A free cover mounted CD from a magazine I long ago threw in the bin, but I vaguely recall this being linked to a retrospective set of pieces on The Band (Bob Dylan's backing band but also artists in their own right).
Who decided this music was inspired by The Band? I have no idea, I suspect the truth is a rather more mundane case of "let's shove some free americana/alt-country on the cover with a big pic of Bob Dylan on it" than a well researched series of records that can trace their creation right back to the artist listening to or channeling The Band. I know that music journalists like to talk about The Band as the creators of some sort of "cosmic american rock" that supposedly combines 60s psychedelia with traditional country but I never understood what that meant. Perhaps because I am coming at it from a few decades later but to me The Band always sounded like pretty great American country rock - nothing groundbreaking but thoroughly enjoyable. So a collection of music "inspired" by them could be massive given the size of that genre.
As with most of these sprawling compilations the music is a pretty mixed bag, not helped by starting off with Drive By Truckers, a band with a lot of critical love who I have completely failed to understand. The highlights are Little Feat and the always brilliant Sufjan Stevens; the utter lowpoint is Old Mule by Ben Weaver which sounds like a parody of a country song, deliberately done for laughs.
I keep this album around for nostalgic reasons (I remember buying music magazines religiously) and simply because it adds a lot of bands to my collection who wouldn't be in it otherwise, giving me the chance to hear something new on shuffle every now and again, but it's not an album I would aim to listen to as a complete collection. If I was more ruthless with my collection I would delete it.
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