Playing Live The Allman Brothers Band

I want you to take a good look at these musicians and how they are all concentrating and looking at each other. This is how its done. It's Dickey's turn a guitar god in his own right to lead but the ensemble playing behind him including Duane is playing "with" him and working, concentrating, and listening in order to weave in and out of the magic.

Each musician is propelling the other and informing the other as the music takes direction. It is an amazing amount of good fortune that this sextet with these specific musicians was captured live by such a renowned and skilled producer Tom Dowd.

Fillmore East as I have just been re-listening to it only recently is a freaking stunning collection of musicianship,and fire. It is an outrageously groove driven pallet of sound, an avalanche of intricacy and composition with halting pinnacles of contemplation and I haven't even gotten to the second disc yet.

I'm listening to "The Fillmore Concerts" a 1992 remaster of the original release just as the ABB were emerging again off the heals of the Dream Box set and Seven Turns. I'm ecstatic to have it in my collection and truth be told haven't listened to it in decades as I was all in on the later day sextet with Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks and Oteil Burbridge.

Berry Oakley's bass work while never receiving as much press as Duane's guitar skill, drive and vision possess the same amount of finesse, brilliance, heart, drive and fire. It is something to behold listening to the original six working together and it is a miracle that this moment in time was captured. Imagine if this recording suffered the fate of the Layla sessions ohhh my what a tragedy that would have been. Instead we have this prodigious amalgamation of the pinnacle of music that is certainly the Mount Everest of music here on Earth and quite possibly a sliver of what it must sound like in heaven - effortlessly dancing and commingling each note, chord and beat thundering through its woven path, barreling through passages of time momentarily settling like a light rain upon your soul and then exploding like a volcano. You better believe it was all about the music and if you bring any other attitude to the stage you suck.