At Fillmore East

#291 Heard Before? Yup, a long time ago. Notes: - blues is really not my genre anymore, and i typically avoid these types of guitar-solo-heavy recordings. - however, this is just as compelling as the hype would have it, and the solos go beyond the typical weedly-weedlie stunting of most rock bands. - some of the most exciting harmonica playing i know of. - the mix is fantastic! - they obviously have such deep knowledge and respect for blues history. - "Whipping Post" is always worth it, but my favorite is "Elizabeth Reed". - the Frere Jacques and Joy to the World quotes get me every time. - i accidentally loaded up the six hour version with all the takes, and listened to most of it. I even survived 35 minutes of "Mountain Jam". Verdict: Grudging admiration. This really is the absolute peak of white dude blues rock. Listen Again? Not for a very long time, but I had a great time today. Thanks, 1001!

One of the greatest live albums of all time and I’m glad it’s on this list. Such a brilliant blend of blues, R&B, country, rock and jazz. The modal jazz influence is particularly interesting, especially on Liz Reed and Hot ‘Lanta. A really important album for me and has been a huge favourite for years. REMEMBER DUANE ALLMAN

There are some fucking long ass jams on this album. But they are great long jams.

A classic, no doubt. Perhaps one of the best Live albums ever made. Blues lends itself to being a great springboard for jamming out and it is used as such here as well. I really like anything they do and this is their magnus opus. Everything just comes together here to be great. My favorites are the side long jams where they just go ham and do everything. Explaining why you enjoy an album is harder than explaining why you don't like something so that's all I can say haha.

WoW- I forgot how grateful this album is! It rocks non-stop from the first track to last.. and the jam sessions are amazing!!! Love the album cover...wonder what was said ti get everyone to crack up? So wish I got a chance to see them = \ = too bad the Bros are gone, 'cause there's a man down there might be your man, I don't know...

One of my desert island records. Probably a top-ten album of all time for me, and one that I know so intimately I could practically play the whole thing in my head. *At Fillmore East* is everything I love about the Allman Brothers Band, everything I love about blues rock, and really, everything I love about music in general. It's an absolute masterpiece. Duane Allman is at his peak here. The tone, the phrasing, the slide work, the interplay with Dickey Betts. Just astonishing stuff. And what makes it so special isn't simply the technical brilliance, although there's plenty of that. It's the way these guys listen to each other, respond to each other, and build something collectively that none of them could have created alone. Gregg sounds phenomenal, his voice carrying that impossibly soulful, world-weary blues quality that somehow sounds like it belongs to a man three times his age. And the rhythm section is just a monster. Two drummers, Berry Oakley's bass weaving through everything, and the whole band moving together like some enormous, six-headed organism. And the songs. Jesus Christ, the songs. "Statesboro Blues" is about as perfect an opening statement as you could ask for. "Done Somebody Wrong" and "Stormy Monday" are fantastic, but it's when the band really starts stretching out that this album becomes something transcendent. "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" is one of the greatest instrumental performances in rock history. The interplay between Duane and Dickey, the way the improvisation builds and evolves, the shifting dynamics, the sheer musical conversation happening between everyone onstage. It's breathtaking. And then there's "Whipping Post." Seventeen minutes of absolute fucking glory. That entire final side of the original record is just massive. The song starts with that iconic bass line, Gregg sounds like he's singing from the bottom of his soul, and then the band just takes off into another dimension. The tension, the release, the extended solos, the way everything seems to fall apart and then miraculously come back together. It's not just a long song. It's a journey. And even after hearing it countless times, I still get completely swept up in it. This album, along with Cream's first couple of records, was really my introduction to the idea of the extended rock jam. Before I even knew what a jam band was, I knew that there was something about a group of extraordinary musicians taking a blues progression and spending fifteen or twenty minutes exploring every possible corner of it that absolutely fascinated me. The thrill of a seventeen-minute blues improvisation turned me on infinitely more than any three-minute pop song ever could. I wanted the solos to keep going. I wanted to hear where the musicians would take things next. I loved that the same song could be played differently every night, that the magic was happening in real time, and that nobody, including the musicians themselves, necessarily knew exactly where it was going. And I think that experience fundamentally shaped my musical tastes. My love of improvisation, blues guitar, long-form instrumental passages, and musicians who can communicate through their instruments rather than simply reproduce a studio recording all traces back, at least in part, to records like this one. It's probably also why I've always gravitated toward guitarists like Duane Allman, Clapton, and Hendrix over the more technically acrobatic shredders who came later. There's a conversational quality to this kind of playing. It's about feel, phrasing, spontaneity, and knowing when to play and when to let the music breathe. The recording itself is fantastic, too. There's a warmth and immediacy to it that makes you feel like you're sitting somewhere in the Fillmore East, watching this incredible band do what they do best. You can hear the instruments clearly, but it never feels sterile or overly polished. It's raw and organic without sacrificing fidelity. And unlike so many live albums, there's absolutely no sense that the band is just running through its greatest hits for an audience. These are the definitive versions of these songs. In many cases, the studio recordings almost feel like sketches compared with what happens here. There's also something bittersweet about listening to Duane at the absolute height of his powers, knowing how little time he had left. He sounds completely fearless, completely in command of his instrument, and completely immersed in the music. The fact that he was only 24 when he died later that year is almost impossible to comprehend. What he accomplished in such a short time, and what he might have gone on to accomplish, is one of rock music's great tragedies. I know this record like the back of my hand. Every solo, every transition, every little musical flourish. And somehow, after all these years, it still sounds as exciting to me as it did when I first discovered it. That's the mark of something truly special. Not just an album you admire, or one you recognize as historically important, but one that's become part of your musical DNA. One of the greatest live albums ever recorded. One of the greatest blues-rock albums ever recorded. Hell, one of the greatest rock albums ever recorded, period. 10/10. Perfect. Desert island stuff.

Easy enough listen, good blues rock band playing at the top of their game, plenty of groove here. Gets a bit samey for the one listen if you're not a huge fan but that's more down to the length of the record than anything else, there's a load of extended jams here. You wouldn't hear any track of this and go "this is awful", it all sounds fairly good. 6/10

Much noodling, not much groove from an otherwise very competent band. Surprising.

I wouldn’t run to turn this off but I would never choose to turn it on

Meh. Pretty basic blues jams to my ears.

Allman brothers hang it tf up

Du blues, très répétitif, assez long, des plans de guitare qui reviennent encore et encore... C'est assumé mais vraiment pas ce que j'ai envie d'écouter.

9/10

BANGER

Some top tier blues, no doubt about that. Its the type of music that focuses on the impressivness of the instrumental playing, such as ridiculously long guitars solos, which are impressive, don't get me wrong, but less my personal kind of blues. An all time live album? Probably. The kind of thing I would listen too often? Ehhh...

Great southern rock band. Good live album

I hate you

This was a southern, bluesy style live rock album. The songs are mostly instrumental and there's lots of improvised jamming. It wasn't super meandering, I thought it was nice to listen to. My favorite song (and the one with the jamming I enjoyed the most) was "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed".

I have this album from 1971. 5 stars all day long. My high school friends and I had an anti establishment, anti Nixon, anti Vietnam war underground newspaper we called The Whipping Post. We printed it from mimeograph sheets and distributed it around the school. Good times. This album was one of the best.

A live masterpiece.

I do not find most live albums appealing. This is not an exception.

Banger

It's blues. Hard not to enjoy but also, hard for me to tell myself to listen to this more than once. There's really good choruses and the solos have a great feeling to them, though some do last for quite a long time (up to you to decide if you like that or not). Overall, it's quite good but, it might be a bit less for me is all.

Bueno, muy muy bueno 7/10

Great album by a great band

American Southern blues rock jam band album at its peak. And it's live.

Right, it's blues. Like if Muddy Waters kept going. Really nothing else to be said for it. Maybe if I'm generous some of the chords are a bit jazzy? You Don't Love Me is a bit fun, but why so long? Oh, just ages of soloing and vague improv It does get a bit more jammy and jazzy throughout I guess, but still too long. Oh god, then the last track is 23mins long!! Dammit this album makes itself hard to like! Best track - You Don't Love Me (but it's too long), Hot Lanta (is short at least), In Memory of Elizabeth Reed 3 stars - in places I love the jazzy jam, in other places the standard blues bore me to death. Probably one of the patchiest albums I've had so far!

Sounds like it would have been great to be there but this long jam session doesn't really translate well to the album format for me.

Allman brothers and a lot of it

Surprising even myself, I actually enjoyed this one. I wasn't familiar with any of these songs before, so hearing them for the first time in a live setting did bring something else out from them. The songs being stretched out makes the track less about the song itself and more about the performance, and these guys are certainly very proficient musicians. Immaculate atmosphere, really transports you to the early 70's. Key tracks: Statesboro Blues

Classic "blues rock" records tend to age poorly, but this one still sound great. The longer cuts are the best.

5/5

An amazing set done by the Allman Brothers Band at the height of their power. Plenty of blues licks, southern dance jams with a quality that's pretty much unparalleled. "Stormy Monday" is a beautiful slow burner of a blues track, "You Don't Love Me" is a jam masterpiece with a solo that transcends blues and enters funk, and even metal territory, and how can we forget the monolithic, epic, and downright just plain huge, Whipping Post. I'm not a fan of live albums, or double album wank fests, but this here is basically a tutorial on how to wank your life out on a double platter and still leave someone like me amused. Props to the band, and especially Duane, who leaves me captivated with every listen.

i love long smooth instrumentals

I discovered The Allman Brothers Band in college, had their greatest hits CD, and didn’t really listen again once I graduated. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Seeing The Allman Brothers Band live would have been amazing. I can only imagine what it would be like to see and hear all those guitar riffs! This album is solid. I must confess that I skipped the 32-minute “Mountain Jam” though. Their sound is so special and the way that they rock so hard while also being so bluesy is awesome.

7.5/10. Certainly a different live show experience than the current day offers, it was filled with a lot of riffing, instrumentation, and less structured songs than many concerts, which made for an interesting listen. Long instrumentals, 20+ minute songs, and not much produced music released before this meant it was more about improvisation and creating something unique and interesting. I enjoyed the music style, though I might not do the full album again; it was nice for background, however.

Great music, but super long.

another really well done live album. that said, i dont really enjoy the jam band thing when not actually listening live. it sounds like it wouldve been a lot of fun though

Ok - I initially approached this thinking "oh great, more derivative rock blues". But I actually enjoyed this. I don't think it's greatest album of all time material. Nowhere near the Miles Cellar Door sessions. But it was fun.

Nettes BluesRock-Album. Spannend lange Tracks um viele Nuancen des HiFi-Systems zu genießen.

I love live albums i love live albums i love quotes in music i love knowing that the albums going to end when that lullaby song comes on i love the groove SO sad that an 18 min song doesnt usually flow in a playlist (I WILL make it happen tho) 5/7

노래 분위기가 꽤 괜찮았고, 좋은 노래도 몇 곡 있었다. The songs were pretty good; there were some really great tracks.

jam session dann doch irgendwann nur noch Brei? c

Very bluesy. Good energy. Fun album

Really nice to listen to while working. It's personally not super distracting but also enjoyable and high energy. I'm enjoying the fact that it's all instrumental, makes it very good for how I normally listen to music. These are LONG tracks though, so the album is actually like 4 times the length I expected.

Impressive instrumental, what a cool listen :)

This is a very good album. Greg Allman has a great voice. A bluesy, soulful voice. The guitar playing is phenomenal. I assume most of the work is done by Duane Allman. They do a combination of covers and original songs. The covers are blues songs. On a lot of the songs the have long long jams in my opinion sometimes too long. This is a period in music where this happened a lot. Punk/New Wave was a reaction to that. The organ playing is quite good. The album cover is quite interesting. They look like a bunch of hippies. This is very good album. Four stars

Regular usual The Allman Brothers Band experience, love it

I enjoyed that much more than I thought I would. I typically don't like live albums, but the noodling of the blues was really nice to listen to while working. The vocals were kinda nothing, though.

Favorite track(s): Statesboro Blues, Stormy Monday, You Don't Love Me, Hot 'Lanta, In Memory of Elizabeth Reed, Whipping Post This is what people think Lynyrd Skynyrd sounds like. Maybe it was for the best that Duane wasn't around to see them. Heard before Previous rating: 9/10

Decent if unremarkable live album. Musicians sound really good without gripping me. 3/5

Eh.

This fucks so hard

Dangerously close to awful, but it’s not. Incredible.

In Memory of Elizabeth Reed is nice

3★/5 10.05.2026

Look, it’s a live album. Allman brothers are great, but you know, live album.

Jam bands have a certain you-had-to-be-there element to their appeal, eh? I do broadly like blues rock, and certain jam bands I like a lot, but I find the bluesier jam bands tend to fall back on just soloing on a very well trodden riff for far too long. By the time this gets to Elizabeth Reed there are some super great vibes going, but the fact that it opens straight into extremely middle of the road blues stompers that feel like middle of the set filler type tracks is absolutely heinous to me. Where’s the sense of vision, atmosphere and journey? If you’re going to play long form psychedelic music I need to be taken on a full arc, not just dropped in to a lukewarm riff and have that extended into a bunch of show-off solos.

a fun listen, wasn’t super locked into this tho

ok - not sure why it is considered so great...

A great example of why I don't generally like live albums. Three excessively lengthy tracks with extended, indulgent solos. Perhaps I would have loved this if I was off my rocker on LSD in a field in the 1970s. To listen to at home on a rainy Friday afternoon, it just feels like it's wasting my time. Aside from that, most of the songs sounded like basically the same blues structure to me. I don't like giving it a 1 - musically it's OK, albeit not my cup of tea - but with the last track over 20 minutes I'm not sure I can award a 2.

If you love that blues rock sound, you'll probably love this album. The last track did insist on itself though, maybe someone likes to listen to 20 minutes of solos, not for me though.

Not the greatest live album I’ve heard. I felt like there was no need for this? Other live albums are capturing the sound and energy of the crowd, which I think is a big part of live albums, but this had none of that. Maybe if I knew the songs better beforehand, then I’d appreciate the live versions better? But as it stands, it was just okay.

This album’s a whole lotta fun, until it’s kinda not anymore

Riktigt bra liveskiva med långa partier av solon. Flera långa låtar.

Decent little jam album

Absolutely crazy lengths on some of the songs, but the album was overall pretty nice. I enjoyed leaving it in the background while I was working and it had this nice rock-y blues-y vibe. I assume this album was pretty nice back in the day, although it seems to be fully instrumental, which is interesting.

One of the greatest live albums ever released. The allman bros at the peak of their powers, everyone one in the band has their moment to shine, but Duane’s slide never sounded better and it’s a god damn shame that motorcycles were invented because the world would be a better place if we had more Duane Allman. It should be mentioned this is a cornerstone album for me, I’ve listened to it countless times, but I don’t think I’ve really caught how instrumental betts was to the band. In the memory of e reed, for me is the best track and it’s all Dicky Betts. Easy 5.

no

Very cool double live record of fusion-laced jams that even verge upon prog in some patches.

Masterful Soul Rock album. Despite my aversion for live albums in the most part, the quality of the immaculate guitar work cannot be understated and makes the album a dynamic and enjoyable listen despite the extended runtime. While this is the magnus opus of their discography, I still find it somewhat rare that 'Eat a Peach' was not included in the list. 9/10 [KEEP]

The best to ever do it.

nice meandering album for a crisp bright september morning. i love the blues. also love the story behind the cover

Sooooo boring. Didn’t finish

This album is 76 minutes long and only has 7 songs on it. I’m not a big fan of jam bands, but I could listen to Duane Altman and Dickey Betts play for at least 76 minutes and 22 seconds. The guitar work here is fascinating it’s like a southern rock version of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. What I’m saying is if you are whining about this just because it’s long and jammy, show some consistency in your music opinions. 4.4

I’m not a huge fan of live albums so this didn’t really work for me

Enjoy a nice jam band

Taký južanský blues rock... Milujem blues, ale toto mi nesedí...

It’s jam band. It’s good jam band, but it’s jam band

Love this slumber so much, incredible blues vibes and classic rock, highly recommend.

I would have loved this in highschool, but I'm too impatient for jam blues rock now

Every time I listen to a new live album on this list, I get a different idea of how artists approach live albums. For the Allman Brothers, their approach is to take their songs and turn them into sprawling, improvised jam sessions, and the results are great. This rendition of Whipping Post, the final song on the album, is nearly 25 minutes long, but the band does so much with that time that it feels earned. The original is a solid 5 minutes, but the version here is a multi-phased saga, cycling through different tempos and arrangements in such a skilled way that you would think the band rehearsed it ahead of time. The band is also smart enough to break up these longer tracks with more straightforward renditions. Plus, the original songs at the core are excellent, a batch of straightforward but soulful blues rock that's absolutely infectious.

Loved this, the feeling of everyone in the room vibing really comes across; it sounds like the band are having a blast, and the jams are good. No particular song grabbed me and wouldn't let go, so I won't give this 5 stars, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable listen

It's jam band time. The allman brothers are the fathers of the stadium jam band. Enjoy?

Very fun! The guitar was ripping on this.

That's an awful lot of notes.

Most live albums are whatever, but I appreciated the riffs and spontaneous nature of this one more than I typically do with long jam songs.

The live album ratio of this project is far too high. They are like watching a friend's video of a concert - easy to appreciate but no where near as enjoyable as being there. As the Allman Brothers Band are a jam band I expect noodling, length and deep cuts for fans. ----------------------------------------------------------- This was an utter chore despite them being very good instrumentalists. The blues fundamentals do not move me, the length of the tracks ail me. The live fuzziness makes it far less enjoyable. The songs themselves just passed me by. Decent background music to railroad tycoon I guess. The first two tracks had a trajectory towards a 2 but then we got stuck in a siding for 20 minutes of noodling diversions. Sorry lads. 1*

A 78 minute live jam session? Not for me, baby! Each song starts well, but my ears would glaze over after ten minutes of noodling.

not my style of music

LIVE ALBUMS DO NOT COUNT.

Lightning in a bottle. One of the greatest live recordings of all time.

Hell yea.

Oh hell yes!!!!!! To be here letting those guitar licks hit you in the face would have been magical. 4.4

Excellent blues jamming! My personal style of jamming is a little less…indulgent?…in the solos, but I still really enjoyed this. 8/10 Most Excellent

Singing was gorgeous, playing was gorgeous. There were a couple of tracks that maybe went on too long for me, but I really enjoyed it. Really nice to have on while working, felt uplifting. Fav song: Statesboro Blues Least fav: In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed

I did need to take a slight break between the last two songs as it was getting too jammy for me, but this is a pretty good album. Slightly shorter and I would love it. Specific rating - 4.1 Fav song: statesboro blues Least fav: stormy Monday

What I've learnt from reading their wikipedia pages is that I shouldn't ride a motorcycle until I'm 25. Also despite two of the band members dying at age 24 the band still managed at least 15 marriages between them. I can't cope with eighty minutes of guitar licks, it's too much for me. The "Jam sesh" is just the rock version of self indulgent Jazz improv- maybe one day I'll meet a 20 minute song that I like but today isn't that day. Favourite song: Statesboro Blues Least: You Don't Love Me

Well, I had something snarky all teed up when I saw this pop up today. The thing, though, is that it’s pretty excellent. It’s a pretty wonderful mix of blues and rock, and even though I’m not generally a huge fan of jam bands, this one hits just right. 3.5 stars, but I’ll tip it to 4 stars because I don’t detect any overt country music influences, and the guitar work is absolutely exceptional.

Thought it was solid. Nothing stood out tho, wish they experimented w diff instruments like sax. Still sounded good