Twiggs

Their best up to this point. I'm Freaking Out is the top composition they ever did. New keyboardist T Lavitz really shines on that one, as well as Morgenstein. The Great Spectacular is a re-recording of a song from their pre-label release of the same name, and it features one of Morse's best solos ever laid to wax. Both of the Dregs album standards, the classical piece and the country tune have strong representatives on here as well. They thought enough of Road Expense to open their first live album years later. Not a down track on here.

For a Few Fuzz Guitars More is the sequel to A Fistful of Fuzz and like the first volume, features plenty of fuzz guitar. The feel of this collection is garagier (if that's a word) than A Fistful of Fuzz, but both volumes draw primarily from the late 1960s…

In March 1971, the Allman Brothers Band famously set up shop at the Fillmore East in New York City and recorded what would become one of the most acclaimed live albums of all-time, At Fillmore East. Two months prior, the band was tuning up for those famed gigs at the original Fillmore in San Francisco, and now those shows will be released September 6th as a new four-CD set, Fillmore West 1971.

Six weeks before the Allman Brothers Band played the shows immortalized on At Fillmore East, they played three gigs at Bill Graham's left coast venue, the Fillmore West, in San Francisco in January of 1971. They were slotted between openers the Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band and Hot Tuna. These three shows are presented in their entirety in a four-disc set. Sourced from original two-track, reel-to-reel soundboard masters, they were held in ABB crew members Twiggs Lyndon's, Joe Dan Petty's, and Mike Callahan's closets for nearly five decades. They were then acquired by archivist Kirk West, who set the painstaking restoration process in motion. The quality here, while very good throughout, is muddy in some spots (mostly on disc two). In addition to the complete shows, West added a 45-minute "Mountain Jam" from March of 1970 at the Warehouse in New Orleans to disc four to fill it out.

If you are only going to get one Dixie Dregs album, this is the one I would suggest. It is easily the most prog of all of their albums, and, as usual, it has exceptional compositions and musicianship, a pristine example of the fusion sub-genre, combining elements of symphonic rock, bluegrass, jazz, and funk.