I've spent the last two weeks buried in Southern Rock selections from 1000 Recordings. That's included Lucinda Williams, The Band (OK, most of them are Canadian, but they do have Levon Helm, and furthermore they sing The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down like they mean it), Derek and the Dominoes, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steve Earle, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ZZ Top.
Let me make something clear. If the South should rise again -- which I think we can all agree would be a really bad idea, for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is The Varsity chili-cheese dog incident -- then ZZ Top will have to play the anthem, because 'most all the other candidates would be sitting around with their feet swinging off the back of the pick-up truck and wondering if they could stay awake until they started selling beer again Sunday afternoon. (Which they could, because Southerners like myself put the "mo" in "motivate," and don't youse forget it.)
What I will say about these most memorable recordings, these historic recordings, in Southern Rock, is that I think we can all applaud the natural death of the jamfest. When I was in high school? I TOTALLY DID NOT GET THE ALLMAN BROTHERS. I used to do a fabulous imitation of the Allman Brothers' classic rendition of "Whipping Post," in which I would scream "TIED" and then wait, like, a day, and then scream "TO THE WHIPPING POST." And then I would wait, probably, a week, and then I would suddenly start screaming "OH LORD I FEEL" and then I would wait for winter to go by, and then I would scream "OH LORD I FEEL" and then spring would pass, and the corn would be a foot high, and then I would scream "OH LORD I FEEL LIKE I'M DYING." At which point I would slash my naked chest with a broken bourbon bottle and pass out. Which was, on balance and across the board, a very good thing.
But now that I am grown up, I have the perspective of a half-finished life (rather more than that, barring some sort of liver ex machina, as the Greeks say), and I can tell you that from this more mature perspective, I TOTALLY DO NOT GET THE ALLMAN BROTHERS. In point of fact, if you listen to Layla (and other hummana hummana), then listen to this Allman Brothers record that Moon recommends, what you hear is the difference between celebrity jam music and tight, solid music that we can all listen to and grasp for its excellence and purity. Or Bonnie Raitt. Bonnie Raitt, on her worst day -- on the day when she gets up and has a psychotic episode in which she imagines herself to be the place where I burned my arm on the heating element under the sandwich table on the back line at Hardee's, which you can still kind of see if you hold my arm the right way, that makes me look weird and like I am flagging a cab in the sewer; you see it on my arm, that is, because the Hardee's is gone -- on that day, Bonnie Raitt still kicks the Allmans in the head with her pointed boot.
Southern Rock, in fact, I will say this: Southern Rock is meant to sound sloppy, and lax, and slaphappy. And some of it -- let's say, The Allman Brothers record here -- is in fact, sloppy. It may be talent? But it is sloppy, flappity, unsmart and self-indulgent. And some of it is artfully, perfectly, slickly sloppy and about as random as a Clash rocker's haircut.
I have listened to "Free Bird" more in the last two weeks than I had in any two weeks since 1978. After doing that, I have come away with a depth of respect for those particular wild-eyed Southern boys than I had when I was younger and had not applied myself to meaningful, intelligent hero worship. I have heard Bonnie Raitt delightfully try on a wide variety of styles on this early record, long before the moment when I heard her in Applebee's and could tell she was who she was with just a few slide guitar notes, and that was fun, too. And you can't say enough about Creedence -- no one can -- and the way that k-Tel commercial on afternoon TV made us feel like we'd missed something, because Lord knows we had, in fact, missed something very important indeed. You know? Not sure I got the Steve Earle thing. Steve Earle -- great voice, interesting stuff. Not a Huge Fan.
Allow me to take a moment now and just say it again: Z. Z. Top.
I saw ZZ Top at the Norfolk Scope. I think. It was either the Scope or William and Mary Hall. (It seems unlikely that King William and Queen Mary foresaw ZZ Top, but then who could, really?) It was their Paginator tour, I think, or maybe it was the In-Sink-Erator tour. The one with the keychain. (Did you feel bad for the kids who got that keychain? Heaven knows I did.) ZZ Top ripped it open. I remember we got, like, 12 people from the front. (This was back when you counted how many people you got from the front. As in, "Dude! We were 12 people from the front! My eardrums changed color!" I was, like, 18 people from the front when Aerosmith reunited. This was, at the time, like being the third person into McCrory's on the day after Thanksgiving.)
The discipline, and the history, and the clarity that Top (did you call them "Top"? We called them "Top" -- like they lived around the corner and were a kid you called by his last name, because that was just how we rolled, us and "Top") brought to music, and probably still do, was marvelous. They were Southern Rock, even though -- That's Right -- they were from Texas. There was this precision-ground THING going on. It sounded like the world was on fire. I remember, still, right now, what it sounded like. It sounded like electric slop, but was straight, tight, chords on chords on chords. It was perfect Southern Rock.
Y'all oughta listen to La Grange again. As Moon says, it was a riff they lifted off of John Lee Hooker, and it was tight like a bottle cap. Open it up and let it fizz. (How many "z's" in fizz?)