Search - Allman Brothers :: Wipe The Windows, Check The Oil, Dollar Gas

Different tunes, Different Incarnation of the band

JESSE R. MC Glown | Enterprise, AL | 05/29/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Allman brothers had a stark choice before them, in the wake of the tragic losses of Duane and Berry: give everything up, sitting in Sackcloth & Ashes for the rest of their lives...or picking up the pieces and moving on! I'm exceedingly glad they chose the latter. Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil is NOT the boys attempting to recreate The Fillmore East...rather, it's the perfect complement to the ABB's landmark initial live album. Gregg & Co. very wisely decided not to even attempt to replace Duane with another guitarist ( at least not for a decade! ). Instead, they found a superb blues piano player in Chuck Leavell, also a wonderful complement to Gregg's B-3 organ. With the exception of Elizabeth Reed, there is no redundancy here: all new tunes, with a profoundly different "intensity"; yet faithful to that classic Allman Brothers Sound. While I respect bands such as Led Zeppelin deciding not to carry on after the loss of an original member, I am glad other groups do indeed live to fight another day...given an average longevity of three or four decades, it's inevitable that personnel changes will happen."