This is their highest-charting album in their home country. The album peaked at #2 in Canada, #9 on the Billboard 100 in 1970. The album was their second album called The Band (The Brown Album ). King Harvest is a great finishing track to one of the greatest albums ever made. Richard Manuel is the singer of King Harvest. The song is told from the point of view of a poverty-stricken farmer- detailing everything that has happened to his farm- then a union organizer appears and makes promises that things will soon improve. Rock critic Greil Marcus has written that King Harvest might be the finest song that Robertson has ever written. I’ve read where The Grapes of Wrath is a big influence on this song. Robertson said he’d been immersed in the novels of John Steinbeck at this time. But because of the way the record sounds, none of this calls attention to itself…it sounds effortless. In the liner notes to one of their greatest hits it states… the music is unusually complex, making use of odd verse patterns and tricky rhythmic suspensions and modifying the natural sounds of instruments for various calculated effects. The five different instruments were not five different instruments…they were one. The Band was so rootsy… They had it all – rawness, competence, sublimity, experience, originality, and roots. I can’t believe I’ve never posted it but better late than never. CB mentioned this song not long ago so I used it after listening to it again. Well, I will say Canadian although one member…Levon Helm was from Arkansas but the rest are Canadians. There is one band that I didn’t get to cover because I ran out of days…well actually more…but Blue Rodeo will be coming up soon on a Friday. Thank you for tuning in this week as we talked about these great Canadian artists…I’ve had a blast with them.
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