Allman Brothers Band - Seven Turns-Shades of Two Worlds - Best Of

Seven Shades:
In the 1990’s we were treated to two back to back releases Seven Turns and Shades of Two Worlds. There is a plethora of jamtastic music on both albums. Seven Turns set the table and Shades of Two Worlds slammed the door with authority. We are the Allman Brothers Band and this is the music we play and it speaks for itself. Here we come like it or not and just like that we were back fans, friends, family and band. No top forty airplay, no striving for recognition, damn few releases just live shows one after the other and the church filled right back up with young and old alike and we got it on. Who needs all the hyperbole all the media it’s all a distraction. The band was back down to business and that nights show was the mission. They recommitted to the music and their original passion and vision despite personnel, despite airplay, despite everything and guess what when they did what they loved because they loved it everything else took care of itself. The music came first not the booze, not the drugs, not the women, not the fame, accolades or attention and we were back with a vengeance. I was still on the air ten years later in 1991 and fell in love with Shades of Two Worlds. It screamed from the studio and out over the airwaves. Nobody Knows ricocheted everywhere I could broadcast it from my car, backyard, studio and airwaves. The energy was fierce and the college kids sheepishly admitted the old guy jams. It was nice of them to say but the phone was ringing off the hook. Your back this year thank god your show is the best thing on campus. It felt good to deliver and it felt good to have the goods to deliver. Thank you fellas!!!!!!!

I was at a Lynyrd Skynyrd Allman Brothers gig in North Carolina a decade later and it was a hoot fest and a half. I told my wife we are at ground zero tonight. The bikers were out in force. The flags were waving and the lawn after the show was strewn with bodies. My wife tried to help one poor flag bikini clad daisy duke wearing chippy as she stumbled barefoot into the washroom, “oh honey put some shoes on before coming in here.” We were back having fun!

I put a Seven Shades disc together which works well and features the songs I think are the best tracks from these two efforts.

Good Clean Fun (Seven Turns)
Seven Turns (Seven Turns)
Get On With Your Life (Shades of Two Worlds)
Low Down Dirty Mean (Seven Turns)
Shine It On (Seven Turns)
True Gravity ( Seven Turns)
End of the Line (Shades of Two Worlds)
Come on in My Kitchen (Shades of Two Worlds)
It’ Ain’t Over Yet (Seven Turns)
Kind of Bird (Shades of Two Worlds)
Nobody Knows (Shades of Two Worlds)
Gambler’s Roll (Seven Turns)
77 minutes

Just a few comments about some of these tracks:

True Gravity – takes off at the 2:50 mark into a beautiful array of sound, splashing drums, and thoughtful melody lines. It’s ethereal with the drums chugging underneath and the bass line jumping in and out in sympathy. And then at the 4:30 mark Johnny Neel charges out with a blistering piano line that wraps around the highway of sound that steals the show and sets the table for the next guitar lead and band to crescendo in a group ascent and fall. That middle segue is a thing of beauty.

Low Down Dirty Mean - opens with an acoustic twang and has a great juke joint feel, with a great set of gutsy lyrics.

Get on With Your Life - has some great call and response blues guitar work and Gregg brings the blues vocals to church.

End of the Line – “Oh when I think about the old days it sends chills up and down my spine.” Do you think Gregg is trying to tell us something here? It’s another gutsy, sizzling track and you can literally feel the band spitting the music out with purpose. A wonderful slide segue melodic and a change of pace leads us back to Gregg’s soulful proclamations. “Spent most of my life downtown sleeping behind the wheel.” Yeah baby tell it like it is!

Come on in My Kitchen - is the perfect pallet cleanser for screaming stacks of Marshall’s and I had to include it as it pays homage to the massive root of music that the ABB sound emerges from. Gregg slows it way down and it’s his singing that carries the melody. The backup vocals are spot on gospel and Dickey and Warren get to do a little chicken pickin and grinnin. It’s a real front porch holler.

Kind of Bird - I remember first listening to this tune and it not really grabbing me because it is a departure from the heavy straight ahead attack of say Black Hearted Woman. But here now decades later I totally get it and love it and get the groove. There are some great touches behind the shifting theme and flourishing riffs. A song structure ahead of its time to my ears back then but now it stands solid and undated dive back into this one if you haven’t in a while it’s all there.

Nobody Knows - Better lyrics may not have ever been written anywhere by anyone. They are straight ahead, unpretentious, speak the truth simply and clearly. I love hearing the band play but I love hearing Gregg sing these lyrics… “they ALL claim to know.” The music gets to the heart of the matter and doesn’t dance around the edges. Gregg’s Hammond gets a good work out to open the assault it’s building you know it’s coming…another verse and then it’s an earthy fierce work out. Nobody Knows sits firmly in the pantheon of great righteous Allman Brother Tunes from Whipping Post to Elizabeth Reed and the aforementioned Black Hearted Woman. Too many righteous classics to mention but this is foundational Allman Brothers at its best. It’s a righteous riffing screaming pin your ears back blow your mind melt the speakers excursion of dexterity, force and truth. It’s an in your face assault that says here we are this is what we do bitch and we do it better than anybody else!

Gambler’s Roll – After Nobody Knows what can you play? Well this tune brings the blues right back and has an opening crescendos that screeches to a halt mellows the mood and then lights the fire again. It builds slowly more truth is spoken with authority and the Hammond builds and stalks the opening assault. It’s so good to hear Gregg at his craft working that massive keyboard. Then the guitar comes in from around a dark alley the mood set screaming out in agony and flourishes with passion. This is a great tune and a good song. Gregg sings us out while the band flourishes and charges and retreats around his voice. It’s a thoughtful arrangement gritty, soulful, dark.

The amount of music this band put out over forty years might lend itself to some missing these tracks. Don’t do it dig down deep in their cannon and enjoy. They deserve to be heard and we deserve to hear them as well.

Allman Brothers Band - Seven Turns - A Personal Journey

Seven Turns:
Before I launch into the merits of the music a little context is needed for this yarn. We all know death but do we know it as a good thing? Believe it or not and it makes no difference to me I’m not here to convince you of anything but if you haven’t experienced the jolt of death the righteous slap in the face that it is you have no idea and zero comprehension of life. It’s a rude awakening but it is an awakening. You may think you know it but until you experience it the proverbial rug has not been swiped from under your feet and the seemingly emptiness revealed. Death challenges you and braces you like turning into the wrong neighborhood at night in a different city where you have just arrived. Death wakes your ass up. Death provides gratitude and awareness it provokes faith and amplifies and informs your life. An unexpected death like a bolt from a canyon rips the false veneer of shallow comprehension off your back and drops it at your feet. Pick it up or run away it still provides the provocative phenomenon that a spinning oasis in space is just a start and what the hell is really going on here? Death raises your consciousness even if you think you have already raised your consciousness to dizzying heights. Death is the ultimate thunder clap and sudden death is its howitzer.

I’ve been blasted by that howitzer several times and in its place fleeting memories and artifacts and phenomena. My beautiful older sister knew how to act. With a sly smile and a warm heart and the true sting of a Scorpio. Perfectly placed five years older than me she sometimes paved the way and when in her sphere raised me up. On rare occasions she pointed her boyfriend’s little sisters my way. Looking out for me she would have stuffed a little surfer girl in the mail to me from Hawaii if she could and told me so but all I got was a tee shirt. She was honest, brave and fun and then in a snap she was gone and I’m still so very young.

Seven turns landed in my lap in 1990. After the wilderness years of solo albums, band feuds, people magazine covers and releases that had glimmers but only a few tracks to cling to I ripped the cellophane off the new CD. How the fuck do you open a CD Jesus mother of marry get that freakin’ label sticky crap sealed again under the cellophane off? What fresh packaging hell is this!? Wait don’t break the plastic case. Okay CD’s came out in the mid 1980’s but I mean seriously!!?

I deposited the new disc in my player and like many of you I was ten years in the waiting….please don’t suck, please don’t suck, please don’t suck. Heightened anticipation positive but still please no more over synthesized pablum puke for the masses. Not since Brothers and Sisters come on we need a complete effort not just one or two righteous explorations and then fill come on mannnnnnnnnn.

So there I was in my old Victorian on the precipice of exaltation, disappointment or somewhere in between. I was all alone no roommates, holding down several gigs, making ends meet, no television, finalizing Journey Home and my music and art surrounding me. Vintage hippie pad, crooked floors, bay windows, complete with tapestries, incense and Native American flute music emanating from the windows. My Cousteau Calypso flag hanging from the second story out front proudly. Plants and bookshelves The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Van Gogh, acoustic and electric, an old typewriter two kittens pesticide free pest control and support system please don’t shit in the rubber plant Sylvia it was Jeana’s.

The marinara steeping in my small antiquated kitchen, pasta at the ready, fresh bread and a nice bottle of red. Good Clean Fun comes roaring out of the speakers! Yeeeees! Fist pump, arms raised, eyes to the heavens nirvana in my crib but no one to share it with. No matter I’ve always been a god damn independent. As one song rolls into the other and I’m preparing my modest feast the thought that grows naturally from my soul and heart is that Duane must be so proud of his younger brother right now and I feel it I really do and the smile is there the music is righteous, strong, invigorated and there it is right in the middle of the floor as I turn my sisters fedora with the feather she stuck in the trim ribbon waiting to greet me.

We live in a beautiful world an amazing world surrounded by creativity and beauty and honor and goodness and magic. It’s a reality unknowable and the ying and yang of it all gives us our work to do and presents those challenges. If met we are the wiser for it more fulfilled brimming with soul satisfaction and awareness at every step, every waking moment and in our dreams as well the visions abound both here and there. It really is a beautiful world and it’s all tied together whether we know it or not in ways we cannot seem to see but sometimes do and more often then afterwards we hear the song birds sing thank you.

Allman Brothers Band - Dreams Again!

 

 

When the Dreams Box Set arrived in stores I had the same expression on my face and bought three copies. Two were gifts. It received extensive play at the studio and I knew more than ever and it just confirmed something was a foot with the band and future new releases were on the horizon.

The live cuts got airplay immediately and the early stuff on the first lp as rare as I could find got airplay as well. I remember standing in the parking lot at the Garden State Art Center and blaring the tunes from my car speakers and fans stopping to enthusiastically discuss the merits of the release.

Warren, Woody and Johnny were great additions to the band. Seeing Woody play for the first time was a revelation and the dominant thought I had was "where the hell did they find this guy?"

Woody exuded such great dynamics from the stage. He was a fierce player but had this teddy bear vibe about him. I don't think anybody in the venue or on stage was having a better time than Woody. That's the way it looked and felt to me.

I was also psyched about the piano coming back into the mix. Chuck I guess was busy with the Stones but Johnny Neel was not a fill in. His playing was extraordinary vibrant and wickedly fast. He took center stage when he played and brought dexterity and a great sensibility to the sound of the band. Johnny Neel did some dynamic work for the band both in the studio and on stage. Often a forgotten player but I enjoyed his contributions immensely.

The crowd? Well they were in a frenzy excited and righteously psyched this music was back and with a vengeance.

I'm guessing this photo is one of Kirk's black and whites. It's a great impromptu capture and it looks like we all band and fans felt the same. Thanks to everyone who pulled that effort together. You sure made one DJ in New Jersey happy!