Feast your eyes and ears on The Allmans Brothers Band burning the house down in their indisputable prime, live at the Fillmore East on September 23, 1970. This was about seven months before their classic At Fillmore East live album was recorded there.

This is a pure pleasure, seeing the best blues-rock band America ever produced improvising at their all time peak. “Whipping Post” begins in 11/4 time, almost placing the Allmans—for one song at least—into some sort of quasi Southern-fried Prog Rock continuum. The version that appears on the At Fillmore East album clocked in at a never boring 23-minutes, taking up an entire side, but this blistering, rampage through the song is just eleven and a half minutes long, as if they’re cramming all the energy of their more expansive jams into half the time. The band, still young and hungry at this point—and with something to prove—produce full “lift-off” here.

The group is Gregg Allman, Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Berry Oakley, Butch Trucks, and Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson. Their pal Tom Doucette sat in on harmonica and percussion during this set.

“Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’”
“Dreams”
“In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed”
“Whipping Post”

Duane and Dickey Bett’s dueling guitars on “Dreams” is not to be missed, but for fuck’s sake why didn’t the camera operators ever shoot their fingers?!?!