POP MUSIC REVIEW : Bluesy Allman Brothers Band Whips Up the Past

No wonder that the ballyhooed harmonic convergence of two years ago turned out to be such a notorious fizzle. Allman Brothers Band fans know that the real harmonic convergence happened somewhere back around 1971, when Duane Allman and Dickey Betts perfected their patented twin lead-guitar patterns.

When the Brothers’ 20th anniversary reunion tour touched down Monday at the near-capacity Greek Theatre, the brilliant twin riffing--a distinctive jazz-blues hybrid--was as unequaled and effective now as then, even with bottleneck guitar god Duane Allman long since deceased and replaced (this time around) by Warren Haynes. Assessing the impact this sound finally had on Southern rock may be dismaying--the Outlaws and the Marshall Tucker Band aren’t much of a legacy to leave behind, after all--but the influence the Brothers had on a young generation of jazz fusion may be more significant.

In fact, in the month of Woodstock two-decade reunions, the Allmans’ 18- and 20-year-old music seems far less dated than most from that era. Part of it is the lack of lyrical content (if ever there was a great rock ‘n’ roll band that had nothing to say, this was it), but a bigger part of it is the timelessness of their chosen style: It’s hard to do carbon-dating on the blues.

The Allman Brothers were the first (and possibly last) American band to make true blues cool on a stadium-sized level, thanks not only to guitar greatness but also to Gregg Allman’s drawly, booze-drenched voice, which can only get more bluesy over time. He enunciates even less these days--certainly there was no making out the words of the inevitably climactic “Whipping Post” without an awfully good memory--but such a show doesn’t rise or fall on whether fans can understand lyrics about leaving by the back door while a girlfriend’s old man comes in the front.

Important as Allman is, the two-hour-plus show rises or falls more on the strengths of Betts and Haynes, a carry-over from Betts’ solo band (which hit the Palace for a so-so show a few months back). This is a roundup full of instrumentals in which famous twin-lead riffs are used to provide ecstatically climactic moments (“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”) or breezy introductions and ecstatically climactic moments (the hit “Jessica”). And in an age when most rock fans of taste have learned to disdain jams and lengthy solos and promote the 15-second Econosolo to a minimalist throne, Betts and Haynes still make a brutally effective case for expansiveness.

Any updating here? Not really. No one has gotten a haircut. The only alterations to the classic garments: “Whipping Post” has been taken in a bit, clocking in at a scant 13 minutes instead of 22-plus, and keyboard player Johnny Neel (also from Betts’ solo band) has added some slightly jarring synthesizer textures to the classic “Post” as well as a recent Betts instrumental entitled “Duane’s Tune.”

Neel was also the only member to show much personality, jumping up and down on a stool specially equipped with suspension for just such fits of fervor. Though this is a band of synchronicities--two guitarists, two keyboard players, two drummers--visual interaction was nil, and there was no stage patter or bits of buddy-buddy camaraderie to suggest that the reports that some of these guys still don’t like each other are all that wrong.

Certainly there is no hiding the fact that the reunion tour is happening not because Allman and Betts couldn’t live without each other, but to promote “Dreams,” the hefty six-record (or, to post-Woodstock whippersnappers, four-cassette or four-CD) history-recapping boxed set. These are Brothers in name only, but damn if they don’t still sound like a Band.

Opening the show was a surprisingly hep choice, Chris Isaak (recently reviewed in these pages), who mines his own chosen style--Roy Orbison meeting the Ventures in a land trimmed with blue velvet--just as thoroughly and expertly as the Allman Brothers mine theirs.