Gregg Allman

Gregg Allman

"The Gregg Allman Tour, "

Capricorn,2C0141

Maybe we've come to expect too much from The Allman Brothers Band, and maybe Duane's untimely death has proved too much for them. All I know is that, while Gregg's solo album was a big disappointment, this new double-album live set is a total bummer. Allman's organ work is well smothered, his vocals as clear and bright as the Cuyahoga River (which, unlike Gregg's vocal performance, catches fire once in a while), his arrangements and material flaccid and his back-up band weak. Among other bringdowns is a new song called "Oncoming Traffic" with the excitement of a three mile back-up on the Chrysler Freeway and the hard-hitting power of a dead Fiat, two numbers by the back-up group Cowboy that I forgot so thoroughly I didn't notice when the record ended, and positively the worst recording performance of "Turn On Your Love Light" I ever heard. (Especially when compared to the Dead's classic version, Edgar Winter's rocker, and the Purple Fringe, a high school band I used to dance to.)

The 24-piece orchestra, which carne to Praise Allman, buried him. His is not the kind of talent that should be the foundation for such a structure of sound. Gregg has delusions of kitsch which should not be encouraged. The production was muddy, the performance dull and the concept overblown. Martin Mull introduces the show - that's its highpoint. It went nowhere from there. 

-Paul J. Grant