Stage Fright, the Band's third album, sounded on its surface like the group's first two releases, Music from Big Pink and The Band, employing the same dense arrangements with their mixture of a deep bottom formed by drummer Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko, penetrating guitar work by Robbie Robertson, and the varied keyboard work of pianist Richard Manuel and organist Garth Hudson, with Helm, Danko, and Manuel's vocals on top. But the songs this time around were far more personal, and, despite a nominal complacency, quite troubling. Only "All La Glory," Robertson's song about the birth of his daughter, was fully positive.

The Band's first album, Music from Big Pink, seemed to come out of nowhere, with its ramshackle musical blend and songs of rural tragedy. The Band, the group's second album, was a more deliberate and even more accomplished effort, partially because the players had become a more cohesive unit, and partially because guitarist Robbie Robertson had taken over the songwriting, writing or co-writing all 12 songs. Though a Canadian, Robertson focused on a series of American archetypes from the union worker in "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)" and the retired sailor in "Rockin' Chair" to, most famously, the Confederate Civil War observer Virgil Cane in "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."

In an era where it's not uncommon for a superstar act to wait three or four years between releases, it's astonishing to realize that Carole King wrote and recorded a strong follow-up to 1971's bazillion-selling "Tapestry" that was released before the year was up! "Music" was a big commercial success, but anything would pale next to the ecstatic commercial response to "Tapestry", which was still high in the charts when this follow-up was released. The generically-titled "Music" didn't spawn any hits as big as "It's Too Late" or "So Far Away," but with several decades' hindsight, it's clear that "Tapestry" was no fluke; in its more low-key way, "Music" is every bit as fine an album.
Highlights include two jazz-tinged tracks, "Brother Brother" and the waltz-time title track, which features a remarkable saxophone solo by Curtis Amy…

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. 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.

Following the success of Sundown, Gordon Lightfoot continued his success by releasing a greatest-hits compilation. A double album (now a single CD), it contained the most popular songs from his Warner Bros. years on disc two, and he re-recorded many of his early songs for side one of record one. Although not as good, perhaps, as the originals, this did bring them up to date with his current sound style. Just about all the favorites are here (except "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which hadn't been recorded yet when this set was put together and appears on Lightfoot's second volume of Gord's Gold), making this a good general overview of a strong talent. When Warner transferred the double LP to CD, "Affair on 8th Avenue" was dropped from the program to make the set fit on a single disc. Randy Newman arranged the orchestration on "Minstrel of the Dawn," by the way.

The first (but certainly not the last) of the compilations issued in the wake of T. Rex's U.K. chart breakthrough, Bolan Boogie was also many of the band's new fans' first chance to acquaint themselves with all that Marc Bolan had done in the past – a point which the compilers certainly kept in mind. The catalog at their disposal was vast, reaching back to the acoustic birth of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Sensibly, however, Bolan Boogie concentrates on the material that lived up its title – aside from one cut drawn from 1969's Unicorn, the entire album dated from the arrival of Mickey Finn, and the attendant headlong dive into electricity launched by the Beard of Stars album, and culminating with the epochal Electric Warrior album. Some incontrovertible classics emerge.