There was an interesting Bio on the band on the Circle channel a while back. Never realized they were originally from Florida.
"What would a $2,000 Geissele Super Duty do that a $500 PSA door buster on Black Friday couldn't do?" - Stopsign32v
I live on a Moshav which was as close to having my own place as you can get in socialist Israel.
I have a sign over the drive way to my house "3 Acres and a mule" I have one flag pole and flew the Texas state flag, since it was good to my family after the war. They lost everything they had to carpet baggers in Alabama and then moved to Texas and started to rebuild, by the time I came along my parents were out of the south, but it is part of our family history.
You could hear music coming from my house most days, Israeli, middle east, Marshal Tucker, Eagles, Lynryd Skynyrd, Linda Ronsdadt, etc
I was at a New Years party in Milan and one guys only English was "Sweet Home Alabama".
Over course he kept finding me and saying it over and over, meanwhile he was getting in myway and the little hottie that invited me to said party.
G D Em F C and Bb, to be exact
Were they redneck? Clearly
Trash? Certainly some were. They even used cheap Peavey amps when the rest of the world worshiped Marshall, vox, and orange. No $10,000 guitars and complicated pedals with guitar techs to maintain them.
Just some dudes who really liked to play.
Overrated? Overplayed, certainly in the US. To the point that many of us got worn out.
But it's a testament to their songwriting that new generations continue to discover them.
It's a bit entertaining to watch professionals and amateurs alike react to them on YouTube who have never heard some of these songs.
It's clear that Free Bird was well crafted, almost to the point of being epic. And well performed long before the days of central mixes and auto-tune.
I had never noticed, but one reaction by a vocal coach pointed out how the band members would back off volume manually to let different pieces shine. They did this manually, not some guy back in the audience controlling the mix. It takes a real cohesive and experienced band to be able to do that well.
Consistently two of their songs make the top 10 best guitar intros lists. Freebird joins Hotel California and comfortably numb on the best guitar outros. And it is also right up in there in the best guitar solos/duets
I had my family thousands of miles from home, and we had driven to a very remote corner of the country we were in to an area that had virtually no tourism. We picked a local restaurant that was not at all touristy and went in, as we like to find local food.
We are sitting there in the restaurant basking in the ambience, then all the sudden "sweet home Alabama" came on their music and we all burst out laughing. Thousands of miles away and you can't escape the D Cadd9 G, and one of the most recognizable riffs there is.
Not my favorite group, and certainly overplayed.
Lord knows I can't change, but don't diss freebird!
Bookmarks