There are a lot of bands I listened to just during certain phases in my life, then were put away like musical skeletons in my closet. The Allman Brothers are not one of those bands. They've been a constant in my life since my cousin's husband Billy - a dirtbag of a guy with a huge beer gut and no redeeming qualities except or his music collection - introduced me to this album. The first time I sat through the entirety of the live version of Whipping Post, I felt spent, as if every ounce of my energy was drained just by listening to it. It was such a defining moment for me, musically, that I can remember what I was wearing (Levis, Grateful Dead tshirt), what Billy was drinking (quart of Miller), that their house smelled like stale cigarettes and the couch cushions had pot seeds all over it, and that my baby cousin Melissa - Sweet Melissa - had a rash on her arm in the shape of Nevada. I hated that house, but loved that Billy let me borrow from his record collection. I never gave At Fillmore East back to him.
The Allmans became my happy place band. They're summer. They're the open road with the window down, they're a field of flowers, a college road trip, a surge of warmth in the middle of winter. And this particular album, especially side 4, is a bunch of twenty something kids and an impromptu keg party in the park, all standing on a picnic table and belting out "Sometimes I feel....sometimes I feel..." in ecstatic karaoke, long before karaoke machines took the joy out of spontaneous singing.
Favorite song: Whipping Post
Album wiki
4 comments:
Thanks so much for linking to that video.
I could study the improvisations of Duane and Dicky for hours. They make it look effortless and their coordination seemed almost telepathic.
Oh geez. Third and I'm gone.
I loved the Allman Brothers ...I saw 'em at Sac' Memorial Auditorium (late 1960's, maybe '69 or '70 or so, during the rock music heyday of Sacramento Memorial Auditorium).
I was soooo impressed. The two drummers hitting every tom, cymbal, whatever in perfect synchronicity. Ditto for the two guitars ...a choreography of fingers hitting notes.
Right from the get-go, they just played sassy and Right Out Loud. Dang. It's been some years since then.
Thanks for a fine evening of memories ....
Thank YOU for sharing your stories for these albums.
I used to have a 700+ album collection before I moved to Florida. One of the stupidest things I ever did in my life was to leave those pieces of vinyl behind. And just thinking about this album makes me kick myself over and over. (Literally, when you posted this, I had trouble sleeping that night.)
I'm not a big fan of extended jams. They get really boring, really fast. The Allmans were the exception. I could listen to them go on and on for days.
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