Lynyrd Skynyrd: Classic or Dud?

I really am digging 'Simple Man' lately.

*puts 'Ban people who don't like Skynyrd' on a t-shirt*

RIP Billy Powell.

RIP indeed

play it pretty for atlanta

people who don't like Skynyrd are one aesthetic step from not liking the Allmans, which in a just world would be a capital offense

Gee, I guess that means we should make alcohol illegal too, since people who drink are one step away from smoking pot.

We should make pot legal because it makes the Allmans sound better.

res with the penetrating insight into a joke post

a year-old joke post

also, james polk otm

res with the penetrating insight into a joke post

you got whooshed dude

got any more awesome wikipedia links res

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"

"Tuesday's Gone" as well. Al Kooper plays it on both tracks.

As luck would have it, TG just came on at the bar and was promptly skipped by this increasingly annoying bartender

“Ooooooh. Mr Breeze…”

“I got that green light babe…”

If it ain’t no pills or booze it got to be a honky tonk queen

The other day I walked past a guy playing acoustic guitar and singing who had changed the chorus to "Sweet home a-Montana." I looked around but there were no bricks to throw, so I just got out of there as fast as I could.

heh

lol did he keep the verses as they are?

my best friend is a philistine

https://i.postimg.cc/637L7yf3/skynyrd.png

vegemite grrl’s youtube link of oct 21 2024 continues to bring me so much joy. i revisit “call me the breeze” from that show regularly. i can’t believe how tight they are. so hairy. so sweaty. so completely dialed in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQqioJKjzPs

^ convention hall 1977