Gimme Back My Bullets Review

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Gimme Back My Bullets ReviewGimme Back My Bullets is generally considered the least successful of the original Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, but it has always been my favorite. I rate it just slightly ahead of the essential "Pronounced". I remember staying up late as a teenager, to hear its midnight debut on the local radio station (WDVE, Pittsburgh), and buying it ASAP after that.
"Bullets" is a transitional album for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Most obviously, it features a 2-guitar line-up, coming after the departure of Ed King, and a few months before Steve Gaines joined. The 2-guitar sound is a bit leaner that previous albums, but Collins and Rossington are more than capable of carrying the load! But it's also their first production with the legendary Tom Dowd replacing Al Kooper who had produced their first 3 albums. And it has the debut of the Honkettes, the female backup vocal group consisting of JoJo Billingsley, Cassie Gaines and Leslie Hawkins.
Gimme Back My Bullets is very much Allen Collins' record. Over the first 3 Skynyrd albums, the songwriting was spilt pretty evenly between the 3 guitarists (along with Singer Ronnie Van Zant, of course). Allen Collins co-authors 8 of 24 songs, Gary Rossington and Ed King each co-author 7. But Allen wrote many of Skynyrd's best songs, including "Freebird", "Gimme 3 Steps", "Tuesday's Gone" and "Needle & The Spoon". On "Bullets", Allen has songwriting credits (along with RVZ) on all 8 of the original songs (Rossington is also part of the team on 3 of the songs).
Musically, "Bullets" didn't have any big hits, but does include several Skynyrd standards. All of the songs are great. The title track, "Double Trouble" and "Searchin" are all Skynyrd standards, along with the acoustic-ish "All I can Do Is Write About It". "Roll Gypsie Roll" is a reflective piece about life on the road, and one of my all time favorite songs. "Every Mother's Son", "Trust" and "Cry For The Bad Man" are all solid songs. There's also a cover of J.J.Cale's "Same Old Blues" that has a great, almost funky, feel. Trivia note: Lynyrd Skynyrd only did 2 covers on their first 4 studio albums, both were of J.J. Cale songs. The other was "Call Me The Breeze".
If you're a casual Skynyrd fan, start with "Pronounced", or the original band's live set "One More From The Road". But if you want to get deeper into the spirit of the band, this album can't be beat.Gimme Back My Bullets Overview

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Second Helping (Reis) Review

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Second Helping (Reis) ReviewOne of the great hard rock bands of the 1970s, Lynyrd Skynyrd, have been mistakenly reviled by some as a buncha' racist rednecks, with too many guitars to boot. As head hombre Ronnie Van Zandt would have proclaimed: "the FOOLS!". Which appears to have been his favored insult through out Skynyrd's recording career. They were more raw, raunchy, stylistically varied, and a lot smarter and funnier than a majority of their contemporaries. "Second Helping", arguably their finest studio album, begins with the classic "Sweet Home Alabama". How anyone can not love this song is beyond my comprehension (Understandably tired of it from dreaded "Classic Rock" radio overkill, perhaps...). Even target of derision, Neil Young (because of his song "Southern Man"), loved it, and after all as Neil Young fan, Van Zandt, quipped, "I just felt he was taking down the whole flock just to nail a few bad ducks". On "Working For MCA", Van Zandt lets out one of the greatest frustrated snarls ever recorded to accompany the beginning landslide of guitar noise. In the album's "slow" number, "The Ballad Of Curtis Loew", a young boy is awestruck by the dobro blues of one Curtis Loew, and he bites back on his anger at the local FOOLS who consider the old man useless. "Swamp Music" is a tightly coiled number (three chords, three guitars!) that sings of the joy of leaving the big city for a while, with your hound at your side. While "Needle And The Spoon" sends out a stark caveat to all the needle freaks. Apparently after a double bill in Missouri, the band wound up getting drunk with The New York Dolls (?!?) (according to a recent Doll's bio) who probably would have profited from paying closer attention to this song. "Call Me The Breeze" is a J.J. Cale tune turned into a hard rock boogie with dueling guitars and horns, barrelhouse piano, and much whoopin', hollerin', and hand claps by, according to the liner notes, and I quote: "Wicker, Toby, Cockroach, Moochie, Punnel, Wolfman, Kooder, Mr. Feedback, and Gooshie". The CD has the added bonus of including Van Zandt's masterful adolescent tearjerker (that's a tearjerker about adolescence), "Was I Right Or Wrong?", as often pointed out, written and recorded before the band got a major label deal and hit the big time. Note: this album is a wonderful companion to their excellent collection, "Gold And Platinum"; "Sweet Home Alabama", is the only repeated cut. The band's career ended tragically with a plane crash in 1977, killing Van Zandt and several other key members. I've heard of albums released after this under the name Lynyrd Skynyrd, but this is name only. I mean c'mon, without Shorty? He was their heart.Second Helping (Reis) OverviewSkynyrd's sophomore album remains their most popular, and now it's been expanded and remastered for this special-edition CD. It's got all the original tracks- Sweet Home Alabama; Workin' for MCA; Swamp Music; They Call Me the Breeze , and the rest-plus three bonus tracks, including a demo of Take Your Time , a previously unreleased version of Was I Right or Wrong and the first reissue of the single version of Don't Ask Me No Questions !

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Closer to Home Review

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Closer to Home ReviewOn this, their third album, Grand Funk Railroad's own unique sound became fully evolved. The band had started with re-written and refined material from their days as another group when they debuted as GFR in 1969 with "On Time." With their second album, "Grand Funk," the band gave birth to a unique entity of music: a hybrid of edgy hard rock, quirky pop, and soulful blues. However, their music, though catchy, was still very infantile. It was clear that the band was still learning to crawl. With "Closer to Home," they officially carved their niche into the musical world with a vengeance. The pulsating rhythms of Mel Schacher's bass, the primal yet deeply spiritual melodies of Mark Farner's guitar, and the much-underrated beat of Don Brewer's drumming came together to paint a picture of how society should be.
The songs, though sometimes mistaken for party fare, are very conceptual. One the A Side, the band examines the world as it was in 1970 (and still is today): a cold place where humanity is in danger of being wiped out by its own desires. On the B Side, Mark Farner's lyrics shift from an observation to a warning: that our best chance for survival as a species depends on adopting an attitude of peace, love, and mutual respect and tolerance for one's neighbors, be they friend or foe. This idea is slowly built upon until it reaches a head with the band's magnum opus: "I'm Your Captain," a ten-minute tour de force of quiet yet explosive rhythms, and some of Farner's best lyrics. The band spends the last half of the song pleading with society to find its way back to the light (accompanied by a flutist and a string section, a first for the group).
What really makes these songs stand out from Farner's earlier efforts is more of a devotion to words with a meaning. In the past, songs that touched upon Farner's personal philosophy were often outnumbered by songs that had more of a pop feeling to them, as far as lyrics were concerned. His abilities as a songwriter matured, so that even on songs like "Aimless Lady," the words and music do a better job of blending into a symmetrical whole. This idea is carried into the next song about a broken releationship: "Mean Mistreater." This song is entirely about rhythm, as Mark Farner takes off his guitar and trades it for an organ. Combined with Schacher's bass and Brewer's fiery percussions, you won't even notice that the guitar is gone. As for the rest of the songs, there is a purity to the band's musicianship that is more refined than it was on earlier albums. Don Brewer manages to keep the beat without hitting the cymbals every five seconds, and both he and Mel Schacher feed Mark Farner a rhythm which Farner uses to sculpt magnificent chords on his guitar: every bit as edgy as the last album, but with just the right amount of pop. And as for Mel Schacher: if his bass doesn't get your feet tapping (especially on "Nothing Is The Same"), you might be legally dead. All in all, the band delivers more than just a message that people must learn to live in harmony. They're saying: "Look out, world. We've learned how to rock, and we're not taking any prisoners."Closer to Home Overview

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