I have pushed Wolfgang’s Vault before… and it is videos like this that explain why…
I know I was moving back to the albums… and did a great, new EP yesterday… but this came in my email and come on!!! What else could I do???
Today I have you audio AND visual… and one of my favorite songs… Yes, I know, my list is long.
You can become a free member or a VIP member for $48 (which gets you $50 credit) and when certain downloads go on sale you can stretch that credit out and get them for less than $5 each… Kind of a no brainer. And of course they have some amazing shows.
The Allman Brothers Band – “Whipping Post”
Way too often I feel like I have been tied to the Whipping Post. We all do… And when we get our asses or lives kicked like that, this is a damn good song to listen to… Hell, this is always a damn good song to listen to.
This version is short… coming in at under 12 minutes. The one on At Filmore East (frickin’ love that record) is almost double that!!! Talk about a jam band.
I’ll let Wikipedia fill you in on the deets… They are good!
“Whipping Post” is a song by The Allman Brothers Band. Written by Gregg Allman, the five-minute studio version first appeared on their 1969 debut album The Allman Brothers Band. But the song’s full power only manifested itself in concert, when it was the basis for much longer and more intense performances. This was captured in a classic take on the Allman Brothers’ equally classic 1971 double live album At Fillmore East, where a 23-minute epic rendition takes up the entire final side. It was this recording that garnered “Whipping Post” spots on both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll list and Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.”
“Gregg Allman was 21 years old when the song was first recorded. Its writing dates back to late March 1969, when The Allman Brothers Band was first formed. Gregg had failed to make a name for himself as a musician during a late-1960s stint in Los Angeles, and was on the verge of quitting music altogether when his brother Duane Allman called and said his new band needed a vocalist. Gregg showed the band 22 songs he had written, but only “Dreams” and “It’s Not My Cross to Bear” were deemed usable. Gregg, the group’s only songwriter at the time, was commissioned to create additional songs that would fit into the context of the new band, and in the next five days he wrote several, including “Whipping Post”.
“Gregg’s travails in the music business would provide the thematic inspiration for the new song, which was written quickly on an ironing board cover: He later said: “It came so fast. I didn’t even have a chance to get the paper out. That’s the way the good songs come—they just hit you like a ton of bricks.”
“The blues rock song’s lyrics center on a metaphorical whipping post, an evil woman and futile existential sorrow. Writer Jean-Charles Costa described the studio version’s musical structure as a “solid framework of [a] song that lends itself to thousands of possibilities in terms of solo expansion. … [It is] in modified 3/4 time, building to a series of shrieking lead guitar statements, and reaching full strength in the chorus supported by super dual-lead guitar.” The result was called by Rolling Stone an “enduring anthem … rife with tormented blues-ballad imagery”.
The result for me is one of the greatest songs ever written… live or studio version… but to see a band be able to air something out in an honest, unpretentious and incredible way is breath-taking… truly…
The irony of what I just said is this… I have NEVER seen the Allman Brothers Band live… I was supposed to go a few times and something always happened… Duane Allman of course is gone… October 29, 1971… a motorcycle accident in Macon, GA. Berry Oakley is gone… Dying three blocks from where Duane crashed, almost a year to the day later… November 11, 1972. Each were 24… What a loss… and damn if I have not done much as an artist with my life… Shame on me!
They are still out there, playing with the likes of geniuses Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks, so I may get my chance… but damn…
Sometimes I do feel like I have been ties to the Whipping Post… Take me down… take me down!
