At Fillmore East

At Fillmore East is a Southern rock album by Allman Brothers Band, released in July of 1971 (see 1971 in music). Their breakthrough success, At Fillmore East remains one of the top-selling albums in the band's catalogue, is one of the critical heights of their career, and "is generally accepted as the greatest live recording in the history of rock music", in the opinion of Popmatters.com's Chuck Hicks http://popmatters.com/music/reviews/a/allmanbrothersband-road.html.

Related Topics:
Southern rock - Allman Brothers Band - 1971 - 1971 in music

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Recorded at the Fillmore East music club, the legendary rock venue in New York City, it showcased the band's unique mixture of jazz, classical music, hard rock and blues. "Stormy Monday" was a definitive slow blues which showcased Duane Allman's guitar work, "Whipping Post" became the standard for a long, epic jam that never lost interest (opening in 11/8 time, somewhat unusual territory for a rock band), while the ethereal-to-furious "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", with its dual lead slide guitars, invited comparisons with John Coltrane.

Related Topics:
Fillmore East - New York City - Jazz - Classical music - Hard rock - Blues - Time - Slide guitar - John Coltrane

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The album was produced by Tom Dowd, who condensed the running time of various songs, even merging more than one performance onto one track. At Fillmore East peaked at #13 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart.

Related Topics:
Produced - Tom Dowd - Billboard

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Several songs recorded during the same set of shows, including "One Way Out", "Trouble No More", and the memorable "Mountain Jam", were later released on Eat a Peach, the latter spanning two sides of the double album. "Mountain Jam" is based on Donovan's "First There Is A Mountain" and features all of the band's members in extensive solos. This song clearly shows the band playing at its best.

Related Topics:
Eat a Peach - Donovan

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Those songs were later included in their entirety, along with un-cut versions of some, re-edited versions of others, and some previously un-included tracks, on a new release of the Fillmore material entitled The Fillmore Concerts. "Stormy Monday" gained back a harmonica solo, and "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'" and "Drunken Hearted Boy" were now included as well.

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2003 saw the release of a two disc version of Live At Fillmore East. It compiled all the released versions of the Fillmore material, some material from the Duane Allman Anthology and the Dreams box set, and remixed the material with a better soundstage than the 1992 Fillmore Concerts.

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In 2003 the TV network VH1 named At Fillmore East the 59th greatest album of all time.

Related Topics:
2003 - TV network - VH1

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