Consumer Guide Album

The Band: Rock of Ages [Capitol, 1972]
This live double introduces a couple of covers, a "new" song they've been playing for years, and the seven-minute organ precede with which Garth Hudson protracts "Chest Fever" in advance, while finding room for only one song from their most recent (and worst) studio album. Yet admirers claim it as a masterwork rather than a commercial stopgap. Nonsense. Given the Band's ordinary woodenness in performance, the playing and singing are spirited, and Allen Toussaint's horn arrangements add genuine punch instead of the usual fuss, although they never reshape--as oppose to redecorate--the material. But this is clearly the testament of artists who are looking backwards because the future presents itself as a vacuum--a problem that has afflicted even their best work. B