Sunday, February 18, 2007

214. The Allman Brothers - At Fillmore East (1971)

















Track Listing

1. Statesboro Blues
2. I Done Somebody Wrong
3. They Call It Stormy Monday
4. You Don't Love Me (You Don't Care)
5. Hot Lanta
6. In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed
7. Whipping Post

Review

Here's another long jamming album, much in the tradition of The Greatful Dead, and particular their Live/Dead album, which was very long and very dependant on jamming. Fortunately, however, this is a much more accessible album and also a much less dull one.

The Allman Brothers impress here with their technical skills and actually some quite innovative guitar playing. They are really good. This is not to say I loved the album though. The first few tracks are standard white blues band fare, which had been done to death better by other groups like Cream. The album is also much too long, and some of these first tracks could have been skipped. I would have been happy with just the last two tracks, making a nice 36 minute album.

And where the Brothers impress is really on the long tracks, particularly Whipping Post; that's where they are able to develop their playing to a level which is interesting. The shorter cuts are just not that impressive. All in all a good album, but nothing to write home about. Get it from Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Whipping Post
2. In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed
3. You Don't Love Me
4. Hot Lanta

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The most well-known rendition of "Whipping Post" by any other artist came in the most unlikely of circumstances, during Season 4 of American Idol. Contestant Bo Bice gave a shot in the arm to Southern rock with an impassioned performance during the show's semi-finals round, pleasing show judge Randy Jackson and propelling Bice to an eventual second-place finish.

heh

Whipping Post, at Filmore East:

Part 1:



Part deux:



The American Idols 4 version... not so good:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really don't know why you have been kind to this turgid pile of overrated crap.

The songs are badly performed, with too many over-long guitar "Blues-Jams" - shiver - Go and check out someone who needs some attention like Marty Robins instead...

Keep up the good work...

Francisco Silva said...

Well, I am not adding this album to my iPod anytime soon (only 9 and 10 get into my music collection).

And yes, a lot of the Allman Brothers is just musical masturbation, but the last two tracks are actually very good, they are not bad performers, and as you see in the video there are so many people in the group that the fact that they manage to jam at all is impressive.

Anonymous said...

Well, actually I think the opposite of you. The Allmans performed blues classics better that any other band at the time. I think Statesboro and Stormy Monday are two of the best live blues ever captured on record. Duane's slide technique was wonderful (greatest white slide player, in my opinion). And Dickey Betts counter-guitar licks were awesome as well.
But when they get into those long long LONG jams I get bored. I mean, it must have been a great thing to see live while high on something, but on record it just doesn't work for me.

Still, great blog, I love you album reviews.

Best wishes, Alex from Colombia