Moondog Matinee

Moondog Matinee
Studio album by
the Band
ReleasedOctober 15, 1973
RecordedMarch–June 1973
Studio
GenreRock
Length35:09
LabelCapitol
ProducerThe Band
The Band chronology
Rock of Ages
(1972) 		Moondog Matinee
(1973) 		Planet Waves
(1974)
Reissue cover
Australian alternate cover
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
Christgau's Record GuideB+[2]
DownBeat[3]
Entertainment WeeklyB+[4]
MusicHound5/5[5]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[6]
Q Magazine[7]

Moondog Matinee is the fifth studio album by Canadian/American rock group the Band, released in 1973. It consists entirely of cover material reflecting the group's love of R&B and blues music, with one exception in their interpretation of the theme from the film The Third Man.

In a 2002 interview, Levon Helm described the reasoning for recording an album of covers: "That was all we could do at the time. We couldn't get along—we all knew that fairness was a bunch of shit. We all knew we were getting screwed, so we couldn't sit down and create no more music. 'Up on Cripple Creek' and all that stuff was over—all that collaboration was over, and that type of song was all we could do."[8]

The original idea had been to replicate the group's setlists of the mid-'60s when they had been known as Levon and the Hawks, playing clubs throughout Canada and the US. Of the ten tracks, only one, "Share Your Love (With Me)" had been performed by the group in the mid-'60s. The rest were merely tracks the group admired, two of them, "Holy Cow" and "A Change Is Gonna Come", chronologically coming after the group's club days.

Rhapsody praised the album, calling it one of its favorite cover albums.[9] John Bauldie in Q Magazine called the re-issued album 'funny, affectionate and immaculately polished' in 1991.[7]

  1. ^ link
  2. ^ Christgau, Robert (1981). "Consumer Guide '70s: B". Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 089919026X. Retrieved February 21, 2019.
  3. ^ "The Band: Moondog Matinee". DownBeat. October 2001. p. 66.
  4. ^ "The Band: Moondog Matinee". Entertainment Weekly. May 25, 2001. p. 81.
  5. ^ Graff, Gary; Durchholz, Daniel, eds. (1999). MusicHound Rock: The Essential Album Guide. Farmington Hills, MI: Visible Ink Press. p. 72. ISBN 1-57859-061-2.
  6. ^ Brackett, Nathan, with Hoard, Christian (eds) (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th edn). New York, NY: Fireside. p. 42. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  7. ^ a b Bauldie, John (5 March 1991). "Stories". Q Magazine. Vol. 84. p. 10.
  8. ^ Lopate, Mitch. "He Shall Be Levon...: The Band's Levon Helm Is Rocking Harder Than Ever With The Barnburners", GRITZ magazine, Fall 2002.
  9. ^ Rhapsody’s Favorite Covers Albums retrieved 01-08-10 Archived 2010-07-31 at the Wayback Machine.