The Allman Brothers Band: Unplugged - Radio and Records Convention, Los Angeles, CA, 6-11-1992

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In the early 1990s, MTV's "Unplugged" series was a popular musical trend, a reaction to the overproduction excesses of the 1980s. The Allman Brothers Band had never really played in the acoustic musical format before, at least not more than for a song here and there. But they jumped on the "Unplugged" train in 1992. This presents the best of their acoustic phase.

The Allman Brothers Band never actually played for the MTV Unplugged TV show, as far as I know. But they put out an album called "IRSA Acoustic Set" based on this concert. Unfortunately, it was only released on a limited basis for a limited time, with the benefits going to charity. As a result, most fans of the band have never heard it.

I've supplemented it with two extra songs at the end. "Pony Boy" was played occasionally in concert in 1992, during short acoustic sets in the middle of longer electric concerts. The last song, "Steady Rollin' Man," was done in 1998. However, you wouldn't know it was six years later, since the acoustic sound is the same as the others. Both of these extra songs come from bootlegs, but the sound is pretty close to the main concert.

That main concert sounds fantastic. However, it had one problem that annoyed me: the audience applause at the end of each song faded out after just a few seconds. The fade-outs were so obvious that they ruined the impression of hearing one continuous concert. So I did two things to fix this. One, I unfaded the fade-outs as best I could, meaning I steadily increased the volume as it was dropping, until there was nothing left to increase. This typically restored a couple of seconds at the end of each song. Sometimes even that wasn't enough for the audience reaction to sound like it came to a natural conclusion. So I patched in bits of the applause from other sounds to extend the crowd response a couple more seconds. The final result still isn't great, but I think it's better than the fast fade-outs.

As far as the music goes, I much prefer the early 1970s version of the band to their later versions, with markedly different personnel. But the 1992 version still had the essential members Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts on lead vocals. (Betts was with the band until 2000, while Allman stayed until the end in 2014.) This version also features the excellent Warren Haynes on lead guitar.

If you're a fan of the Allman Brothers Band at all, you should listen to this. Sure, they were great at rocking, but they were just as good at playing on a porch with acoustic instruments. There's even a decent amount of jamming here.

The album is 56 minutes long.

01 Come On in My Kitchen (Allman Brothers Band)
02 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
03 Seven Turns (Allman Brothers Band)
04 Midnight Rider (Allman Brothers Band)
05 Southbound (Allman Brothers Band)
06 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
07 In Memory of Elizabeth Reed [Instrumental] (Allman Brothers Band)
08 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
09 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Allman Brothers Band)
10 Melissa (Allman Brothers Band)
11 Midnight Blues (Allman Brothers Band)
12 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
13 Pony Boy (Allman Brothers Band)
14 talk (Allman Brothers Band)
15 Steady Rollin' Man (Allman Brothers Band)

For a free mp3 download of all the songs on this album, check out this page at my music blog:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-allman-brothers-band-unplugged.html

The cover art photo doesn't come from the exact concert in question. But it's close. It's from an acoustic performance on TV just one month later. There were multiple photos from the same appearance. The photo I chose was good except for the fact that Warren Haynes (third from the left) had his face bent down so it was blocked by a microphone. So I used a different photo to patch in a better version of him from the waist on up.

For the band name, I used the artwork from the 1979 album "Enlightened Rogues" (a surprisingly good album for the year, by the way). I rearranged the wording and then inverted the colors.