Live at the Atlanta Pop Festival captures the Allman Brothers Band at the
peak of their musical prodigious powers. Not only is it a piece of musical
history, but prelude to the Allman's solidifying their reputation as a
premier live act that would soon unleash their ground-breaking recording a
year later with Live At The Fillmore East.
Special thanks goes to tour magician Kirk West for co-production in this
document representing what the Allman's do best: Presenting a no frills
show and showing the Allmans creating a legacy of "blues rock" that even
their closest brethren couldn't match.
Two CDs from the July 3rd and July 5th event showcase a group of musicians
who might have very well stole the show. The rhythm section of Butch Trucks
and J. Johnny Johnson was the freight train giving "Whipping Post" and "In
Memory of Elizabeth Reed" a terrifying push that challenged the norms and
paradigms set down by the normal blues rock standards. Greg Allman
exhibited fine vocals throughout these gigs. A few listens to "Statesboro
Blues" and "Don't Keep Me Wondering" rank Allman as one of the few white
blues singers who can add spice to the genre and and not take it backwards
with shameful antics. And his organ runs are right there in the mix as he
treads well in the frenetically paced "Whipping Post."
Bassist Berry Oakley takes over the mike for Willie Dixon's "Hoochie Coochie
Man" reworking the song into a sweatbath of blues boogie. Expanding the
blues seemed to fall on the shoulders of the band's guiding light Duane
Allman. "Statesboro Blues" on both the discs comes with Duane's signature
slide guitar licks that still brim with vitality 33 years later and prove
vehicular learning points of the directions slide guitar is supposed to go.
The rain delay at the July 3rd show does little to deter the band's spirits.
The trademark instrumental "Mountain Jam," a mishmash of swirling
instrumentals under a psychedelic umbrella, has to stop because of Mother
Nature showing a wet love for the hippie masses assembled. As soon as the
rain stopped, the band just simply picked up their instruments and began
where they left off in the song.
Guest player Thom Doucette blows some tasty harp licks in the versions of "Don't Keep Me Wonderin." Second guitarist Dickey Betts takes the spotlight in "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" straddling fences of jazz and latino music a la Carlos Santana. Allman's organ helps steer the tune into jazzier pastures. "Stormy Monday" finds Greg Allman willing to kneel down at the altar and cast his bread on rocky waters as most bluesmen are prone to do. Doucette pops up in the mix with little harp licks. "Mountain Jam" on Disc Two sees Johnny Winter turning up to jam.
The liner notes by Kirk West are a terrific read. Consider Wests' comments gospel for what was an overlooked event shadowed by the Woodstock Festival. Thankfully a piece of history was preserved allowing us to look back at a time when it was the music that mattered. Thirty-three years later, it seems to have changed for the worse. The Allman Brothers made it possible for us to hitch our wagons to their gilded chariot and take us to another side of life.
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