O.C. POP REVIEW : Allmans Still Have All the Right Stuff

Except for the band being awake, it was almost like a Grateful Dead show. The Allman Brothers’ two-hour performance Friday evening at the Pacific Amphitheatre had many of the trappings of a Dead tour: In the audience there was a plenitude of Dead-logo or tie-dye-shirted folks, many doing the famous shapeless “wind baby” Dead Head dance. There was marijuana smoke in the air. There was even a small section of microphone stands in the audience, as fans taped the show.

Meanwhile on stage a musical assemblage very like the Dead in composition (with the kindred rarity of two drummers) and lineage rambled into lengthy musical excursions while an oil-pattern light show gooshed about on a screen. Nineteen years ago, it may be recalled, a co-headlined bill of the Allmans and the Dead (with the Band) drew one of the largest audiences in history, more than 600,000 persons, to a concert at Watkins Glen, N.Y.

But the Georgia-based Allmans are far from being just a deep-fried Dead. To give Jerry Garcia and Co. their due, the Grateful Dead are justly an American institution, practically the Ellington Orchestra of the patchouli generation. On their best nights all that stuff about waves of energy emanating from the stage seems to be true. But they also can often meander musically like a field full of cows on acid.

Back in its own fabled days at the Fillmore, the Allmans were a much more muscular proposition, with rampaging blues riffs spiked by the twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts. Both players pushed the music on with a questing fire, and unlike Garcia, who tends to shy from the overt statement, neither Allmans guitarist was afraid to really nail an emotion with a killer lick.

That fire, by any reasonable expectation, should be long extinguished. Slide guitar genius Allman and bassist Berry Oakley died in separate motorcycle accidents in the early ‘70s, and the group slowly declined from that point. Allman’s brother, organist and gravel-throated singer Gregg, had a succession of drug-related problems. His testimony against a mutual friend in a drug prosecution in 1976 led to a deep rift between him and the other surviving band members.

They did manage to patch things for a brief reunion in 1978, though the musical results weren’t anything too promising. And now that it’s the era of cash-in reunions, even the barest shell of the Allmans’ old magic would probably be enough to satisfy fans.

But evidently no one’s told band members they can take it easy. The reconstituted Allmans--founding members Gregg Allman, Betts, drummers Butch Trucks and Jai (Jaimoe) Johnny Johanson with current members Warren Haynes on guitar and slide guitar, Allen Woody on bass and Marc Quinones on percussion--delivered a show that was always musically solid and satisfying, and sometimes flat-out exhilarating.

The 18-song set drew chiefly from the group’s glory days, though there were some nods to the material done since it regrouped in 1989.

The show opened with a passel of Allmans staples, including “It’s Not My Cross to Bear,” “Statesboro Blues” and “Blue Sky,” which closed with Betts and Haynes engaging in the trademark doubled guitar harmony lines of the original group.

It was on a newer song, though, that the group’s old magic was rekindled. Betts’ “Nobody Knows” from the 1991 “Shades of Two Worlds” album proved to be the launching pad for some remarkable solo flights. Over a furious rhythm beat out by the twin drummers, Allman led off with a choppy Hammond solo. That led into an effort from Haynes that started with psychedelic-tinged sustained-note lines that grew more lyrical, then built in speed and complexity to finish in a dizzying crescendo.

The group then dissipated that momentum in a rhythmless, free-form section that left it to Betts to build his solo from the ground up. Betts is one of very few guitarists (ex-Stone Mick Taylor being another) whose playing is so fluid and subtly vibratoed that he can sound like he’s playing with a slide when just using his fingers. That technique came to bear in an elegantly tiered solo construct that again wound things up to the heights Haynes had achieved. By the time the two were trading four-bar choruses at the end of the song, there was no doubting that the Allmans can live up to their legacy.

Though not so incendiary, the group’s other new songs also fit in well among the oldies. Allman’s slow blues workout “Get On With Your Life” was fueled by a fervent vocal and funky double-timed organ solo from him, as well as astringent licks from Betts and Haynes. Betts’ “Seven Turns” led off an acoustic set, which also included “Midnight Rider,” Southbound,” “Melissa” and the blues “Pony Boy,” which featured Betts on some fine acoustic slide guitar. The rest of the players dropped out to leave him slowly fading out. The subtlety of that solo was lost on some in the audience though, as a family-size fracas broke out in one section.

Along with old favorites “One Way Out” and the Young Rascals-ish “Revival,” the band’s vintage material allowed for two more miraculous excursions. Those, predictably, were “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Whipping Post.” As it did in its Fillmore heyday, the former tune deftly wound through several movements, allowing for both the delicate harmony lines of the paired guitars and for heated rounds of solos. Those ranged from Betts’ blend of intricate melodic inventions and crying sustained notes to a rhythm riot from the drummers and percussionist to a rumbling solo on 18-string bass from Woody.

“Whipping Post” hadn’t lost any of its show-stopping power from its old days, perhaps because Trucks and Jaimoe drove the thing like tandem locomotives. Allman evidently had saved his most heated vocal for last, and he and the guitarists made the tune scream and surge.

Opening the show, Blues Traveler deserves several points for originality, though the finished product doesn’t quite connect. The New York-based quartet’s frenetic improvisatory jams sound a bit like Firehose might if it had been inspired by the Dead, though not as engaging as that comparison might suggest.

The group’s chief asset is front man John Popper, whose strained, jerky vocals sound like a cross between Pere Ubu’s David Thomas and Family’s Roger Chapman. His chromatic harmonica playing was unfettered by tradition and frequently inspired. Unfortunately his accompaniment--particularly the heavy-handed guitar work of Chan Kinchla--didn’t seem up to the challenge of Popper’s efforts.