Discography / Moondog Matinee
Moondog Matinee
Released October 1973 on Capitol Records. Self-produced, recorded at Bearsville Studios between March and June 1973. An album of covers only, made because the group had largely stopped being able to write new songs together. The full story is covered in Rock of Ages & Moondog Matinee (1972–1973); this page covers the record itself.
Track listing
| Side | Track | Original artist |
|---|---|---|
| A | Ain't Got No Home | Clarence "Frogman" Henry |
| A | Holy Cow | Lee Dorsey (written by Allen Toussaint) |
| A | Share Your Love (With Me) | Bobby "Blue" Bland |
| A | Mystery Train | Junior Parker, popularized by Elvis Presley |
| A | The Third Man Theme | Anton Karas (instrumental) |
| B | The Promised Land | Chuck Berry |
| B | The Great Pretender | The Platters |
| B | I'm Ready | Fats Domino |
| B | Saved | LaVern Baker |
| B | A Change Is Gonna Come | Sam Cooke |
No original compositions appear on the album, a first for the group. Of the ten songs, only "Share Your Love (With Me)" had actually been part of the group's old bar-band repertoire from their Levon and the Hawks days, despite the album's title referencing that era.
Personnel
- Rick Danko: bass, vocals
- Levon Helm: drums, vocals
- Garth Hudson: organ, piano, saxophone
- Richard Manuel: piano, vocals
- Robbie Robertson: guitar
Chart performance
Peaked at No. 28 on the Billboard 200, down from Cahoots' No. 21 and well below Rock of Ages' No. 6 the previous year.
Critical standing
Reviews split roughly down the middle. Robert Christgau gave it a B-plus, calling it an uncommonly well-selected and well-performed batch of oldies. AllMusic rated it a B, calling it entertaining but inessential, a stopgap while Robertson worked on new material. Richard Manuel's vocal on "A Change Is Gonna Come" and Danko's on "Holy Cow" are generally singled out as the record's strongest individual performances.
Notes
The title combines two references: "Moondog" from Alan Freed's Cleveland radio show Moondog's Rock 'n' Roll Party, and "Matinee" from the afternoon shows the Hawks used to play for teenage audiences in Toronto a decade earlier. On "Ain't Got No Home," Hudson rigged a hose from a talk box so Helm could sing through it, an improvised vocoder effect years ahead of when the technique became common in rock and funk production.