A Flute Player Fer Chrissakes!

 The flute player made me do it.  A flute player, fer chrissakes! 

Once again, its been forever and a day since I wrote here.  Lotta heavy water over the dam since last one.  I've a hankerin' to write again.  See what I can see about the unseen role denial is playing in this insanely crazy time we're living in.   And more specifically, my own and the role it plays in my life.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll get to what's in the water and spill my guts about it. 

But not tonite. 

Its a Friday nite and I'm sittin' here groovin on Jackson Brown's Pandora station and Marshall Tucker plays Can't You See.    And I have an immediate flashback to a late Sunday afternoon long ago as I often do whenever I hear an MTB song.  I've been a fan since day one and day one was that Sunday for a park full of hippies, hippie haters, and hippie wanna be's with a fair 'nuff sprinklin' of bona fide red necks and bikers thrown in.  A menagerie of humanity hanging from their collective finger tips at the edge of a bottomless abyss gathered up together with a common want - deliverance!  On that Sunday Central City park in Macon Georgia was a scene reminiscent of  Sunday afternoons not long gone to Macon or up in Piedmont Park in Atlanta where the Allman Brothers Band would show up, jamb all day and into the night and blow everybody away on a regular basis.

Or, so I was told. And since, have read.  Cuz that was right before my time in Macon.  Before disaster.  By the time I'd gotten down there in '72 they'd blown the lid off the top and were in a free fall crash into apparent oblivion.  Almost exactly 1 month to the day before fatal lightning struck for the 2nd time in a year.

There was hunger.  Macon had the unique experience of a back stage pass dealt only to them.  An all access pass to the birth of what came to be known as Southern Rock.  A brand new genre in a blues rock style that so many were emulating back in the day, the Brothers had evolved it into its purest form yet.  A sub-genre to what I like to call just plain ole roots rock.  And then, disaster!  The kinda stuff with real life in it as Neil Young would say.  Back before the techno know-it-alls started messin round bombardin the breath out of a breathin entity, blasted into dirty digits.  Kinda like the anti-life process of bombardin' living genes to 'modify' 'em in the name of 'progress'.

First, Duane.     Ranked 2nd only to Jimmy Hendrix on Rolling Stone's list of greatest guitar players of all time, Wilson Pickett, right after his astonishing cut of Hey Jude was in the can  down in Jimmy Hall's Muscle Shoals studio, had dubbed him -- Sky Man.  'Cuz his amazing riffs seemed to come intuitively channeled from the ethers creating improvisations that quietly, sweetly, filled in the blanks.  Or, as was the case with Hey Jude, put a phenomenal exclamation mark exactly where it was needed.  That monicker then magically morphed into Skydog.       

And then, Barry.  In the cumulative club of rock n roll bass players, Barry stood alone.  Back in those days nobody bent the strings on a bass quite like Barry.  Or since for that matter.

The chemistry.  The alchemy from which it all fuzed together.  The two elixirs that, when mixed together, made gold.  Literally!  A new magic.  A sound that had only been barely heard between the notes up til then.  And the really kewl part about it? 

THEY KNEW IT!!    Though they'd each recognized their own unique style they each had carried within a genius waiting for the right muse to manifest.  Their coming together in the late 60's to jamb down in Jacksonville was that muse.   Influenced by their shared love of the music of mostly rural, mostly little known, mostly black, roots n blues artists sprinkled across the landscape of the deep south who had walked the crookedest of roads on that landscape before them.  Setting the stage.  Opening the space for the unique blend that could only surface from within each of them through those influences, surfacing for the first time, in that jamb.  Differentiated vibrations so magnetically attracted to one another and in such a pure form when combined as to open the door to an entirely new sub-genre:  Southern Rock.  Many claim it to be dead today.  A thing of the past.  I know damn well that's bullshit.  You can hear the influences of its founding fathers woven into the styles of many players all across the entire spectrum of contemporary rock artists and beyond into several genres.  Just as you can hear the influences of those little known who had walked before them in the riffs of Duane and Berry.   Together, and then as a band, they could whip the post like no others.  How could a sound and a delivery so laid back, so natural, be so loudly profound and definitive at the same time?

They had no idea where it was gonna take 'em but, they knew they'd conceived a brand new baby.  One of the few who come along every once in awhile and set a new paradigm.  That one grain of sand that drops and the whole pile has a seismic shift.  A spike in the energy field that pegs the magnetism meter.   Gregg, Dicky, Butch, Jaimoe?  Absolutely essential in the blend of that chemistry.  Rounding out the potion that became the Allman Brothers Band.  But Duane and Barry were the core with the others pushing them on to new heights.  Witnessed by the roles each played as the voice of leadership of the band.  When Duane went down, Berry took up the role pushing the band that was pushing the edge.  And then, they were gone.

The Brothers mesmerized an entire generation.  Nah, zoned out on drugs, some of you might say?  Good point Gladys!  BUT, you can't cut to the bone, connect on energies that, up until the Brothers had been flowing so unrequitedly through the hearts of so many and mesmerize them for 45 years on drugs alone.  There's something a whole lot deeper happenin'.  Something that transcends differences and unites a commonality in a very unique way that fulfills a primal need on a vibratory level. 

But at the time, it appeared the Brothers were toast.  Any band of human beings would have been pushed over the cliff by the magnitude of the shear reality left in the wake of what the Brothers had created between March of '69 and that Sunday in the park.   The disturbing demise, exacerbated by they, themselves and the biz'ness and all that goes round n round in the land of sex drugs and rock n roll, pulling themselves down, down, down into the depths of self-destruction.  Sinking, sinking as fast as they'd ascended, higher and higher until, they were regarded by many as the best damn live rock band of the day.  And still are in some circles.  And then they crashed.  Into what appeared to be impending death.  And Macon had front row seats to a show with an edge to it known only to them.  A horror show at that!

To the hippies the Brothers and their new sound brought a sense of identity and credibility.   The whole point of hippiedom was about searching for an identity.  Something, anything other than what the generation that had fathered them had to offer.  To the rednecks the south had risen again.  They didn't have to wait for Charlie Daniels, another artist recording out of Macon, to pronounce it in song a few years later.  This was now!  And it had been REAL!! You can't push the frame on anything without being a rebel.  In this case, a strange juxtaposition actually.  The Brothers, an integrated band in the deep south 5 short years since the civil rights act, brings credibility to the rebel cause which was all about what?  Race!  And segregation!!

So, there was this incredible thirst.  The whole phamily with its myriad sub-cultures was as if ship wrecked.  Lost at sea desperately seeking a beacon.  Just as ABB lost it, they lost it too.  Its a big part of the reason why everybody in town was pissed at 'em.  Nobody actually put it like that directly.  No, it played out and oozed out sideways n bass-ackerds n upside down n inside out n every way but direct.  But it was there fer sur.  You could feel it in the air.

And then it happened.  Word spread like magic mushrooms at the Atlanta Pop Festival (better known as the Byron Pop Festival), the south's answer to Woodstock.  Capricorn Record's new discovery.  The Marshall Tucker Band.  In the park on Sunday. 

Lotta things bout MTB stand out.  But the way I saw it the one standing higher than any was Jerry Eubanks, the flute player.  The whole band was just plain gooooood!  But a flute player?  In a rock band?  Running the intro line?  Now THAT was a new groove  And nothing gimmicky about it.  It was perfection.  The kinda thing that just plain mesmerizes you and you immediately follow that pied piper.  And he leads you into... BLISS!  From hopelessness and desperation to bliss in one song!   Yeah sure, there was already an Ian Anderson but Jethro Tull was anything but American, let alone Southern. 

Suddenly, Macon was alive again.  And there was frosting on the cake!   Not only had we just experienced redemption, but the whole idea of a flute player in a southern rock band brought a notoriety of sorts to anybody and everybody who'd ever played in a high school band.   Who'd ever marched their ass off while their head is wondering what the fuck it would feel like to be featured?  It was a subtle thing but you could see it in everybody's eyes.  You could feel it in the air.  It was as if suddenly, everybody felt validated about that desire.  They might not have experienced it directly.  But they could empathize with those that had and REJOICE with 'em.

A flute player fer crissakes!!