![]() Three months later the two were dead, along with Cassie Gaines, assistant tour manager Dean Kilpatrick, and Walter McCreary and William Gray, the pilot and co-pilot of the Convair CV-300 that, at a little before 7 p.m. There’s not just a newfound joy in it, but a new understanding, a new will to keep making music and continue striving for that greatness night after night after night. Their voices harmonize, though only by like an octave - the same notes coming from the man who’s seen it all and the one who can’t wait to see it all. “When my time’s up, I’ll hold my own / You won’t find me in an old folks home,” Van Zant and Gaines declare in unison on “You Got That Right,” a line that jumps out on record, but resonates in the great open-roadness of it all during a gig at the Asbury Park Convention Center in July '77, the last Skynyrd performance captured on film. ![]() Death was never a frightening prospect, but the thought of losing Lynyrd Skynyrd, everything they’d created over the past decade and all they could create over the next, was. Like the best Lynyrd Skynyrd, Street Survivors navigates the ol’ mortal coil, but where their earlier material found tension tension in a Jacksonville-bred form of desperation and an all-in devotion to rock grandeur, this time around they’d actually steered too close to the edge and peered over the other side. Yet it sounds nothing like any other Skynyrd record - it’s lithe, deft and swings in a way that tweaks the massive arena rock sound their three guitar attacked helped foster, but without sacrificing any sort of grandeur or triumph. Street Survivors is an appropriate culmination of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s career, touching on the musical and thematic marks that best served the band throughout their career: The front porch orchestration of “Honky Tonk Night Time Man,” the boozy horns to boot Van Zant’s flirtations on “What’s Your Name,” guitar work as poignant (“I Never Dreamed”) as it was riotous (“One More Time”). Rounded out by opener, and another perennial radio favorite, “What’s Your Name,” a rambunctious rendition of Merle Haggard’s “Honky Tonk Night Time Man,” the Gaines-helmed closer “Ain’t No Good Life,” and in a brilliant nod to their past, “One More Time,” a track initially recorded at Muscle Shoals and released on Street Survivors essentially as it was originally laid down. Gaines’ guitar, go figure, lies at the heart of Street Survivors: After years of languishing in sub-par bands and hotel lounges, the Okie was more than ready to unleash all sorts of pent-up genius, whether a relatively simple rhythmic progression that sprouts out and bounces off of Rossington’s lead riff on “What’s Your Name," or the stunning, staggering swirl of pull-ons and -offs that opens "I Know A Little.” Playing his Stratocaster tight, quick and clean - each note picked to round out with a twang that fit Van Zant’s voice like a charm - Gaines had Rossington and Collins chomping at the bit to keep up, though never playing with any sort of malice or jealousy. The newcomer is front and center on my favorite Street Survivors track “You Got That Right,” a stellar traveling song he co-penned and -sang with Van Zant that also closes with one of the best solos in Skynyrd’s catalogue, a synced up note-for-note torrent from Gaines and Collins that bleeds the former’s buoyant pluck with the latter’s striking screech so cleanly into one 'til the seams reveal themselves brilliantly as the two navigate towards, then detonate, an all out fret-tap assault. ![]() That’s some serious dreams-come-true shit. A headlining gig at Madison Square Garden was on the band’s 1977 tour docket. But more than that, Street Survivors is a celebration - of the music itself, of all the small things, of all the good to come. Street Survivors carries that air throughout, and though tragic coincidence and retrospective perspectives play no small part in heightening that mood (the album was famously, quickly re-released with a cover sans the band ablaze after the crash) its creation and release in the aftermath of the most tumultuous period of Skynyrd’s career made it ripe for mediations on mortality. “That Smell” is stark even by Van Zant’s standards - “Whiskey bottles, brand new cars / Oak tree your in my way” he puts it, Rossington surely standing right over his shoulder - his lyrics treading around a lead guitar riff thatsteps with eerily prescient trepidation. ![]() the album released three days before the plane crash. the one with the cover showing the band engulfed in flames a.k.a. Gary Rossington’s accident - here’s the car-nage - provided the inspiration for “That Smell,” another installment in Ronnie Van Zant’s anti-drug series and the second track on the band’s final, perhaps best album, 1977’s Street Survivors. Lynyrd Skynyrd - “That Smell” (live in Asbury Park, ‘77) “Street Survivors”: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Best, And Last
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