With this vinyl-only release, The Allman Brothers Band once again revisits its nexus with the Grateful Dead, if just symbolically.  The material on this 2-LP set has been available for several decades in other formats, and was captured at the Fillmore East in 1970 by the Dead’s soundman at the time, the famed Owsley “Bear” Stanley, as the Brothers were serving as the Dead’s opening act.  For this edition, it’s been transferred and mastered as well as possible from the archival tapes, and grooved into an exclusive run of “orange sunshine” vinyl.

Let the winks and knowing nods begin. 

Maybe, though, in 2023, over five decades after its initial recording, the idea of tacitly linking the music with a design element that celebrates perhaps the most famous strain of LSD ever created- by California surfers, no less- is quaintly nostalgic rather than anything all that subversive.  And the Brothers, after all, were more notorious as fans of the magic mushroom.  Note the psychedelicized mushroom band logo adorning the cover.  Even the shade of orange on the vinyl, itself, leans toward a peach tone; another clever choice for those in the know.

As for the music, it predates, by a year, the group’s historic Fillmore East run that led to the explosive 1971 album, At Fillmore East, but previews mostly that set’s incendiary tracklist.  “Mountain Jam,” which takes up sides 3 and 4, is probably the closest to what it would become 13 months later. Still, the other entries, including a truncated-by-comparison rendition of “Whipping Post,” do find singer Gregg Allman in full anguish, belting out the blues as the road-weary troubadour he was and would always be.

53 years later, it can be written with a smile:  The Allman Brothers Band on orange sunshine, as it were, feels like a most appropriate, if somewhat appropriated, trip.