Allman Brothers, yep those Allman Brothers

This weekend I made it to the Allman Brothers show in Raleigh. Now, don't get me wrong, I grew up with southern rock. There was a time when I could not understand how anyone could not like Skynyrd, but having grown jaded to most "commercial" music foisted upon us by the industry, I wasn't expecting too much from this show, even though the ABs are veterans verging on senior citizens (well, the original guys anyway) of the music industry. But when you get right down to it, when a band is cranking it out on stage in front of an appreciative audience, the mind numbing sameness of the industry doesn't mean all that much. I was pretty much able to leave my avant-punk attitude at the door and have a good time.

The highlights of the night for me were the soaring lead guitar lines the Allman's specialize in. The solos pretty well rocked, though I found myself wanting more passion from the drum solo.

Of course, we were on the lawn, the only semi-affordable way to go to large shows these days. It was I think the highest concentration of hippies I have been around since my last Dead show, in 198_. Probably the highest hippies as well.

While the Allman's were in their early years in the 70's, across the pond there was a band just getting started in England named Ultravox. I saw this link in Slashdot today with Ultravox drummer Warren Cann. Ultravox were at the forefront of what we kids called New Wave. Anyway, it's a long interview and I haven't finished reading it, but I didn't want to lose the link, so you get to enjoy it too! I actually found that interview on Slashdot from a commenter on this story about the technology of They Might Be Giants. Link to the TMBG interview is here.

So there ya have it all: southern nostalgia, Brit wave, and "other". Hmm, how would you classify TMBG?