The Allman Brothers Band - Eat a Peach (Deluxe Edition) (2006)

Allman Brothers fans are a hardy lot. For years, make that decades, they have been inundated with reissues of the same material with teasers thrown in, or have been given truly bizarre compilations such as the Madacy ripoff entitled Essential, which didn't include many of the band's biggest hits and on its second disc provided a straight reissue of Enlightened Rogues. The Deluxe Edition of Eat a Peach is something different, however. For those who have been in the depths of confusion about the various Fillmore East reissues -- whether the straight At Fillmore East album or the Fillmore Concerts set -- this version of Eat a Peach, fully and beautifully remastered, does hold a bit of a treasure trove, though the word is that the second disc has been oft bootlegged. While the album is on disc one, in all its pieces and in proper order, disc two stands as a virtually unreleased concert of the ABB's final performance at the Fillmore on June 27, 1971 -- with Duane, who was killed in October of that year. Two of the disc's tracks had been previously released -- "Midnight Rider" (on Duane Allman Anthology, Vol. 2) and "One Way Out" (on the original Eat a Peach, which means the track shows up on both discs here). The rest of these performances -- "Statesboro Blues," "Don't Keep Me Wonderin'," "Done Somebody Wrong," "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" (12:51 in length), "Hot 'Lanta," "Whipping Post" (20:17 in length), and "You Don't Love Me" (clocking in at a whopping 17:24) -- have never been officially released. Sure, it's a standard Allman Brothers set -- if there ever was a such a thing. The playing is very inspired and adventurous, Gregg's singing is better than on the original Fillmore dates, and the interplay between Duane and Dickey Betts is symbiotic. And it rocks like a mother. Real fans of the original band have something to be happy about for a change, as this hidden bit of Allman memorabilia with the beloved Duane is finally on the shelves -- it might have been nice if Universal had issued the second disc as its own album so you didn't have to buy Eat a Peach again, but oh well.