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| Th' Skynyrd rocking out Free Bird in '77 |
Just as scrimshaw and penmanship skill sets have fallen into disuse, so has Rocking Out. How did The Youth Of Yesteryear manifest this forgotten art? Visible signs included lowering the head to shake their long hair, and adopting poses concomitant with playing the electric guitar - a phenomenon known as "air guitar". The head could be thrown back during an air guitar solo, the features expressing painful ecstasy. The act of Rocking Out was frequently performed by a peer group of young males, mostly at live concerts. The solitary Rock Out was an established feature at "keggers" [parties involving beer - Ed.], usually followed by falling into a swimming pool, or off a roof, or asleep.
FoamFacts™: A bolt of lightning is visible in the sky above Ed King's head on the first album cover, unnoticed until the sleeve was printed. Ed was a member of The Strawberry Alarm Clock (FFA©- Ed.].
Seek medical advice before Rocking Out. Have a paramedic present, or use a "Dead Man's Switch" device to summon help.
Loadup deliverable later today (my time), or tomorrow (your time).
ReplyDeleteI witnessed this band twice in the mid 1970s; both shows in Asbury Park, New Jersey. First show I sat outside the venue, in line with ticket in hand, for a good five hours & wound-up in the third or fourth row (general admission ticket = standing). Outstanding show; took snaps with my little Kodak color-film camera and was in seventh-heaven. Second show, back of the auditorium (Memorial or Casino Hall?), another great performance. This particular gig featured new Guitarist Steve Gaines.
ReplyDeleteLater that year, my family moved from "Rocking Out" New Jersey to snooze-ville north western Vermont. L.S. released their last LP, Street Survivors and I was in even higher, musical seventh heaven. Then the airplane crash...
Any of those snaps still around? Thanks for the comment.
DeleteI saw them in a disused area of a railyard in Pensacola, Florida early 70s. The drum riser was a couple of sheets of plywood laid on the actual rails of the railroad tracks. Singer was barefoot the whole time. Opened for BB King. Weird show in a weird place. I wasn't really into whatever it was they were trying to do but have to say they kicked bootay. I'll email Elson a story I haven't told regarding an offshoot band they turned into at a Muddy Waters show at the Agora in Atlanta that I haven't shared here. I'll try and be Quick about it.
DeleteElson is hunched over his in-tray in fevered anticipation. Loved the detail of the plywood on the tracks.
DeleteI will do my best to locate said Snaps... And the second concert was actually filmed and is on You Tube. Again, will share when located...
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoEZa5oG4b4 >> L.S. mid-July 1977... Mid-Summer show makes sense now... I moved to Vermont in August 1977.
DeleteThank you for this! First thing that hit me was the drumming, then that everything is in tune, including the vocals, right in the middle of the note, and they are all on the beat, in the pocket, listening to each other, and AS MUSICAL AS FUCK. This is high performance.
DeleteWelcome ! A tight musical-unit for sure... Now, where are those photographs...
DeleteCheck Elson's inbox
DeleteI used to work near the studio where that first album was recorded. Calling it a nothing little hole in the wall would be an injustice to holes in the wall. But a lot of cool southern rock was recorded there - in addition to a few LS albums, Atlanta Rhythm Section and .38 Special cranked out a lot of music there.
ReplyDeleteThe most fun one is that long before the movie Almost Famous, there was a real band called Stillwater. They recorded both of their albums at that studio.
The hardest one to imagine - bearing in mind that the building is a warehouse-like industrial strip mall atrocity near the dead end of an industrial road that usually needs repaving, lost in the wasteland just off of what is now Atlanta's "spaghetti junction" highway interchange, with several "u-pull-it" auto parts salvage lots in the general vicinity - is that someone actually managed to get Dio and a couple of the guys from Deep Purple to go there to do an album in the early 1970s, shortly before Skynyrd recorded their debut there.
Torgo give good comment.
DeleteTorgo never use first person. Torgo love smell of radar.
DeleteIt smell like napalm in morning.
Deleteyes is good - useo
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/K3Axq293vXX
ReplyDeleteA storming album. First class songwriting, performance and production. What a great year for music. Three Steps always make me smile - a song about backing out of a fight! Far from the Southern Man stereotype.
1976, and I was doing a considerable amount of rocking out, playing bass in a covers band called, you guessed it, Freebird. We played the local US Navy radar station. Five stoned Scots teenagers playing Sweet Home Alabama for homesick Yanks, some genuine Alabamians, to rock out to. Happy days.
ReplyDeleteAlthough there was only phantom long hair to be shaken, it was like watching the US Navy formation air guitar display team. Yee-ha!
DeleteThis is the kind of quality comment you just don't get anywhere else. Especially on the internet. Kudos!
DeleteI saw “Skynyrd” twice here in Manhattan; both times they were a mismatched opening act/headliner. The first time was when they opened for The Who, on their ‘Quadrophenia’ tour in Madison Square Garden (1973?). The second time was a few years later in 1976 at The Palladium (formally called the Academy of Music), where they headlined with Be-Bop Deluxe as the opening act.
ReplyDeleteMeh.
I saw the reconstituted Skynyrd at a casino in Mississippi a few years ago (maybe 10, my brain cell don't work so good these days). Lots of wrapped-up-in-the-flag, support-the-troops, a crowd full of beer-drunk MAGA-hatted bikers, redneck jingoism & some seriously aging players, but still a great concert. That said, one of my buddies was crew for them back in the day & was waiting for the plane in Baton Rouge the night the plane crashed. Thanks for the link.
ReplyDeleteTen years fly by like nothing these days. And that's one audience I'm not part of.
DeleteThen again, I made the mistake a couple of years ago to check out their later work - as in stuff from the last fifteen to twenty - and, well, it's exactly the kind of music MAGA-hatted redneck bikers would listen to - an indigestible mix of blues and hard-rock, chock full of the kind of sentiments that above target group (and let's face it, that IS the target group) would like. Egads musically and egads lyrically. Egads egads.
ReplyDeleteAh well. They haven't been the band since the plane crashed. Shouldn't spoil our enjoyment of the first couple of albums, which - as far as I know - no great distance - weren't appropriated by any political movement back then, but then I was very far away from Sweet Home Alabama, which was written as a reply to Neil Young, who allegedly "heard screamin' and bullwhips crackin'" - unlikely in 1970, so he might have expected a response.
DeleteA Geffen exec had this to say about Van Zant:
“He liked George Wallace but not for the race part – which is horrible – but for the workingman part – he felt Wallace had their back. His daddy was a truck driver and they grew up blue collar. He wasn’t a racist at all. He admired black artists and loved their music and had a kind heart. He was a Democrat for the most part and he was going to do a fundraiser for Jimmy Carter, but he got sick and couldn’t perform. He was definitely not a right-wing Republican like those two idiot brothers [Donnie and Johnny].
People seemed to think that because they were poor Southern white dudes who looked and sounded kind of redneck-y, Ronnie Van Zant and his band mates must have been a bunch of ignorant, racist, far-right gun nuts. But if you actually listen to their music, you’ll find that the opposite is true. At the height of the band’s popularity in the ‘70’s no one was singing about gun control, but Ronnie wrote lyrics like ‘Handguns are made for killin’, they ain’t no good for nothin’ else … So why don’t we dump them people to the bottom of the sea’ in the song ‘Saturday Night Special.’”
(go here for a good article: https://rockandrollglobe.com/rock/this-bird-you-cannot-change-ronnie-van-zant-at-75/ )
It might be worth remembering that a political movement will appropriate anything they think makes their point - such as the bible, or Born In The USA. Or the swastika. Politics is dumbass.
DeleteAnd then there was Mr. MAGA hugging (and mistreating) the American flag, while most of his followers waved Conferderate flags. WTF?? As said above, the pre-crash band was great, but never got into the later stuff.
Delete...and thanks for the link to a great article...Can't you smell that smell?
DeleteNo doubt there is as stark a contrast as any between Pre-crash Skynyrd and after - not only were they obviously much weaker musically, but they really started to lean hard into the guns & god and 'don't tread onme' angle of their music, whereas the early 70s Skynyrd, which I agree are great by the way, and much more versatile than usually given credit for, was as much for the hippies as the Okees from Muskogee.
DeletePerhaps their biggest legacy is "Free Bird," as in that drunk dude 10 rows back who screams "Free Birrrrrrd!" during a folk music show. About the only place I haven't heard someone call out for that song is church, but I don't go to church except for funerals and weddings so I could be wrong...
DeleteAh, the meme before we called it that. Yeah, not a great legacy, and the band is completely innocent in this bullshit. Seems to be an American thing, though, never heard that here on the old continent...
DeleteThanks, I've not listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd in years - Free Bird got overplayed on the BBC Friday Rock show in the 80's - but I'll give this a spin, I liked a lot of what else I've heard. I saw them in 1997 at the Albert Hall, London with Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden as the support act. In those days I could afford to go to big gigs.
ReplyDeleteIt was also a favourite clip on the OGWT when Whispering Bob was hosting it.
DeleteEnough time has passed for me to once more enjoy Skynyrd.
Then there's Warren Zevon..."Sweet home Alabama, play that dead band's song".
ReplyDeleteThere's *always* Warren Zevon. Which reminds me - maybe I should give Randy Newman's Good Old Boys a spin?
DeleteGuy at our local rock night (1979) used to air guitar to Starz : Coliseum Rock...complete with switching of imaginary foot pedals...you just had to stand back and offer (imaginary) applause considering he was probably the only person in Scotland, at that time, who knew who the fuck Starz were.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet he got laid a lot.
Delete"Save some pussy for the rest of us, fella!"
DeleteI'd like to hear of any contemporary Rocking Out - does it still happen? I imagine it still happens in Southern bars and at what passes for Skynyrd concerts, but what about as a more general thing? Rocking Out was never limited by geography or politics. I have myself, in the past, Rocked Out. Do The Young People Of Today, uh, "rock out"? Perhaps someone would like to add a scathing comment about my presumption that TYPOT are incapable of Rocking Out? I only ask because I want to know - is Rocking Out still "a thing"? Is there an app?
ReplyDeleteClubs that cater to Punk and Metal (and all their sub-genres) are very much alive and well in large urban areas, for TYPOT. Classic Rock, not so much.
DeleteYebbut does the audience Rock Out? This is a very specific thing.
DeleteDo they rock out?
DeleteDoes Pinocchio have a wooden schwanzstucker?
No, he doesn't. In a classic case of Freudian sublimation, Pinocchio's proboscis vicariously represents, or substitutes for, the absent penis. Its "growing" is the public display of tumescence, in the story the result of a "lie" - the lie being the denial of impotence, or fear of castration. But you knew this, Babs.
DeleteI'm not sure if TYPOT rocks out like you describe Farq, but I did attend a Judas Priest and the Scorpions gig at Hammersmith Odeon about 20 years ago, audience was mainly people in their 40/50's many of whom were 'throwing shapes', with plenty of air guitar. I'm sure there were young people there too, but didn't spot them 'rocking out'.
DeleteThere is a very health Metal scene in England, but I find it generally a bit preposterous. Judas Priest are the granddaddys of Metal, and lets give Metal some credit here, their front man Rob Halford has been openly gay for decades and it hasn't adversely affected their career, as it may have done in some genres of music.
I can't speak to "rocking out" but there is still the "mosh pit." Back at the Mabuhay Gardens we called it "slam dancing". Last time I was in one was with my son at a Buzzcocks show about 10 years ago.
DeleteOr rather...we were near the stage, with our backs against a pillar so we had leverage to push the fools off of us and no one could hit us from behind unexpectedly.
I trained my beloved larvae in the ways of the club rock concert: the guy who pushes through the crowd holding a triangle of glasses filled with bourbon on the rocks, spilling as he goes....move over. Never leave your stuff (drinks, purse, jacket) unattended. Pee before you go, the bathrooms are dire. Yes, there will be an encore. And stay out of the mosh pit, you can lose a tooth.
You saying "you can lose a tooth", reminded me, about 35 years ago I lost my prescription glasses in a mosh pit at a Motorhead gig - until now I'd completely forgotten about that. I'm much more sedate generally at gigs these days in both my choice of music and my drinking behaviour.
DeleteHey, Bambi! Yeah, there's that sense as I age that I'm AWARE of the possibilities of what can go wrong. A pair of cheap drug store reading glass, hey, I'll take a risk. Prescription, or a pair of good sunglasses? They stay at home (can't leave 'em in the car here in Oakland, people break the windows of your car and steal 'em.)
DeleteAnd I don't drink these days, either. :)
Following your guideline I tried "rocking out".
ReplyDeleteNot much hair left was the first obstacle. Then the painful expressions only came from cramps.
"Air guitar" seemed like "air spliff rolling"
Falling asleep or drowning (dressed) into a pool I feel qualified to tough.
Maybe I should try "jamestayloring out" but it's a depressing prospect.
Great records never matched as far as I know.
Thanks Farq
Bat
You're welcome, Bat.
DeleteI don't get out much anymore but the few times I have ventured out recently to see live bands (e.g. Tonstartssbandht (check them out!), Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Built to Spill, Jack White, Flaming Lips) I have been very disappointed in the lack of Rocking Out despite the bands doing so. It seems like audiences, here at least, just want to stand there and be "entertained." There's enthusiastic applause but a seriously lack of giving energy back to the artists while they're playing. I'm sure people must be rocking out hard somewhere but the audiences here in Orlando are sadly flaccid.
ReplyDeleteCan we get frontline reports from any other locations? MrDave's disturbing observation seems to back up my suspicion that audiences have lost the ability to Rock Out.
Delete