WHY THE ALLMAN BROTHERS ARE LIKE PUNK ROCK

To commemorate the release of the new live CD Kicking Television (which is quite superb by the way), Jeff Tweedy of Wilco picks his 10 favorite live albums of all time...

Allman Brothers Band, Live at the Fillmore East (Polydor, 1971)

A lot of these records are just so formative for me. It's like "the sky is blue" kind of stuff. This one is one of the prime documents of rock music. It shows the chemistry of a band being so finely tuned, a band playing with one mind. And serious chops. I think I probably hated it the first time I heard it. I'd done a lot of brainwashing in the service of belonging to something I was never meant to belong to, like punk rock. The Allmans got pushed to the wrong side of the line in the sand--if you liked them, you couldn't be punk. That's the difference between listening to music and trying to fit into a mass movement. Punk was a mass movement. It required true believers to make it go. And now I see punk as just rock, another incarnation of it. In a way, it's exactly like the Allmans--people believing in themselves, and going out and doing it.