Review Summary: Theres some truly magical chit going on in this album.
It was Saturday July 21, 2007. The date is so vivid due to a couple of friends and me going to see The Police Reunion Tour on Thursday the 19th at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. A good friend of mine was having a nice party in his backyard with a couple of old acquaintances and new ones as well. Some of these people I had never met before. As usual, I brought it upon myself to control the music for the evening's festivities. See, my friend hosting the party was (and still is) very much a *insert generic term for how brutal this kind of*core metal head. As was the case, most of the people there were the very same. These people would rather listen to Suicide Silence and Emmure than give something with less bump and more intelligence a shot. I had run to my car and got my huge book of cds, and The Fillmore East just stuck-out that night. I had no reservation, I had no second thoughts. I knew the audience there were not going to even begin to anticipate what I was about to put in the disc player. I wanted to surprise them, challenge them even.
So, I threw the cd in. At first, they were puzzled. They wanted BREAKDOWNS, not guitar leads. Well, nobody was going to tell me to turn it off so off we went.
Statesboro Blues went over well, but it wasn't until
Trouble no More where they finally started to get it. Magically, the party reached new heights. I absolutely could not believe these "core" kids were actually grooving to this, as much as me. As the album progressed, the party did so as well. Even the people circled around the Huka were jamming out. It was unreal. I mean, you had girls between the ages of 18-23 really enjoying this, shakin their thang, and a party of about 20 feeling the music in unison. Not to mention whenever Dicky Betts or Duane Allman broke out a solo, it was air guitars galore. It was beautiful indeed. It made me realize that whatever one's musical tastes may be, when one album comes and makes you feel it without knowing it, you have something truly special. It also made me realize how much of a force this record is to be reckoned with. If you can shatter the Hard-Core culture's views of "heavy", you can show anybody. This was just a little different heavy.
An album I’ve always seen in my father's old vinyl collection, The Allman Brothers
At The Fillmore East is always popping up in critics' best-of lists, and it's not hard to see why. This was a band truly on fire, and thank God somebody put it to tape. Recorded on Friday and Saturday March 12-13, 1971, the original album has a different track listing than the one I’m reviewing. I had found this version while Christmas shopping for my dad, and he even said himself that this version was “the best one to have”. The album comes complete with the original album, but in a different track listing as to make way for the extra songs included. There has been some criticism to this version as to how they shouldn’t have messed with the original track-listing but kept it intact and use the second disc as the bonus material. I, for one, highly disagree. This version absolutely plays like a concert, and the engineers did a fantastic job splicing the songs together to keep the show rolling. Besides, with today’s technology you could import this sucker to iTunes and burn yourself the original version from this album, with extra goodies! Included on the disc is the live tracks off of
Eat A Peach (Trouble No More, One Way Out, and Mountain Jam) that were recorded at the same time but thrown on the latter, probably for space filler (and I mean that with the highest of respect). In a nutshell, pretty much every thing that was recorded on these two nights is presented here. Well, sort of.
The albums producer, Tom Dowd has gone on record saying that these performances that you hear on the album are not genuine. What I mean when I say that is that Dowd took two or three versions of, say, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and spliced the best parts of said performances to make the version you hear on the record. When I had read that, I was very unhappy. However, I’ve come to appreciate his good-nature towards it, and I appreciate the work he put in to make such an album as alive and as ferocious as this is.
Musically, this album delivers the goods on all cylinders. This is the album that proves that the original Allmans
really knew how to throw down! Some of the album is just straight-up Southern Metal (a fine example of this is the middle section of “Done Somebody Wrong”) that would make Pantera blush. Of course there are extremely quiet and bluesy songs such as “Stormy Monday” to smooth out the harder numbers too. In short, there is something for all moods and all tastes. The albums centerpiece (to me) is “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”, a breathtaking instrumental that starts off quiet and relaxing but then transforms into a furious free-for-all. Of notable mention is the way Duane Allman presents his guitar solo. If you read the booklet that comes with this packaging, the man doing the liner notes spoke to Duane around this time and Duane name-dropped John Coltrane a few times and how Coltrane himself presented his solos with note-bends. Allman does that and more as a direct nod to Coltrane, and it makes much more sense with repeated listens.
The Second disc opens with “Hot’Lanta”, a quick 5-minute instrumental that opens the beginning well. Of course, up next is quite possibly the Allmans most well-known song,
Whipping Post. A classic amongst classics, this 23-minute bruiser is the subject of every aspiring jam band in the world. Forgive me for sounding bias, but the Grateful Dead has nothing on these guys, especially with this track, and the next one,
Mountain Jam. Mountain Jam is sadly known for its length, not for its content. At 34 minutes, I can see why, but its still a challenge to listen to it start to finish without pressing the skip button. This was a band at their very tightest musically, and they could do anything with ease. Not to mention the original incarnation of The Allmans before the death of Duane and Barry Oakley is the stuff of legends.
It’s very odd that a live album gets as much recognition as this one does. But with The Allmans, they are absolutely a live band. The band members have said themselves that they could never quite get it right in the studio. So it makes much more sense why this album was their commercial breakthrough as it defines them much better than something like
Idlewild South could ever do. There are no limits as to what or how this record could influence you by. 15 Hard-Core kids praising together should be able to tell you something. My father buying this as a teenager in 1971 and still playing it to this day should also tell you something. If I could, Id give this album a 7 out of 5. While very much a Southern Rock boogie album, it also transcends all forms of music and its very easy to understand. How could something as defined as Southern rock speak to so many who are unfamiliar with the swaggering guitars and harmonicas? There really is no clear answer, just see for yourself as the proof is ever-so in the pudding. Besides, don’t limit yourself, as you’re only tying yourself to the Whipping Post by not having this in your collection. It’s just that good.
