That’s Doobie and Allman to you.<\/p>\n
The Doobies get a bad rap.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what a string of Top Forty hits will do to you.\u00c2\u00a0 But to hear Tom Johnston’s pure voice is akin to being drenched in honey and licked clean.\u00c2\u00a0 You feel both alive and renewed!<\/p>\n
Although traffic has decreased in L.A. since the recession, I insisted we leave for the Greek extremely early, I didn’t want to miss a note.\u00c2\u00a0 And when we emerged from Rena’s office we found an almost totally empty venue with an eight piece band playing in the waning sunlight.\u00c2\u00a0 It was almost exactly seven o’clock.\u00c2\u00a0 Needing to fit in a full four hours of music before the eleven o’clock curfew, it was necessary to start then, before most of the fashionably late boomer audience had left their homes.<\/p>\n
But as time wore on, the seats filled and the band from Santa Cruz won them over.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what professionals do.\u00c2\u00a0 They assess the situation and instead of going home, they draw on decades of experience and will the audience to love them.<\/p>\n
They did the hits.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything from "Black Water" to "China Grove" to "Listen To The Music".\u00c2\u00a0 The level of musicianship was amazing.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew Tom Johnston could sing, but who knew he could play?\u00c2\u00a0 Never mind extract that classic Doobies sound from his axe.\u00c2\u00a0 Not that it was only Tom, Patrick Simmons’ hair may be gray, but he’s lost not a step, and John McFee looks younger than yesterday, when he played the licks in Clover, he whipped his bow over his violin like a virtuoso.\u00c2\u00a0 But the highlight was their rendition of "Nobody", from the very first Doobies album, both of which, album and single, were not hits.\u00c2\u00a0 But when I got the boxed set, this formerly hidden cut was a revelation.\u00c2\u00a0 Tom said this was the first track they ever recorded they were satisfied with.\u00c2\u00a0 Never underestimate the power of Ted Templeman.<\/p>\n
And by time the Doobies were done, it was dark.\u00c2\u00a0 We retreated to Rena’s office, whereupon I found that Tom Petty would not be repeating his appearance from the night before.\u00c2\u00a0 We were going to get Ziggy Marley.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was not told the Allmans were going to bring out the Conan O’Brien horns, the remnants of Southside Johnny’s backup band from way back when.<\/p>\n
To say the Allmans were stunning would be understating the case.\u00c2\u00a0 They started at 10, and then kept tightening the screws, going towards 11, they were a well-oiled machine running on all cylinders.<\/p>\n
I wish young ‘uns could come see the Allmans.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they’d understand it’s about being a musician.\u00c2\u00a0 Stardom is fleeting at best.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, a few lucky ones can whore themselves out as special guests on sitcoms and maybe replace the star in a Broadway show, but that’s about eking out a living, that’s got nothing to do with\u00c2\u00a0 music.<\/p>\n
Music is something you feel in your heart.\u00c2\u00a0 You practice when no one is paying attention.\u00c2\u00a0 You roll in a van, taking your life in your hands, not only from the road, but your bandmates, who are about to ignite from so much close contact and so little remuneration.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’re good, and lucky, you break through.<\/p>\n
The Allman Brothers were the biggest band of the early seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 Anointed by Bill Graham, closing the last night of the Fillmore, they didn’t peak until after Duane’s death, with "Brothers and Sisters" in ’73.\u00c2\u00a0 "Ramblin’ Man" emanated from that speaker in the dash every day.\u00c2\u00a0 They headlined Watkins Glen and then imploded.\u00c2\u00a0 But miraculously reassembled.<\/p>\n
Forget the deals with Epic and Arista.\u00c2\u00a0 The Allmans are no longer about records.\u00c2\u00a0 The Allmans are about playing!\u00c2\u00a0 Utility player Warren Haynes is more valuable than Derek Jeter and allows Derek Trucks to shine.\u00c2\u00a0 Gregg Allman is the linchpin, and Butch, Derek and Marc Quinones, the percussionist between them, hold down the bottom along with bassist Oteil Burbridge.\u00c2\u00a0 And what a bottom it is!<\/p>\n
The Allmans are truly a family.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re inside enough, you get to watch from the stage.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you get in the way, a roadie doesn’t brush you aside, he whispers that you’re blocking his operation and gently asks you to move.\u00c2\u00a0 And what you end up with is an experience of being in the music.\u00c2\u00a0 To experience the percussion from the back line of the Allmans is to be part of a tribal rite.\u00c2\u00a0 Butch is like a metronome, locked in the beat.\u00c2\u00a0 Jaimoe is in a trance, hitting every note.\u00c2\u00a0 And in between them, Marc hits a range of percussion instruments that add accents you can’t predict, but sound just right.\u00c2\u00a0 And when the audience roars in return, the love puts a smile on the band’s faces.\u00c2\u00a0 The adoration isn’t enough, but it helps.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes the twenty two hours off stage tolerable.<\/p>\n
That’s what a musician does…play!\u00c2\u00a0 Then there’s the travel, the drinking and drugging, the women and the camaraderie, the jokes, the cards, the laughter.\u00c2\u00a0 Rock and roll is the circus without the seamy carney underside.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why everybody wanted to run away and join way back when.\u00c2\u00a0 You wanted to be closer…to this lifestyle, to the music!<\/p>\n
But to a great extent, that’s gone.\u00c2\u00a0 The "artists" want fame.\u00c2\u00a0 The promoter is playing to Wall Street, the fan is a pawn in the game.\u00c2\u00a0 The music is just an excuse to charge customers up the yin-yang.\u00c2\u00a0 So when you see the pure unadulterated essence, it leaves a mark.<\/p>\n
Nobody in the band was mugging.\u00c2\u00a0 Warren and Derek weren’t trying to outshine each other, they were working in harmony!\u00c2\u00a0 Watching Gregg walk his fingers over the keyboard connected you to generations past, musicians playing for the love of it, doing their job, to both entertain themselves and the audience.<\/p>\n
Music when done right should not be a job.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re working at it, if you’re thinking you need a vacation, you’re doing it wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is like sex, it never gets old.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, there’s surrounding bullshit, the wooing, the failures, but you’re married to the rituals, they pay dividends.<\/p>\n
"I Shot The Sheriff" with Ziggy was a winner.\u00c2\u00a0 Susan Tedeschi wailed.\u00c2\u00a0 I loved hearing the horns on a rendition of Van Morrison’s "Into The Mystic".\u00c2\u00a0 But it was those songs of yore that truly resonated…<\/p>\n
"Trouble No More", from the very first album, which I went back and bought after being infected by "Idlewild South" and "Fillmore East".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got the original "Whipping Post", it’s even more solid than the second record.<\/p>\n
And "Revival"…\u00c2\u00a0 People, can you feel it, love is everywhere!\u00c2\u00a0 But not in Hepburn Hall at Middlebury College.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t ever remember a girl in Dave McCormick’s room that January when he dropped the needle on that album every single night, as we got high and watched the plastic from the burning zilch drop into the waiting bucket.<\/p>\n
And, of course, "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed", waltzing like a drug trance over Griffith Park.\u00c2\u00a0 The guitars synchronously locked like Derek and Warren shared the same brain…<\/p>\n
Gregg ultimately strapped on an acoustic and performed "Melissa", and when the show was done, the members didn’t clusterfuck in front of the drum riser and slap each other’s backs, rather they slunk off the stage, the same way you do after a day on the assembly line.\u00c2\u00a0 But rather than building Thunderbirds, last night the Allman Brothers constructed a one time only event.\u00c2\u00a0 That was not programmed to a computer, that featured no dancing, other than that done in the aisles.\u00c2\u00a0 They started with their skills and a bag of tunes.\u00c2\u00a0 And from scratch delivered an evanescent experience that was the essence of life itself.<\/p>\n
There’s a reason music drove the culture way back when.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it did set you free.\u00c2\u00a0 It existed outside the system.\u00c2\u00a0 It was made for you and me, not for media consumption.\u00c2\u00a0 Funny, but most of the business infrastructure has fallen away.\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly on the record side.\u00c2\u00a0 They may have received golden parachutes, but all the old execs are gone.\u00c2\u00a0 The ones still left were not pioneers, just inheritors of dad’s car, which they’re driving straight towards the cliff.<\/p>\n
But the musicians, they still remain.\u00c2\u00a0 And they play.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve got no choice.\u00c2\u00a0 And those who remember venture to the shows.\u00c2\u00a0 For not only a hit of what once was, but for inspiration for what can be.<\/p>\n
When done right, music is powerful.\u00c2\u00a0 Talking heads in elected positions can spew their hogwash, but they can’t compete with the power of the note from one guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 This pure and easy sound immediately penetrates the intended recipient, like an IV, going directly to the bloodstream, bypassing cognitive functions.\u00c2\u00a0 Hearing it makes you want more, makes you want to play the tunes over and over, go to the show, get to a place that’s pure, absent the bullshit.<\/p>\n
Last night while fewer Americans than you would think were watching has-beens trying to cling to fading fame on television, tying themselves to two-dimensional singers looking for the standard rich and famous contract, a band of seven players was doing the same thing they’ve been doing for forty years, through thick and thin…playing music, exploring inner and outer consciousness, blowing the roof off the joint.<\/p>\n
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