Tuesday, March 4, 2008

COOL OLD MUSIC: LYNYRD SKYNYRD, WHISKEYTOWN

I'm a sucker for reissues. I love box sets, reissues, the whole thing. Universal does a great job with expanded reissues, and today they released two really cool ones. I won't "review" them, as I haven't had enough time to listen through all of them yet.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's Street Survivors was their last album before the tragic airplane crash, which killed singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister, backing singer Cassie Gaines. Man, that album cover is still creepy. The album features two huge radio hits, "That Smell" and "What's Your Name." But as is often the case with Skynyrd (and many other bands sainted by classic rock radio), there are a lot of great tracks that have been forgotten. I'd call one's attention to "I Never Dreamed," for starters. Anyway, this album is worth the bucks. I never knew that the version of Street Survivors that was released was their second attempt at recording the album. The expanded version also includes the original one, as well as live versions of some of the songs.

I never had the original version of Whiskeytown's Stranger's Almanac, but I'm looking forward to diving in. I'm not one of those folks who falls head over heels over everything Ryan Adams does, but you can't deny his talent. One of his talents is not editing, so I'm not sure I'll love a formerly 13 track album that now has 39 tracks, but Whiskeytown was a band, not just Ryan.

I walked into work with both albums, wrapped and price tags intact. This one guy was like, "You paid for those?" That's how I roll, my friend.

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