About

The soundtrack to our family

I grew up in Sydney, Australia, in a house where music was rarely treated as background noise.

My family moved quite a few times when I was young, and one of the first things we would do in a new house was put on a record or CD. Quite often, it was The Best of The Band. While boxes were being opened and a new place was slowly becoming home, The Band would be playing.

Music was central to family life. In summer, we would sit outside on the balcony while my parents had a glass of wine and played records late into the evening. In winter, we would sit near the fire and work our way through CDs.

The Band was part of that soundtrack, alongside artists such as the Traveling Wilburys, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan.

The stories behind the songs

My dad did more than introduce me to the music. He introduced me to the lives and memories attached to it.

While we listened, he would tell stories about being a teenager, moving out of home, the friends he listened to these records with and the experiences that certain songs brought back.

Some of those friends remained part of his life. Others had drifted away or passed away. The music gave him a way to explain a period of his life that I had never seen for myself.

Those evenings taught me that a record is rarely only a record. It can carry people, places and entire periods of your life inside it.

Dad died several years ago, and the music has taken on another meaning since then. Listening to the artists he loved is one of the ways I still feel connected to him and to the time we spent together.

Creating websites about this music is also a way of carrying something forward. These artists were monumentally important to my dad. Preserving their stories and introducing their work to another generation feels like a continuation of what he did for me.

Finding my own way back

Like a lot of teenagers, I eventually went looking for music that felt entirely my own.

I explored newer rock and roll, punk and plenty of other artists that sounded very different from the records my parents played. But I kept finding my way back to The Band.

Their music felt timeless. It was familiar without feeling old, and it carried a sense of comfort that was difficult to find elsewhere.

I remember being unwell as a teenager and loading my six-disc CD player with music before lying down to rest. One of the albums I chose was a Band greatest-hits collection. Even then, their music was something I instinctively reached for when I wanted to feel grounded.

The performance that stayed with me

The Last Waltz version of "The Weight," performed with the Staple Singers, remains one of the most powerful pieces of music I have ever heard.

There is something beautiful, painful and haunting in those voices. You can hear the weight of experience in the way the song is performed.

When I first watched it, the concert had already taken place many years earlier. I remember looking at the performers and thinking about the fact that this moment had already passed. Some of the people on the screen might no longer have been alive, yet the emotion of the performance was still completely present.

It still gives me goosebumps.

Other songs reveal completely different sides of the group. "Up on Cripple Creek" feels almost like a party building towards a release. "The Shape I'm In" is a genuine rush of energy. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" creates an entire world through its characters, atmosphere and sense of history.

That range is part of what makes exploring The Band so rewarding.

More than five musicians on a record cover

One of the aims of this site is to show that The Band's importance extends well beyond their best-known albums and songs.

They were five distinctive musicians whose individual contributions were essential to the whole. They could exchange lead vocals, change instruments and support one another without losing the identity of the group.

Levon Helm was not simply the drummer keeping time behind the singers. His voice, playing and personality were central to the sound of The Band. The same is true, in different ways, of Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson.

Their work with Bob Dylan is another major part of the story.

Dylan's "Forever Young" is a favourite example. Both the slower and faster versions feature the members of The Band, and each creates a completely different feeling. One is reflective and almost unbearably poignant. The other feels celebratory and alive.

It may be a Bob Dylan song, but The Band's presence is unmistakable.

Their ability to shape the music of other artists is just as fascinating as the records released under their own name.

Why I created this site

Every member of The Band has now passed away. The performances, recordings, photographs and stories are what remain.

Best of the Band is my attempt to bring those things together in one place.

I want it to be somewhere a new listener can discover why this group mattered, but also somewhere an established fan can find details about the albums, sessions, musicians and collaborations that are easily overlooked.

The Band should not be remembered as a group with only a few familiar songs. Their history stretches through rock and roll, blues, country, folk and the development of what would later be called Americana. Their influence can be heard in their own recordings, in their work with Dylan and in generations of artists who followed them.

For me, this site is about music, history and musicianship. But it is also personal.

It is about the records that made unfamiliar houses feel like home. It is about evenings on the balcony listening to my dad's stories. And it is about making sure the music that connected one generation of my family can continue to reach the next.

Whether you have known these songs for decades or have only just discovered "The Weight," I hope you find something here that encourages you to listen more closely.