In stores tomorrow: 2-CD "Deluxe Edition" of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Street Survivors"

[Amerigo Vespucci]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0012X6FW6/

Street Survivors 30th Anniversary CD Set
Ronnie Van Zant considered Street Survivors Lynyrd Skynyrd’s greatest achievement. A year in the making, the album was recorded twice. Now, on the two-CD Street Survivors - Deluxe Edition - 30th Anniversary (Geffen/UMe), released March 4, 2008, the previously unreleased first version debuts alongside the incendiary final studio album from the original Lynyrd Skynyrd issued in 1977.

The package also features the never-before-issued last known recordings of the band, five songs performed live at a Fresno, CA concert less than two months before the group’s famously tragic plane crash.
By 1977, the Jacksonville, FL band--singer Van Zant, guitarists Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, keyboardist Billy Powell, bassist Leon Wilkeson, and drummer Artimus Pyle--had scored four hit albums and become one of America’s top concert draws. There was a new member, guitarist Steve Gaines, and the group could take its time with a new album. The first version was recorded at Miami’s Criteria Studios in winter 1976 and spring 1977 with renowned producer Tom Dowd. But, dissatisfied with the results, Skynyrd returned that summer to Studio One in Atlanta, where “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” had been recorded, and produced the released version themselves.

On Street Survivors - Deluxe Edition - 30th Anniversary, both versions are heard of “You Got That Right,” “I Never Dreamed” and “Ain’t No Good Life” (the original with background vocals by the Honkettes); three versions of “That Smell” (including a never-before-heard extended guitar jam); a previously unreleased “What’s Your Name,” and a song dropped from the album, “Sweet Little Missy,” as a demo and a master of the also axed “Georgia Peaches.” Replacing the two two deleted songs were “One More Time,” a newly overdubbed track from six years earlier, and Merle Haggard’s “Honky Tonk Night Time Man.” A Deluxe Edition bonus is Van Zant’s autobiographical rewrite titled “Jacksonville Kid,” the last song he wrote and recorded.

Street Survivors, the most anticipated Skynyrd album to date, shipped 500,000+ units, instantly earning gold status. But on October 20th, three days after its release, the band’s tour plane ran out of gas and crashed into a Mississippi forest, killing Van Zant, Gaines, his singer sister Cassie, and their road manager, while seriously injuring the other bandmembers. Even as the album reached double platinum and scored a Top 10 hit in “What’s Your Name,” the survivors were devastated.

But Street Survivors, one of the classic albums of Southern Rock, was aptly named.

http://www.lynyrdskynyrd.com/news.php?id=48

[Forkboy]

1. Even better...a new Bauhuas CD comes out.

We'll both be happy campers tomorrow. :)

[harmonicon]

3. aren't you at least a bit skeptical?

I love bauhaus and was overjoyed when they toured in the 90's, but now I'm afraid this time it really is ONLY for the money. Love and Rockets and Peter Murphy were both tanking (musically and financially) around the time of the 90's reunion, and definitely since (well, Love and Rockets broke up... er... disbanded?).

Basically, I think it's going to be a heaping pile of crap.... yet I'm super excited about the My Bloody Valentine tour - fuck, I'm flying to Paris to see them, so what do I know?

[Forkboy]

4. Yeah, I am...which is why I'm getting it given to me.

Damned if I'm paying 18 bucks for it. :)

[no name no slogan]

7. No shit? I did not know that.

Funny, because my band just played "She's in Parties" and "Bela Lugosi's Dead" at practice Saturday night-- the first time in probably a year that we've played either.

I am cautiously optimistic that the new disc will be worthwhile.

[hellbound-liberal]

9. Better yet, a new Flogging Molly CD out tomorrow!

All three of us will be happy campers. We'll be twice as happy if we buy two, right?

[pokerfan]

2. Skynyrd at Knebworth in 1976

http://www.youtube.com/v/RHsDa9_HSlA&rel=1
http://www.youtube.com/v/HG3GTyXMiLk&rel=1
http://www.youtube.com/v/FvzfOgQGM9Q&rel=1

"Lynyrd Skynyrd, also from the USA, got the best reception apart from the Stones. They played numbers like J.J.Cale's 'Call Me The Breeze', 'T For Texas', 'Sweet Home Alabama' and the soaring 'Freebird' which won them a standing ovation. They declined to do an encore."

[pintobean]

6. The camera work and film

editing sucks, but 'T For Texas' is awesome.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

8. The irony of "Street Survivors"...

...is that everything finally came together for the band. The loss of Ed King, the less-than-spectacular "Gimme Back My Bullets" album that followed, the triumphant "One From The Road," featuring the arrival of new member Steve Gaines, the potential of the new musical lineup and the fact that many of the "personal demons" had been exorcised from the band...

I remember buying the vinyl version of "Street Survivors" on the day it was released. I remember the plane crash three days later. I like to think that Skynyrd is remembered as much for their music as they are for what happened to them, but that's naive. It's a mix of the two, folklore and substance, but the Knebworth clips you've posted...and "Freebird: The Movie"...offer ample proof that the substance was there.

:toast:

[pokerfan]

10. Oh yeah

King was leaving and they needed a replacement. Backup singer, Cassie Gaines suggested her brother, Steve and the way I've heard it told, they gave him an audition mainly as a favor to her. Steve's audition was an unexpected surprise blowing them away and he was immediately asked to join.

I like to think of it as the scene in 'That Thing You Do' where Tom Hanks replaces the bass player with a studio musician who had more talent in his pinky than the "Oneders" had in their entire band. Probably not quite that dramatic but Gaines brought a lot of energy and creativity to their music, including their old standards.

Ah, what might have been.

[pintobean]

5. Thanks for the heads up

This album has always been in my top ten favorites.