Friday, 12 March 2010
Allman Brothers Band 2010 United Palace Run: The Preview
In the countdown to the start of the Allman Brothers Band's 2010 New York run I found myself pondering matters relating to age.
Twenty years ago, even as recently as the turn of the century, had the technology been available, I'd have been icing down a slab of beer and throwing in the odd bottle of white wine should any of the music fans who are likely to wander into the Little House of Concrete feel like something other than an ice-cold beer. After all, it wasn't that long since I could spend all day drinking full strength beer playing pub cricket on a Sunday and then adjourn to the Vale for a further two hours of full-on drinking.
Now, in March 2010 I find myself contemplating the start of the run by opening a bottle Brown Brothers Sparkling Cienna (5% alc/vol) and following that with a Rockford Alicante Bouchet, which tips the scales under 10% should Warbo, the Scoffer, the Barra, Roger or whoever else lobs on the doorstep around eleven this morning feel like a small celebratory libation.
None of us are getting any younger, and with the survivors of the original ABB line up well into their sixties and the youngest member of the current configuration, the sublimely gifted Derek Trucks well on the other side of spring chicken status now that he's hit his thirties, there's every chance that one of these New York runs may be the last.
That speculation was given a bit more impetus when it was announced that the band had cancelled the last five of the thirteen scheduled shows due to family matters which was viewed in some circles as an inability to sell enough tickets.
Regardless of such speculation, in 2010 for the first time, there's the prospect that, thanks to the magic of Moogis, Hughesy'll be watching the New York run live right here in downtown Bowen.
It took Allmans drummer Butch Trucks a few years to get the Moogis concept off the ground, but it got an airing through the 2009 run at the Beacon, and Hughesy was left muttering about the state of Australian telecommunications as the run unfolded without the capacity to catch it live.
However, at the start of 2010 a change of ISPs and a bit of surplus cash prompted me to investigate matters a little further. The change brought with it a doubling of our monthly bandwidth allowance, and significant improvements in download speed, so once I'd checked the feed from the website and found it amazingly good, I shelled out the $US150.
Now you might think that's a lot of shekels to shell out for something that may not work as advertised, but, as the saying goes, you'll never never know if you never ever go....
The payment also gave me a chance to catch some of the archived shows from 2009, something I wasn't going to go into too heavily given uncertainty about the amount of data that was actually involved and the desire to catch all thirteen shows that had been scheduled.
Having five of them cancelled loosened things up a little, but we're still erring on the side of caution.
The Allmans have done one of these New York runs most years since 1989, and until the Cirque du Soleil cut in, most of them have been in the Beacon Theatre. Given the clash of bookings, this year they're off to the United Palace, allegedly in a less salubrious part of Manhattan, but that's not going to be an issue as far as the webcast is concerned.
Twenty-five minutes to go, so it's a case of get this onto the website and settle down to wait....
