I was a bit late to the party. Wasn't until about 1977 that I first heard their music at a lazy afternoon kickback at a girlfriend's sharehouse. I remember we were all talking but were distracted by this great music playing in the background. Someone said, "Who is that?" and everybody said, "Yeah, whose that band?" It was the 'Brothers and Sisters' album playing on the hi-fi, and I went and bought my own copy a few days later. Dusted it off and been playing it again this weekend, and it still sounds good even if its now full of clicks and pops.
A few years later I was travelling in Europe with Top Deck and saw the band live at some university in Copenhagen. Only cost a few dollars too. Someone said that their recording contract stipulated that they must do a European tour every year. But they preferred to play at unis and low key places. Memorable concert in the uni auditorium. As soon has the lights went down the place was a sea of bobbing red lights as the joints were smoked and passed along. Place was full of smoke.
There's a lot of Allman Brothers stuff on YouTube. But this semi-doco compilation of the band from the early 80s is good for number of reasons IMO. Its just a quick concert the band played at a uni somewhere in Florida. All flared Levis, Miller shirts and Ray Bans. No easy warm-up tunes for this band to get in the groove - they're straight in to a nine minute run of 'Jessica' with some of the sweetest picking (I think that's Dickie Betts on lead). Impeccable. The bass player is good too. Its all worth watching, but if you skip ahead to 40:45 there's this jam session in a motel room, followed by the band doing a studio session somewhere which ends when they break to fix a technical problem. At which point the late, great Greg Allman picks up an acoustic and turns out a wonderfully soulful version of 'Come and Go Blues'. What a great band they were.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHuqBRVtjAA
