Hey, here’s another one I’ve never heard. Allmusic gave it 5 stars. It MUST be great. Right?
Lynyrd Skynrd – Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd – 1973
Skynrd’s debut record fires on all cylinders from jump. Sounding like a bunch of vets with a long discography behind them, it’s actually surprising to know that this is their first album.
The dynamite opener of “I Ain’t the One” acts like an overture. Followed by the epic mid-tempo “Tuesday’s Gone”, which could have fallen off the best of songs by The Band that you never heard, “Pronounced” is unrelenting. No sooner have they finished a SEVEN minute dirge-ballad then we get picked right up with a beer-swilling boogie of “Gimme Three Steps” and they close the first side with a classic 70s epic. “Simple Man” really only hints at the greatness to come, but if this was all we’d get that would be enough. Dayanu.
Flip the record over and it’s whiskey drinking, monster truck rally time. “Things Goin’ On”, with it’s honky-tonk piana acts more like an intermission. It plays like a jam that, for all intents, could take up the entire second side and no one would be disappointed. Thank goodness it doesn’t, because then we wouldn’t get the treat of the stripped down, do-bro, harmonica goodness of “Mississippi Kid”, or the dingy, drunk, dirty, “Poison Whiskey”, which could have (and probably should have and, fuck, may have) served as the soundtrack for the Walking Tall movies. Or, at least, laid the groundwork for a decade’s worth of porn soundtracks.
And then, the granddaddy of them all. The FM radio brother to Zeppelin’s Stairway.
Free Bird is every bit as great and grandiose now as it has been the 900 times you’ve heard it on WPLJ or WDHA (The Parkway to Rock!) or whatever your classic rock station was.
My two minds of Free Bird are that I hate the fact that it fades out at the end, because I am a sucker for a good ending. And, after 9 minutes, I feel like I deserve it. On the other hand, if a bird flies away…well…it fades from view, right?
I can’t believe I just made that analogy.
One of the best debuts ever.
Grade: A+
ASide: Tuesday’s Gone, Gimme Three Steps
BlindSide: Simple Man, Poison Whiskey
