90. whipping post

“Because this is what it sounds like to be free. I read that once, maybe fifteen, some old Rolling Stone mag found in a pile at my friend Carl’s place. Which got me looking for the Allman Brothers’ Live At The Filmore East, and I found it, also at Carl’s place, one our regular Friday nights getting stoned, trying to figure out how to become rock stars. And the thing is, I didn’t really get it at first, whatever I supposed to get from the Allmans, certainly not what I was expecting to get, which was some kind of kickass southern-fried raunch. Nah, these guys were cooler than that, way more expansive, which isn’t to say they didn’t ROCK, there was just way more to it than that. Like the side long take on Whipping Post, which maybe halfway through you think is winding up for a big deal ending, but it takes another ten minutes to get there, like they’re loving it too much, they don’t EVER want it to end. They really were free, and so was anybody that was there at that concert, or even listening to it months or years later. Except it already had ended for the Allmans by the time the album hit, certainly for main man Duane Allman, dead in a motorcycle accident a few months after that Fillmore gig, and then barely a year later, it was bassist Berry Oakley, another motorcycle, same basic neighbourhood. The cost of freedom, I guess.” (Philip Random)

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300. key to the highway

Derek and the Dominoes‘ only studio album was a 1970 release, but it didn’t cross my teeny bop consciousness until summer 1972 when they finally got around to releasing Layla as a radio single. Which led to my friend Malcolm getting the album, which mostly went way over our heads – all that loose jamming (and the drugging behind it) being more for the older kids. But I’d eventually come back around to it maybe twenty-five years later, particularly stuff like Key To The Highway where misters Eric Clapton (already well into a heroin addiction), Greg Allman (due for a fatal motorcycle accident), Jim Gordon (fated to go mad and murder his mother) and essential others sort of lay back and go long, delivering the news of what is to be genuinely free (you’ve got the key, you’ve got a vehicle, you’ve got an open road – what more could want?) for almost ten minutes anyway.” (Philip Random)

696. lonesome and a long way from home

“Speaking of ear worms, this Eric Clapton track is definitely one of mine, always just lurking there, ready to slip into my consciousness if I’m feeling sorry for myself or whatever. Not that I’ve ever been a huge Clapton fan (Jimi Hendrix was always better, and Jimmy Page, Steve Howe, Neil Young, Duane Allman, Peter Green, Pete Townsend even). Nor have I been perpetually lonely, and where the hell is home anyway? “It’s back there somewhere,” as my friend Steve used to say, thumb pointed over his shoulder and far away, “Always in the rear view.” (Philip Random)

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922. where the soul never dies

Delaney and Bonnie (Bramlett) and Friends (Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Duane Allman, among others) cut loose with exactly the kind of raw, unpolished sort of stuff you needed after a decade like the 1960s – so many young minds burned, souls stretched thin.  Not that I was on that particular track myself at the time. I wasn’t even twelve yet. But I’d get there eventually, crashlanding from my own weird and wild early adult adventures, and then somebody put on precisely the right album.” (Philip Random)

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