The festivities begin with “Statesboro Blues,” the old Blind Willie McTell number that turned Duane Allman into a slide guitar genius after hearing Jesse Ed Davis play the slide on Taj Mahal’s version. You know that from the Bill Withers album—the way he let the crowd determine where to go with the song. They’re creating in the moment—pretty exciting stuff.”. Duane’s tone and intensity mirror the sting of the whip; it feels like a furious assault on body and soul. Digging: Bendrix Littleton - Deep Dark South, yea this rules, Allman Brothers are so good The only live albums I listen to every now and then. History didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me, so I asked my trusty resource for all things 60’s and 70’s, my dear OLD dad. Bullshit! As always, great writing! For a while it looked like Grand Funk Railroad was going to be the next big thing, but when they went on tour, it was obvious they didn’t have the goods, and they never recovered from that, because word got around.”, “How did word get around without the Internet? All I knew is that—well, when Tull came to play Berkeley, I remember really looking forward to it because they had a reputation as a great live band. This is the most beautiful passage in the song, a melange of sweet guitar, spinning cymbals, drum roll punctuations and gorgeous, melodic bass. We were playing music for ourselves and for each other. Well, you’ll have two more shots at Radiohead this year, so I’ll try to make them interesting! Whenever I listen to the five-minute studio version on the first album, I feel cheated. The pain of humiliation at the hands of a woman he naively but genuinely loved is more than he can bear as he realizes that both the woman and his friends have played him for a fool: I’ve been run down and I’ve been lied to. That woman is a LOWLIFE BITCH! Album Rating: 5.0Thanks guys, although I must say the great Duane Allman deserves more than 'I should probably listen to this' from you Aids. When you listen to At Fillmore East, you hear the spiritual descendants of Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry and Jimmie Rodgers in the form of one deeply committed group of musicians. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. And just like magic, he takes the fade chord and guides the band back to the snappy rhythm of the song itself. Again, I’m really grateful for the validation! Find thousands jazz reviews at All About Jazz! In communion with the crowd, the band establishes an interactive blueprint for all shows that followed, while its high-wire displays of powerhouse soloing and time-stretching arrangements remain the stuff of hall-of-fame legend. Album Rating: 4.5Some classic Nag' piece of work for an everlasting piece of art. My next choice was At Fillmore East, and I was delighted to learn that The Allman Brothers insisted there would be no overdubs. Alex Lester BBC Radio 2 . Let’s talk Allmans.”, “First, then I’m skipping ahead to Brothers and Sisters. I’d suggest the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series one of his 1966 gig in Manchester, the famous “Judas” gig but… drat… you’re not into Dylan nor The Band! And I look great in leather. At first, the band pretty much sticks to the original chord pattern of alternating 7th and 9th chords with minor 7th enhancements in the couplet that closes each verse, though they do depart from the pattern occasionally on the closing chord. Tragedy was lurking just around the corner, but for these precious moments they were, and remain unbeatable. Album Rating: 5.0Thanks all; deluxe edition is an even richer collection obviously, including the neverending Mountain Jam, but that and two others are also on Eat a Peach. I really enjoy your blog. All rights reserved. Second, Berry Oakley chose not to adopt the bass part of the original, which is just a reinforcement of the two-beat syncopated pattern. In terms of sheer musicianship, the first is easily one of the greatest debuts in music history and Idlewild South was just as strong—and even more diverse. ( Log Out /  Maybe we exchanged information on the astral plane while we were sleeping. You never would have heard of Peter Frampton if it weren’t for live albums.”, “I wish I hadn’t. The drummers then begin to complement one another, increasing their intensity in sync with the faster picking on the guitar. KING, STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN, ERIC CLAPTON - Why I Sing the Blues, Bo Diddley and Ron Wood - Live At The Ritz (DVD). And when you’re talking about At Fillmore East, you’re talking about an album that’s full of surprises. I don’t have any issues with the original solo—it’s actually one of my favorite passages on the album because it highlights Duane’s picking ability, which like all of his other skills, is truly remarkable. ( Log Out /  I was excited about the 1995 remaster because there was enough material from The Who Sells Out to balance the Tommy shit. Interestingly, what follows is a series of tentative riffs that move in and out of key, as if the man is half-heartedly looking for a way out of the darkness. the jams are mind blowing. Thin Lizzy's Live And Dangerous? All marvellous of course, but the Allmans did it best... By 1970 the band had completed two fine studio albums but hadn't been able to translate their live reputation into fiscal returns. A: We Are Devo! The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East was a genuinely high-fidelity recording. “Anytime. altrockchick, sorry to intrude, but you’ve got my attention. Want more Rolling Stone? 3 people found this helpful. Bands: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCtaCO7BOJ4. Another thing that seems to be unique to your era—the Allmans hit it big with a live album. I’d done a few—Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall, Swiss Movement, and Full House Live—but wanted to do more. In fact, the only criticism I’ve heard from other musicians seemed quite frankly to have its roots very firmly in the time-honored practice of hollering sour grapes — over the last year the Allman Band played the Fillmores so frequently that some people were calling them Bill Graham’s House Band. Gregg Allman: organ, piano, vocals, Dickey Betts: guitar, Duane Thank our lucky stars that The Allmans were men of integrity. This is important because it’s much harder to come up with a viable instrumental than a straight song—the music has to be that much stronger to compensate for the absence of lyrics. That proved to be problematic. Another crucial choice was Gregg Allman’s decision to sing like Gregg Allman and not to attempt a pale imitation of Elmore James almost manic, sinful preacher vocal style. A lightbulb finally went off; we needed to make a live album. My next choice was At Fillmore East, and I was delighted to learn that The Allman Brothers insisted there would be no overdubs. At Fillmore East captures one of the great American bands at their too-brief peak, and what The Allmans accomplished here cannot be understated. He made that same point in the book re the Beatles. Whatever else one may have to say about Graham, though, his taste in music has been largely unassailable, and hence it came as no surprise at all to anyone in the music business when Graham selected the Allman Brothers (and the Geils Band) to close out the Fillmore East. They’re one of the nicest things that ever happened to any of us. She took all my money, wrecks my new car. “Statesboro Blues” is a message to the audience—the brash confidence of that time-honored phrase, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”. “We didn’t want to go back and overdub anything, because then it wouldn’t have been a real live album,” remarked Gregg Allman in Alan Paul’s Allman Brothers bio, One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers. The Allman Brothers had many fine moments at the Fillmores, and this live double album (recorded March 12th and 13th of this year) must surely epitomize all of them. I'VE BEEN LIED TO I listened to it on audible which had the added dimension of hearing the book read by the author, who is a very entertaining reader. The recording quality and performances are exceptional! perhaps there’s no way to escape the darkness. That segment ends when Duane Allman wraps up a blistering solo with a held blue note while the band support diminishes to a fading drum roll. ( Log Out /  Wow, I realize I hadn't reviewed anything in more than 3 months, I do need to pick it up. I love the swells Dickey Betts plays during the introduction; the sound he creates reminds me of the Ondes Martenot used on several Radiohead songs. What follows is a shift into something more like free jazz than blues rock for a minute or so before the band settles on a melancholy theme to provide a baseline for even more free-form improvisation. What I don’t remember is where I heard that or how I knew it.”, “You already know that. Were you hippies too stoned to remember that?”, “You should remember from our trip down south following the trail of the Freedom Riders that things had become pretty polarized with the civil rights movement, and that polarization extended to music. After a stunningly-well executed crescendo, the band shifts to a Latinesque tempo featuring the secondary theme, leading to a diminuendo that opens the floor to the soloists. Everyone in the industry was saying that we’d never make it, we’d never do anything, that Phil Walden should move us to New York or L.A. and acclimate us to the industry, that we had to get the idea of how a rock ’n’ roll band was supposed to present themselves.