Attention Hippies: Go to Macon in December

The Big House, the Macon home members of The Allman Brothers Band lived in back in the day, will open as a museum in December, according to The Macon Telegraph.


Image via The Telegraph.

Speaking of The Allman Brothers, they just finished a run at the Beacon Theatre in New York, which benefited the museum. Apparently J.B. and Jimmy Herring from Widespread Panic sat in.

Lucid Idiocy Athens Bureau Chief Brian Huff has provided a link to that show on panicstream.

A great A.J. story and a few other Richt lines

All from Coach Richt's visit to Macon this evening...

A.J. Green committed pretty early, but of course he was a big-time prospect, so other schools kept recruiting him. And the in-state schools, South Carolina and Clemson, wanted him bad.

So one day Steve Spurrier was going to be at Green's high school to try to talk him into coming to South Carolina.

"He skipped school that day so he didn't have to bump into him. ..." Richt said. "So I knew he was my kind of guy."

Of course, Richt noted that he generally does not approve of skipping school.
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Richt on a playoff:

"I think it's gonna happen. I don't know how quickly. I was thinking, if the president elect of the United States wants a playoff, there's probably a pretty good chance we're gonna get a playoff. I would think the president of the United States might be the only person who might get a playoff system.

"I think four might be the starting point. I think eight, in my opinion, would be the most that will happen any time in the near future. I'm afraid if you go to 16 teams you might devalue the regular season to the point where games are not nearly as meaningful. I think it would really disrupt the post-season and the bowl season. I think four would be extremely simple to do."

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Tatnall Square Academy here in Macon has apparently averaged 37 points a game and they're giving up 5 a game. So Richt turned to one of their coaches and said: "That seems like a pretty boring game to me. ... Don't you want to take it down to the last play, couple weeks in a row? Keep the T.V. ratings up? Raycom loves us right now."
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In his opening remarks, Richt said the last time he was at a Macon Touchdown Club meeting, they were raising money to drill wells in Africa. They drilled three and one of them has a "big fat G" on it now.

"Some people don't even have water to drink," he said. "So now let's talk about being 9-2."
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On the Florida game being in Jacksonville: "It's not very neutral. ... I wouldn't hold my breath (on the location changing)."
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The number of scholarships Georgia will have to give this year is hard to predict, "but I doubt it goes to 25."

Pressing business: Widespread Panic to join Georgia Music Hall of Fame as 2008 inductee

I believe The Macon Telegraph is breaking rock and roll news tomorrow: Widespread Panic will be inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame this year.

Lynyrd Skynyrd was last year's group inductee. In 2006 it was REM. Ray Charles was one of the first two inductees in 1979.

The induction will likely be a black tie event, scheduled for Sept. 20 at the World Congress Center in Atlanta. Tickets are available through Friends of Georgia Music Festival, (770) 491-9494.

According to Phillip Ramati here at The Telegraph, the other Hall of Fame inductees this year are: Keith Sweat in the songwriting category; gospel singer Dottie Rambo in the posthumous category; Fred and Dinah Gretsch of The Gretsch Co. in the pioneer category, and Macon "King Bee" Hamp Swain in the non-performer category.

If you find yourself in Macon, the Georgia Music Hall of Fame is worth a couple of hours. There's an Otis Redding exhibit featured through Sept. 10.

Congratulations to Widespread Panic. This is a very large and very deserved honor.


In other news, we're all old now. Or should we say "classic."

Images: widespreadpanic.com. Music and merchandise available.

A blind man still can see

Back when I started here at The Telegraph, we had a talented design and graphics guy named Alan Gibson.

He left The Telegraph several years ago, but stayed active in the arts community. A few years ago, I heard he'd started losing his sight. I saw him downtown a month or so ago and he had dark glasses and a cane. His sight was completely gone.

And, yet, when the Cherry Blossom Festival asked local artists to decorate poodle cut-outs (the Cherry Blossom is Macon's signature festival, a pink poodle is its mascot) Alan Gibson volunteered.

I'm told he did his by feel.

For you Brothers fans

Just got an email - construction is officially underway at the Big House, the Vineville Avenue home here in Macon where the boys in The Allman Brothers Band lived for a time.

You know that line in Blue Sky - "Good ole Sunday Morning, bells are ringing everywhere?" They still ring there. Like a half dozen of them.

A foundation is turning the home into an Allman Brothers museum, and it's probably going to have the most impressive Brothers collection in existence.













Image: www.mamalouise.com.

"and this loneliness won't leave me alone..."

I was remiss in not noting that Monday was the 40th anniversary of Otis Redding's death. He was one of the greatest song writers of the century, and just happened to be from Macon.

A lot of people don't know this, but along with his own songs, he also wrote RESPECT, which Aretha Franklin made famous. The man was only 26 when he died in a plane crash. Imagine if he'd lived.

Joe Kovac here at the paper did a piece about the anniversary of his death, and I particularly enjoyed some of the comments from his family.

This one, from his wife, Zelma, particularly made me smile:

"When I met Otis Redding at the Douglass Theatre, ... he was a smart mouth, he said something like, 'Hey, baby,' and something crazy. So, you know, I'm a defensive person, always have been, because I'm a short person. ... And back then I was a little bitty short person, like a size three or four. And we go into this argument and I said, 'You don't know me and I am not your baby.' ... And then I saw him again and I'm, like, 'That's that same fool I saw at the Douglass.'"

If that don't give you hope, I don't know what does.

Sittin' here resting my bones
And this loneliness won't leave me alone
It's two thousand miles I roamed
Just to make this dock my home

"A man of character."

I'm sorry to see anyone leave, but I enjoyed writing John C. "Scooter" Herring's obituary for the paper yesterday. I wish I'd been able to interview him before he died.

His life story is proof that Macon once was awesome, and that the headlines never define the man.

The basics (from the version I wrote, before it was edited):

John C. "Scooter" Herring, who lived much of his life on the outskirts of rock 'n' roll fame and starred in one of the most sensational trials in city history, died over the weekend.

He was 67.

Herring lived a quiet, charitable life the past few years in Macon, and probably died from complications associated with heart disease, his family said.

But he was once a defendant in a federal drug trial that gripped the rock 'n' roll world's attention and featured testimony from rock legend Gregg Allman that, some said, helped break up one of Macon's most famous contributions to music history: The Allman Brothers Band.