The Band "The Band" [1969]

Known better as the lowlife Canadian folksters who lucked into the Bob Dylan gig, The Band continued the log-cabin charade for many years before Martin Scorsese eventually exposed them as a bunch of coke-mongering fools like him. On the follow-up to their debut "Music from Big Pink," Robbie Robertson's group of campfire geeks couldn't find a new title as comically pornographic as that, so they just called it "The Band." The results are equally as terrible: siding with the South in the Civil War ("The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"), advocating infidelity, alcoholism and gambling ("Up on Cripple Creek") and forcing the maple syrup icon to come out with her hands up ("Jemima Surrender"). Somehow these are the alley cats who always managed to avoid the old boot, though nothing could disguise this "earthy" album from having been recorded at Sammy Davis Jr's Hollywood pool house. So be careful who you consider "genuine": they're perhaps even more likely to be connected on the inside.