot chocolate made.  That childhood friend did not appreciate the "rock" aesthetic of Live Bob 1974 with The Band.  Frankly I didn't want to hear it either at the time, but we had a day to kill and I didn't always do things to please people.

Giving this a second listen this week on my desktop in headphones in the same methodical way as I write this (I think an SACD version I bought got ripped somewhere down the line), the Band arrangements jump out at see you.  They are clearly a defined entity at this point in their timeline.  

This one is a "aesthetic" listen for me, not a listen for pleasure.  Listens were spawned by CD reissue purchases over decades but after the 70’s I can’t recall pulling it to play it start to finish.  I always could handle a 90+ minute listen, but sometimes boredom is a legit emotion with long forms.  A creeping slight boredom that comes from a relentless assault of material that could never be topped in it's original form. Not the full on boredom I had as an 8 year old watching The Last Waltz waiting seemingly an eternity for Bob to come on.  I felt that feeling more with The Basement Tapes cassette, but that was a different double length digestion and grew on me in later years to the top of the tier. I certainly never felt this feeling with the 60’s albums passed down either folk or electric.  

That doesn't mean I don't like all of Before The Flood, or love some of it.  It does mean I might have to call it a cut below the A list.  I've been going back and forth on A and A- for a half hour.  No wonder Christgau gave up this system for half the records he reviews.  Distilling everything into one or two characters is it’s own art form, often greater than the words of reasoning of how you got there.

That said, after the weight of "The Weight" closes out The Band, you can't really argue how Side 4 plays out. Rolling and Blowing have a new found weight all their own and a new life is given to those warhorses.

I never really thought about "arrangement" as a kid or how attempting radically different versions can keep the entertainer entertained.  Yes, I understood it is it's own record, but I didn't really think about WHY.  The subliminal knowledge of knowing this album nearly a lifetime didn't fully alter how I listen to this today.

It just WAS.