A Double Dose of Lynyrd Skynyrd?

I'm no stranger to double-headers, but this one might be pushing my luck. I've heard tell that the second Lineart Skymall album is better than the first Lyndon Skyndler album, but that of course means i have to listen to them the right way 'round. Fffffffalright. 

This particular CD has bonus demos, so we'll not listen to those and just stop at the song no band wants to ever hear requested at their shows. Nope, not even Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute bands actually want to play Freebird, and you can't convince me otherwise. What's their appropriately self-titled "Hello, Atlanta!" album gonna turn out to be? 

1 - yeah, your family will definitely not approve of you marrying me. Good start, actually. 

2 - what a coincidence that today's Tuesday and it's pretty much over. Still, don't like track 2 ballads, even if they're good songs on their own. I don't like them because you rocked me, but now you're not rocking me. Everything else is kind of middle of the road after that. Are you sad that you just broke up with her for a not actually good reason? Plus, i don't even have to look, the rest of the album will just be back and forth rockers and rocking chairs. 

3 - dude, i wasn't trying to steal your girl, please don't shoot me. Seems like a reasonable request. 

4 - be a simple man. No worrie's Granny Van Zandt, even i'm trying to do that. No argues from me at all. 

5 - poverty sure does exist at the same time as foreign wars and rocket ships to the moon. How high are rich people? I certainly can't argue with the train of thought so far. 

6 & 7 - random i'm from a place in the South songs. 

8 - Jailbreak at the aviary, do not wait up for me 'cause i'm not comin' back. 

Fun fact, Al Kooper produced and engineered their demo recordings. Yes, original imagineer of BS&T Al Kooper, small world. Other than the moderately uninteresting banger-ballad back and forth, i have to say this is a perfectly lovely self-titled debut. I know who you are, and what you're about. Plus, the songs are good. 

That wasn't so bad at all, what's the Second Helping taste like? Oh yeah, that Neil Young diss track with the weird don't care about Watergate line. Ok, Sweet Home Alabama needs a hell of a lot of explaining. First though, we have to get the comparison of the albums out of the way. Their first like 3 or 4 albums all came from songs they'd been playing forever. They formed in 1964, changed their name in 1969, and convinced Al Kooper to sit in the control room in 1973. Nothing about Lynyrd Skynyrd actually sucks, they're fantastic. 

Ok, so why are they so confusingly Southern and bizarrely Leftish at the same time? Spoiler alert, it's because they're musicians. Now for the Alabama song from the Florida band. 

First, the Neil Young thing was a kind of playful sparring match. Remember how Johnny Rotten actually liked Pink Floyd? Yeah, Lindseed Skinned knees liked Neil Young, and he played Sweet Home Alabama at their memorial. Which brings us to the Birmingham/Watergate thing. 

First, "the Guv'nor" was George "stand in the doorway" Wallace, and they punctuate that lyric with at least one audible "Boo!" "Now we all did what we could do," with the grammatically implied "about Governor Wallace." 

Watergate doesn't bother me, does your conscience bother you? Tell me true. 

There really is only one way in which that whole verse makes any sense, and it's that we don't hold you responsible for the bad thing Nixon did, why would you hold us responsible for the terrible thing Alabama's Governor did? You can try to spin it, but you have to omit at least one of the 4 lines to do it. The context is clearly "we couldn't have stopped Wallace any more than you could have stopped Nixon; both very popular among their constituents at the time. Let's move on to agreeing that heroin is pretty terrible." 

I agree, but let's linger a moment. There is a very real cultural problem that equates the North to anti-racist and South to Racist. That's absurd, racism isn't geographically motivated. Literally tons of Northern racists in the Civil War fighting the Southern Secession, and equally tons of Southern Abolitionists and Anti-Segregationalists. Remember Ronnie questioning how high you'd have to be to not notice all the ghettos from the first album? 

Way better than i thought it would turn out. I like Lynyrd Skynyrd quite a lot, actually. Album structure leaves a lot to be desired, but i'm willing to pretend that was mostly Al Kooper's fault ;)