The Band - Wembley Stadium, London, Britain, 9-14-1974

Here's a concert that was brought to my attention by musical associate MZ. Apparently, this has been kicking around on the Internet for years (and you can even find video of it on YouTube), but it passed my attention. There isn't much live music with high sound quality for the Band between about 1971 and their final concert, the Last Waltz, in late 1976, so this helps fill that gap.

This concert was a pretty big deal, mainly because of the headlining act, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (CSNY). This was CSNY's sole concert in Europe for their big 1974 reunion tour. Furthermore, the opening acts were pretty great as well, with Jesse Colin Young, the Band, and Joni Mitchell. Good audio exists for the CSNY set, but it wasn't a good one musically, as they were too high on drugs and were having increasing ego clashes near the end of their tour. I've posted a CSNY concert from only a few days earlier in New York that's much better. I've never seen any sign of the Jesse Colin Young or Joni Mitchell sets existing with high quality, but for some reason the Band one does, so here it is.

The Band was already in a looking back mode in 1974. Earlier in the year, they went on a long concert tour with Bob Dylan, mostly going over the great music they did together back in the 1960s. There are some excellent sounding recordings from that tour, but the Band mostly backed Dylan on his songs and did relatively few of their own. For this show, they mostly played songs from their first three albums, "Music from Big Pink," "The Band," and "Stage Fright." Their most recent album, "Moondog Matinee," came out a year earlier and was an all-covers album. They did only one from that, "Mystery Train." But they also did a cover, "Hard Times (The Slop)" that they apparently never recorded in the studio. Otherwise, it was pretty much all classic originals, one after another.

The sound quality is excellent, since this is a soundboard, augmented by a second source. There's not much audience cheering at the end of songs (even though they played a huge stadium venue here), but that happens sometimes with soundboards. There's also basically no banter between songs, but I think they just weren't an act that talked much.

This concert is an hour and 16 minutes long.

01 Introduction (Band)
02 Hard Times [The Slop] (Band)
03 Just Another Whistle Stop (Band)
04 Stage Fright (Band)
05 The Weight (Band)
06 The Shape I'm In (Band)
07 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Band)
08 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down (Band)
09 Across the Great Divide (Band)
10 Endless Highway (Band)
11 Smoke Signal (Band)
12 I Shall Be Released (Band)
13 The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show (Band)
14 Mystery Train (Band)
15 The Genetic Method - Chest Fever (Band)
16 Up on Cripple Creek (Band)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15896062/TBnd_1974_WemblyStdiumLondnBrtain__9-14-1974_atse.zip.html

 I couldn't find any good photos of the entire group from this concert. I considered taking a screenshot from one of the YouTube videos of this concert, but the quality is rather low. (I believe two of the songs from this are on the DVD of the band's box set "A Musical History," so if anyone has that in high quality, please let me know. Maybe I could get a better photo from that.) Weirdly though, I did find good photos of four of the individual band members from this exact concert, so I used those. That's Richard Manuel on the top left, Rick Danko on the top right, Garth Hudson on the bottom left, and Robbie Robertson on the bottom right. Ironically, the one left out because there's no good photo is Levon Helm, who sang a majority of the lead vocals.