Raisin' Hell in Macon: The Allman Brothers Big House!

DUDE: all i wanted for my birthday this year was to go raise hell in macon and go to the allman brothers museum, aka the big house. a big thanks to area.personality for making it manifest!!!!

I gotta admit, I had always thought of the allman brothers as "mom music". This is because my mom, Nancy, was always listening to them when I was a kid. For this reason I always wrote them off as "mom music", as children tend to do. I now understand that my mom just has great taste in music, and that the allman brothers fucking rawk and should not be classified as "mom music".

I'm not sure what spawned the interest in them. Surely had to have been some song floating through my head ending up on internal radio, and begging to be revisited. I know for sure that when I was in Denver to see Ween several years ago, we visited Wax Trax records and I totally picked up a sweet copy of the Duane Allman Anthology, pictured here with several other selections from that haul:

That turned out to be a total fucking SCORE, and went on to be on heavy, HEAVY rotation back at the Cave on Berean (my previous residence). Its a great album because not only do you have duane rawkin yer face off on the slide, you also have the likes of BB King, Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton (even though eric clapton has always seemed like an asshole to me), and of course, the sexy baby brother Gregg Allman. Please see the separate blog entry for HOW FUCKING FINE THE ALLMAN BROTHERS used to be. What a great album!

Well so then I reckon I went on some kinda southern rock binge. Dawg reminded me that we watched a bbc southern rock documentary together- who knew? here it goes:

That documentary is awesome and totally worth watching (again, and again, and again...)

So back to the big house: 

When you first walk in there are a ton of old concert and festival posters! This was super exciting for me because I don't just dig the music maaaan, I also really get stoked about gig posters. In particular I was stoked to see this poster from the 2nd  Atlanta International Pop Festival. I recently got this three part compilation album of music from both the Isle of Wight and the Atlanta Pop Festivals after hearing a live allman brothers track played on another radio program i like to listen to, Reeling in the Years, with your host Jeff, on Album 88. They are fucking killing it on there!

But this wasn't the first I'd heard of the pop festival. Nancy's sister, my aunt, Susan, had attended the pop festival, so I actually have a sweet (albeit sort of rotting apart) commemorative t-shirt! Its exciting to me because its like the Woodstock of the south. Who knew?

Here goes the pop fest poster, among others:

Here goes a gold record from Capricorn records, their label. We tried to go take photos in front of the abandoned studio, but it was getting too late in the day because we take forever to do everything.

 heres a sweet trunk in the big house:

u seen that before somewhere?? ;-)

here they go in a promotional ad for some pioneer speakers/soundsystem: bitchin.

here go they photos:

here goes duane looking amazing:

before they were the allman brothers, but after they were the allman joys, they were the hour glass. some record label shipped them off to the left coast to force them into some psychedelic bubble gum pop band. here goes that album cover at the big house:

id love to find me a copy of that one day! 

i LOVE talking about when they were the hour glass. talk about square peg, round hole! all. day. long.

here they go as the hour glass:

god! they just look uncomfortable in all that getup. who's idea was it to dress them up like that?? they still made slammin tunes tho, as evidenced here:

the museum is full of amazing ephemera- we seriously spent all day there, like until closing time. Our tour guide was a high school friend of dawg's, so he gave us the super exclusive, hella comprehensive, backstage VIP ultra tour- replete with more information than we could ever begin to process about the brothers, the band, their families, the roadies, the record label, the manager, the south.....and so on. i tried to pare down the amount of info to only the most pertinent but it was hard.

Here goes a check written to duane- who knew his first name was Howard? WTH?? Also here is his scratch book with lyrics in his handwriting **AWESOME**

Here is some crazy archaic audio formats of antiquity and of foreign lands:

here goes the house soundsystem, bitchin!!!:



Here goes the view from the window where Dickey Betts wrote Blue Sky:

ITS TOTALLY INSPIRATIONAL THERE i can totally see how he conjured that tune up there!!

here goes his handwritten lyrics (which is dated wrong, according to our fabulous tour guide)

Here he goes with his wife, Blue Sky. I am totally posting this because when I read about the song was about her I totally googled her and could not find her picture, but it is there at the big house, and now it is here, on our blog. She was totally pretty.

Probably the best part of the tour was when our tour guide told us about Dickey Betts and Blue Sky's wedding, and how she's all native and he's all part Cherohonkee or whatever, and so he had to kill a deer before he could marry her or whatever. Then he went on to tell us about one time when Dickey Betts totally slaughtered some cow with his bare hands on the side of the road all high on drugs or whatever. Badass! See, you just don't get info like that on any regular old tour!

Here is the shower the allman brothers showered in!...

...and the bath they bathed in....

...and the toilet they peed in!! (I peed in it too, now we are ONE)

[area.personality:  me too]

Here are some of those sweet hippy ass threads of theirs:

their clothes were made for teeny people of another distant era. they reminded me of the shit featured in this book native funk and flash with all that stichery witchery!

here goes that book and some fotos from within:

 that chick is my style icon.

Here is an excerpt from Duane's journal that's framed beside the bed in the room that was his. It makes me love him so much to read this- what a nice guy!! 

here are a few examples of posters and photos and such on display in the big house. there is seriously so much fascinating shit in there, you'll just have to go for a visit yourself if you are at all interested:

Here goes the front door- i dig all the bitchin stained glass!!

they have a MEGA merch booth/room (you know i got me a commemorative coozie, guitar pick, and tshirt):



here is a photo of us playing a replica of duanes guitar. and emulating his expression on the photo on the wall behind us (just realized im totally holding this like a sitar, WRONG):

Here goes dawg and her high school friend who gave us the super duper wuper detailed tour:

and here we go posed up in front the big house. wish the brothers could be here with us!!!

and here are some of the bricks in the little garden beside the house, totally cool:

and finally, here is a photo of my delicious Allman Burger from the Rookery. All their burgers are named after Macon musicians and Jimmy Carter. They also had beer battered fries and pitchers of Wild Heaven. HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY to me!!!!!!!!

I will definitely go back, because I wanna take Nancy. I also wanna go to the H&H restaurant where they used to eat, but its closed on Sundays (thats why we didnt go this time).

a big thanks to my DAWG for arranging our personal private super VIP tour of the big house. its exactly what i wanted for my birthday this year!!!

[area.personality:  You're welcome, Dawg!  I had a blast!  And yes, a super special thank you to my old buddy Jeromy from high school for giving us the most informative and interesting tour of all times!  I appreciate it so much!]

lawd have mercy!: look at how fine the allman brothers was!

Can we talk about how fine the allman brothers used to be for a minute?

not only were they good lookin, they were brothers

jesus LAWD gregg was purdy!

and yall know i love me a lawng haiyuhed snaggletoothed man! git it duane!!

but the brothers werent the only lookers in the band :-)

i like em serious..

...and jolly

rockin...

...and just chillin...

...and drankin....

..and rawkin some more...

...and snoozin...

..and wearing fresh hippy ass threads.

and that's all i got. 

Daddy-Daughter-Dinosaur Date

Do you know what this is?

 

 

That's right.  It's a Steppenwolf 8-track tape.  I remember we had one of these in my house when I was a teeny child.  So a couple of months ago, when I was listening to my new favorite radio program, Stonehenge on WREK 91.1, I heard John say that John Kay and Steppenwolf would be playing a show at the Harley Davidson of Cartersville on 8/24.  I texted my Dad and we made a date.  Dad just turned 70 years old.  For his 70th birthday, he rode his Harley 700 miles.  Like all bikers, he loves Steppenwolf, but unlike Steppenwolf-lovin'-biker-posers, he's always been a fan, as evidenced by the 8-track shown above.  And he's always been a biker, although he had to go without a bike for many years when we were growing up.  In the past ten or fifteen years though, he's gotten back into it with a vengeance!  This time on a real hog!

 

About a week before the show, Dad called to cancel, telling me he needed to get his eyes checked before he could ride at night again.

 

"You know, Dad, we could take the car..."

 

(long pause)

 

"Yeah, yeah we could.  OK let's do that."

 

I love my Dad.

 

Then I finally got around to checking the innerwebs for details about the concert.  It was so much more than a Steppenwolf show, it was Bikes!  Bikinis!  and Bands!  A benefit for esophogeal cancer, which apparently claimed the life of Earl, formerly of Harley Davidson of Cartersville.  The thing that got me even more stoked for the show was the opening band, one of my personal favorite dinosaur bands:  Mother's Finest.  Hell yes.  I defy anyone to listen to one of their first two albums and not dance even just a little.  Try it.

 

Anyway, Dad and I had a blast at the show.  We got there in the middle of the MF set, but they saved all their best tunes for last anyway, so it didn't matter.  The chick lead singer looked amazing!  And they sounded the same, tight and funky and full of rock.  Here goes Mother's Finest:

 

 

Then out came Steppenwolf.  Earlier I had asked Kevs if he wanted to come with us, but he said no, he wanted to remember them as they were when he saw them in concert.  In 1975.  On their reunion tour.  I am assuming since he didn't have a car then that they got to the show via pteranodon, but I digress.  Steppenwolf put on a good show, but at the same time I think Kevs made a good call.  There are two types of old man voice, the raspy Grandpa Simpson kind and the parkinsonian Jimmy Stewart voice.  Unfortunately, John Kay has developed the second type of old man voice.  The good news is that they were also very tight, they appeared to all be in very good shape despite their advanced age, and the crowd had a great time.  Here goes Steppenwolf:

 

 

Here goes me and Dad raisin' some hell at Steppenwolf.

 

 

Oh, you forgot who Mother's Finest is?  I'm headed over to Once Possessed to get their albums on vinyl again this weekend!  And probably a bunch of other stuff too.  Well, you don't know what we can find. 

 

Oh, you forgot who Steppenwolf is?  It's ok.  Forgetting stuff is part of the fun of life.

New Music Tuesday: How does this happen?

This song caught my ear a few months ago:



It's nice.  It's a bit of an earworm, and I'd find myself humming the tune sometimes.  XMU has been playing it on regular rotation for the past, oh four months I'd say, at least.  So one day I got it stuck in my head and I wanted to hear it.  I looked it up on Spotify - no deal.  That's cool, not everyone wants their music on Spotify.  Then I checked Amazon to see if I could download a copy, and I did find it, but it was not to be released yet until July 23, a couple of weeks ago.  OK, so maybe I'll check their discog and find some old stuff I like, too.  Guess what?  It's their debut single.  On New Music Tuesday, July 23, 2013, they released a debut single with a b-side.

(I have to stop here and say yes, I did find it early on in the process on youtube, as well as their b-side, and I listened to them.  Please.  I'm an IT Professional.)

So my question is, how can a band who has not even released a single yet be getting constant airplay of their debut single for months on satellite radio?  Could someone please answer this for me?  How does this happen?

The boys are cute, but not THAT cute, and I find their psychedelic imagery on their video pretty derivative, but it's a great, catchy little song.  The only thing I could think of was that perhaps Temples was made up of members of other bands who had already made it on the 'indy' circuit, so I looked them up.  There's not much info out there about them, but no, they're a brand new band from the UK.  They formed and then added their drummer, who was formerly from the band The Hot Melts, another hard-rocking britpop group (which I tend to be a sucker for, btw).  Here goes The Hot Melts:



But, I don't really see where The Hot Melts took the world by enough storm to get Temples on XMU four months before their debut single was released.

For the record, my awesome band published our demo almost a year ago and I practically have to beg my best friends to listen to it.  None of whom are influential music people.  Anyway, don't get me wrong, I still like Shelter Song and now I like The Hot Melts too, but does anyone know how something like this happens?  How were they playing at a psych fest in London almost a year ago?  Anyone?

Anyway, here goes some sleaze rock awesomeness:

jamz du jour: deep purple and the creation

deep purple is a great name for a band! here they go:

their song emmaretta has been on repeat in my head today




it has such a killer facemelt in it.

it was in my head today cause i listened to in the car on the way to werk, its on the mojo mix heavy mod, which i got from willard's wormholes! so awesome. 

the other song playing all day on and off on heavy rotation in my mind was how does it feel by the creation. which is another amazing name for a band.  although i was honestly disappointed when i realized it was "the" creation, because "creation" would have been way heavier. here they go:

here goes that song:




this song was also on that mix and it got me all curious about mod. i had to research at werk today. i also felt compelled to donate money (a small sum) to wikipedia because it is like my number one resource for all information. you wanna know about mods? wikipedia. you wanna research some obscure molecule you need to know about for werk? wikipedia. u wanna fall down a wikipedia hole for several hours about abu dhabi, oman, nepal, the annapurnas, the highest mountains in the world, arabic clothing, and burqinis? wikipedia.

behold: the burqini

so anyway i got all interested in mod. wtf is mod? i recall when i first started at GSU (in the 90's) there was a handful of "mod" looking kids. they made an impression on me because they had such a tight style, but i really never knew what the hell music were they listening too. (i still think i don't, wasnt there some kind of mod "revival" in preceeding decades? unsure.) the wikipedia entry has loads of interesting info about how it was basically the precursor to psych rock and hippies, and spin offs included skinheads, swinging londaon, and rude boys. how the fuck is that for variety?!

but i still feel like i could use a documentary or something to sort it all out. i tried a search but the only flick i could come up with was this swedish documentary about these two  little shitstains raising hell:


 it opens up promising enough, and it was entertaining enough, although i kind of didnt like the guys at all, so that sort of ruined the whole thing. but its an interesting look back in time/place. perhaps it left me with more questions than before- any recommendations of a documentary about the mod subculture??