THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND Win, Lose or Draw (Capricorn)

The Allman Brothers have one very serious, probably insoluble problem: they want to die. Not physically, necessarily, but as a collective force in the world at large they long to tumble back into that warm Confederate loam and rot gloriously away, dreaming of crumbling dynasties as the twilight slowly descends on Appomattox.

It’s sick, all right, but there is no geographic state of mind more literally decadent than the American South. And 1 exclude from that untold millions of people who live there — I mean the romantic lames who believe in Raintree County, Gone With the Wind, and the more extravagant folklore of Tennessee Williams and Erskine Caldwell. White Southerners who get their kicks off that fantasy are no different than black people who shuffle and play dumb nigger; they have merely projected their own spinelessness on the rest of their countrymen.