Word: skynyrd
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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AIRPLANE CRASHES have tragically ended the musical careers of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jim Croce and Buddy Holly, but it was a hand-gun that almost finished off Chicago. Earlier this year guitarist Terry Kath, one of the most creative members of the group, was playing with a gun that not-so-playfully went off and killed him. Beset at the time by various artistic and contractual problems, the members of Chicago considered bagging the whole thing and ending their joint musical career...
These tapes have now been released as Skynyrd's First and Last Album. Despite the advertising hype that accompanies the reviewer's copy, the immediate response from anyone who has suffered through any one of the execrable "roots" albums that sprang up in the aftermath of Jimi Hendrix's death runs along these lines: "Here is a half-assed first album being released now to pay the bills for the next few years ...Forget...
...certainly not a forgotten masterpiece. In general, it is an adequate collection of derivative hard rock with a couple of ringers thrown in. The band which recorded this album bears only a family resemblance to the group that recorded in the late 70's as Lynyrd Skynyrd...
...Skynyrd's roots in British rock are obvious and there is little pretension in the album's music or the P.R. about the extent of their debt. Numbers like "Down South Jukin," "Preacher's Daughter" and "Lend a Helpin' Hand" would not have been written if the Rolling Stones and Cream had never recorded. "Comin' Home" owes its existence in part to the early Allman Brothers, the group that Skynyrd always played second Les Paul to until just before the end. And thrown in for filler are two songs by then drummer and vocalist Rickey Medlocke which...
Still, it remains true that Lynyrd Skynyrd was a workman-like but not overly sensational band which took a high-decibel brand of Southern-British boogie and a couple of great songs to the masses. In that mission they became victims, but in the ironic way of these things they have become better loved in death than they probably could have been in life. For those of you who are jumping on the Skynyrd band-plane in fulfillment of this time-honored truism: this album is not for you, it is for people who were fans all along and already...