Southern Rock

Another week and another batch of (mostly) freebee CDs courtesy of an Amazon voucher. This time I’ve ended up going for a few Southern Rock compilations. I seem to have been listening to quite a few blues-rock albums with the likes of Fleetwood Mac, Free, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company and Whitesnake rotating on the car stereo. The odd thing with this is that they were almost all UK based acts (Hendrix was American but based in the UK for much of his short career). Southern Rock has an attraction to me in that it doesn’t fit into the overly produced slickness of mainstream US rock but retains much of the grit and roots of the Southern states of America. It also wears its influences on its sleeve with a pleasing mix of rock and roll, blues, country and folk – it feels like the real deal.

I went for three disks and for purely alphabetical reasons I started with the “Essential” Allman Bothers Band. Now, I’m not sure quite how essential this is. The rear sleeve notes say that these are “carefully selected” tracks from their career but also make reference to “Jessica – the unmistakable theme tune to TV’s Top Gear”. This is true but I would hardly go marketing such an influential group of musicians based on a popular motoring programme. Never-the-less, this is all enjoyable stuff and much more blues soaked than I somehow imagined. I can’t complain for the £3 it cost me and is one I’d happily listen to it time and again.
 

The second disk was one I’d been planning on getting for a while which was a Lynyrd Skynyrd compilation. I have an old 7” single with Sweet Home Alabama on one side and Free Bird on the other. The version of Free Bird on the single was the edit and it really misses the best bit with the extended solo. In a way it’s rather like the Beatles' Hey Jude – a so-so-ballad which turns into something monumental and anthemic towards the end. There is no risk of this curtailment with the version on “Greatest Hits” as it is all there in its full 9 minute glory – and what a moment it is. The rest of the album isn’t too shabby either and any album that can kick off with the (friendly) poke in the eye of Sweet Home Alabama can’t be that bad.

The last disk was a double CD: ZZ Top’s Rancho Texicano. In a way, this compilation sums up the two halves of this most distinctive of band’s career – the growling guitar and gritty blues-rock simplicity of their 1970s output and the synthesiser overload of the 1980s. In all honesty, it’s the first disk that I prefer but I don’t think their 80s output was that bad – just a case of diminishing returns. The first disk contains the real classics: Tush, Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers, Cheap Sunglasses and La Grange are all there but there isn’t really a bad track amongst them. The second disk actually contains their most commercially successful material and I still think that Eliminator was a great album: Gimme All Your Loving and Sharp Dressed Man were genuinely top-notch song-writing. ZZ Top were one of the first American rock bands to really embrace the MTV age and their unique image helped with this but I think it is obvious that Afterburner and Recycler were moving them further away from what they did best. My only criticism of this compilation is that the last couple of tracks are throwaway remixes of earlier tracks – it would have been nice to hear some of their more recent stuff or live performances.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with the disks and I can see myself going for some of the more recent Southern Rock acts -The Black Crowes, maybe? Then again, who knows where my musical meandering will have taken me by then.