Now here is a music documentary for actual music fans. This comes from a series of video documentaries about specific classic pop albums. This was produced by some concerted effort involving among others the BBC and VH1.

But this is no Behind the Music soap opera crap. You wouldn't know from watching this video just what kind of drugs which band members were doing, other than some seemingly run of the mill drinking, and you wouldn't know anything about what who was humping.

Instead, they're all about taking apart the Band's eponymous second album. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this album rates equal to any in the history of recorded popular music. They could have probably gotten several fascinating hours.

They actually start with the tail end of recording the preceding debut album Music From Big Pink. One sort of bled into the other somewhat.

One thing that jumped out at me was the deep sadness that came out of Richard Manuel's high vocal parts. Hearing his vocal part from "I Shall Be Released" pulled out by itself from a studio mixing board, it seems a wonder that he made it as long as he did before killing himself.

Ah, but the survivors are sure proud of their achievements. Robbie Robertson comes out as the professor. He's totally enthusiastic and informative about how different arrangements came about, but academic. I about half expected him to pull out a chalkboard.

Old Levon Helm was probably the most fun. Out by the lake, enjoying his Arkansas twang, Levon looks to be a cracker's cracker. I'm telling you, ol' Skip McQueen out of our Rabbit Holler would talk to this guy for a minute and say, "Damn, but that's one cracker ass country boy."

He exhibited the most purely visceral enjoyment of any band member, which I found very gratifying. Besides the good information and analysis from his studio segments, it was rewarding to see the sense of continuing pleasure these recordings have obviously given him.