The Band – Music from Big Pink [Stereo] (Mobile Fidelity GAIN 2 Series Edition)

(AAA) — Lacquers cut from the original analog master tapes by Krieg Wunderlich at Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab.

The Band Music from Big Pink on Numbered-Edition 180g 33RPM LP from Mobile Fidelity: Audiophile Reissue Is Out of Print

Take a Load Off with This Incredible Pressing: Ranked #34 on Rolling Stone's List of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

1/4" / 15 IPS analog master to analog console to lathe

You’ve likely heard the story. Now hear the results of one of the most famous sessions in history with a clarity and warmth never thought possible.

In late 1965 and early 1966, Bob Dylan shattered the boundaries between folk and rock music on a controversial tour that found the generation spokesman plugging in and shocking purist audiences that reviled in horror at the sight of their hero playing electric with a bunch of ragtag Canadian mates. Then known as the Hawks, the Band was that backing group, serving Dylan not only on the road but, playing with him after his motorcycle accident, on his seminal Basement Tapes collection.

Recorded in 1968 and ranked #34 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, The Band’s Music From Big Pink stems from the same locale—a pink farmhouse in upstate Woodstock, New York—as the Basement Tapes and is just as rustic, timeless, and mysterious as Dylan’s celebrated work.

A debut for the ages, the album features two songs co-written with Dylan—“This Wheel’s on Fire,” “Tears of Rage”—as well as what’s universally recognized as the definitive version of Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released.” More famously, it also includes “The Weight,” a standard covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to Weezer to Aretha Franklin. But the power of this set doesn’t lie in one song but the entire album.

A groundbreaking statement, Music From Big Pink lays bare the magnetism of the American South, Appalachian traditions, and country-rock innovations. That guitarist Robbie Robertson, pianist Garth Hudson, bassist Rick Danko, drummer/vocalist Levon Helm, and organist Richard Manuel are all household names only adds to the proof of this must-have record’s everlasting appeal. This is the majesty of what Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America.”

Mastered from the original master tapes and pressed at RTI, Mobile Fidelity's analog version practically gives you a spot on the floor at Big Pink as the sessions went down. Curl up, close your eyes, and listen as the music's sublimely organic sounds appear with full-range dynamics, life-size imaging, and tremendous soundstaging.

"So finally, after all of these years we have the penultimate Music From Big Pink. It's got the bass, it's got the proper top end, it has the mids correct and it gives you all of the space and low level detail missing from every other edition, though the original Capitol isn't bad in that department. This is a "must have" album on the "must have" version."
--Michael Fremer, Analog Planet, June 14, 2012

(Above description from MusicDirect.com)