Lynyrd Skynyrd: Classic or Dud?

i found this one yesterday.

Poor guy just got off the Skynyrd criuse:

http://www.simplemancruise.com/smc2009/lineup.php

Rest in peace, Billy.

Looks like many of the posters here have never listened to a LS album all the way through. How novel. Four of their five original studio albums are great. I was just listening to Street Survivors. It's actually relatively delicate and pretty.

there's some crazy talk dissing the allman bros upthread.

'sweet home alabama' might be the most popular pop/rock song of all-time, and for good reason, it's fuckin perfect.

Classic. Some clueless (and classist and elitist) posts on this thread, especially the late "Richard Wood Johnson", who truly is a dick.

Street Survivors': so so so CLASSIC. I really dig the alternate verison of You Got That Right on the re-release.

But in general...killer lyrics, awesome vocals, that band was TIGHT AS HELL...how can they be anything BUT classic.

I thought this might get bumped to talk about the new album. Haven't heard it, but saw it in the store and was mildly, mildly curious. Judging by the genesis of the album title, God & Guns, they don't like Barack.

I will admit that I have a mental block when it comes to incarnations of Skynyrd post-crash. It just doesn't sound right without Ronnie singing. Plus all that feuding and infighting afterwards really turned me off.

Ultra classic when Ronnie was alive. The reunited version bad in about 1000 ways.

New Lynyrd Skynyrd thing in stores = flypaper for idiots.

"Whiskey botttle, brand new car, oak tree you're in my way"...talk about a great song opener.

Yeah, I don't count post-plane crash Skynryd.

xpost: new record is called "God & Guns". Yeesh

Yeah, kind of dumb. The real Skynrd at least had some subtlety to them, ie the anti-gun "Saturday Night Special"

"Working for MCA" totally beat both "EMI" and "Complete Control" for classic major label songs about major labels not being classic. And wasn't "Gimme Back My Bullets" actually about not landing on the Billboard charts? And "That Smell" was anti-drug in the darkest way possible. So: so classic. Also, actually one of the few acts whose "Essential" collection I play as much as the albums proper. I find it makes the album tracks pop out even more when I play the albums.

Yes, their Essential is fantastic.

I really like Platinum & Gold compilation (is that what it's called)?

All the eye-rolling over 'Sweet Home' and 'Free Bird' kind of bothers me. I know they've been played to death, and that they've become signifiers for something pretty far from what the band represented at the time...but it bums me out that everyone hears the cliche, rather than the actual songs.

Nah, the Essential is a two-disc collection that is relatively recent (okay, maybe turn of the century-ish?). Speaking of "Freebird", while waiting to pick up a prescription at CVS last night the store was playing some horrible adult-contemporary medley that went into the chorus from "Freebird" out of a Richard Marx song. It was pretty bizarre.

Does anyone have the Muscle Shoals Album? Recommended? Yes no? Want to expand my Skynyrd collection a little, and that one looked interesting to me.

xpost: "signifiers for something pretty far from what the band represented at the time"

OK, I'm a hater, but I'm genuinely curious, so tell me - what did the band represent at the time?

Yeah, I don't count post-plane crash Skynryd.

^^ is otm

the store was playing some horrible adult-contemporary medley that went into the chorus from "Freebird" out of a Richard Marx song

You sure that wasn't the legendary Will to Power medley of "Freebird" and "Baby I Love Your Way"?

As in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lxDwfMaQsc

That was indeed it! It was a Richard Marx song before the medley then.

^^hello 6th grade slow dance

I had honestly never heard that before in my life.

xxpost to soukesian even though I know I'm being baited.

I'll be blunt but my dumb hipster friends equate both songs with 'the stupid South', with redneck racist lowbrow hillbillys. Skynyrd weren't that anymore than the Allman Brothers were. They played blues rock like their heroes the Stones, and they sang with southern accents. Their songs spoke about where they came from, they celebrated it, but they never celebrated the things that...outsiders?...*equate* with the south. Like all the Southern Man/Sweet Home stuff...Ronnie & Neil were friends. But people act as though some kind of rocknroll civil war re-enactment took place.

and EW to that will to power clip

(shudder)

OK. Really, I'm not trying to bait you. I've been listening to Thin Lizzy a lot recently. Reading this, I'm trying to figure out why I love them and hate Skynyrd, who are approximate contemporaries and, when it comes down to it, not a million miles remote in sound. I've got no answers.

If it's just a matter of taste, then it is what it is. You know? I love Lizzy a TON...but Lizzy don't 'bring the south' like Skynyrd, and maybe that's where you draw the line. I can appreciate that. It's like Beatles v Stones, or Who v Kinks, or whatever...sure they're contemporaries but sometimes your ears just like one over the other, for whatever reason.

Maybe that's it. I'm not from the South, and I associate Skynyrd with wannabe bikers who aspired to that redneck, racist, lowbrow stereotype in suburban UK in the late 70's. Ridiculous as it seems, there were such people. But Skynyrd didn't create them, and aren't to blame for'em.

I think that's kind of what I was getting at upthread. Skynyrd attracts those kinds of associations all over, like iron filings to a magnet. It took me a long, LONG time to get into country for a lot of the same reasons. And Skynyrd for that matter too, I really didn't come into them til the last 5 years or so.

It's hard to hear the music and not bring all your own associations with it.

You need to listen to one "Southern Rock Opera" to fully grasp the duality of "the Southern thing," you see.

^^ otm. Actually, that album was what sent me back to the Skynyrd catalog. It's a good way in for folks who might be wary of Skynrd. At least for me

I could be wrong, but I'm relatively certain that "Saturday Night Special" is the greatest rock song ever recorded (imo, right this minute).

I think it's only from the deluxe version of One More For From The Road double live, but on the live version of "Sweet Home" at the Fox in Atlanta, Ronnie basically gives a shout-out to then candidate Carter, who was about to become president.. "and sweet Georgia, home of the future president of the USA"

Pretty optimistic considering that record was recorded months before the election (unless the deluxe versh featured tracks from much later)

No, it didnt, it was all from a three night stand in May (I believe) '76, a good 5 months before the election.

yeah but who was he running against - Ford? lol

Jerry Brown, Mo Udall, Scoop Jackson, George Wallace, etc.

Every time I see this thread pop up I have this sudden shock that anyone would find Lynyrd Skynyrd anything short of classic.

just listened to (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) in its entirety ... damn, there isn't a single bad song, not a single bad NOTE on the entire album. lynyrd skynyrd was always the one southern boogie band that i actually admitted to liking (well, ok, maybe zz top too) -- but this was the 1st time i'd heard the entire record and DAMN it's good.

I need to get that. I have Street Survivors in the car...perfect driving cd! No bad songs, I never tire of hearing it. Ronnie sure did sing purdy...

I grew up in Atlanta, so it was Skynyrd 24/7, with occasional breaks for the Allman Bros. and Led Zeppelin. They were a good band with a few excellent songs, so I'm sorta in the middle regarding the thread's original question. Classic: Simple Man, Curtis Lowe, the live version of Tuesday's Gone, I Know a Little. No duds. Everything else is quite listenable, though a couple of things on Nothin' Fancy are w/in a stone's throw of dud.

Skynyrd 24/7, with occasional breaks for the Allman Bros. and Led Zeppelin

I think this condition pervaded the entire state of Georgia at one time.

Skynyrd are classic and deserving of more love on this thread. Not a whole lot of bands were swinging harder in 1973-74.

Classic rock radio does this band a huge disservice by focusing so much on their boogie stuff like Gimme Three Steps and Gimme Back My Bullets.

'that smell' reminds me of 'sister morphine'...maybe intentional considering the subject matter?

Or is it kind of the same idea as Randy Newman's "Rednecks"? Like, you get all righteous about misbehaving politicians, but maybe you secretly harbor similar beliefs? ("Tell the truth")

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, April 18, 2024 12:19 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

different in that Randy gets to say the n-word cuzza he's such a Smart Guy