100 VINYLZ: #57 - Street Survivors LP by Lynyrd Skynyrd

(1977, MCA Records)
I have two copies of this recording. One is the regular one I accumulated during my initial post-small town, college-age, “Oh yeah, Lynyrd Skynyrd is like the Buddhism of the South” stage. The second copy was a gift from a gay friend, and it was the flaming cover version that was deleted and cancelled once they crashed a plane and killed off the original band. At the time, I had no idea that cover was so rarified, and even to this day, even though I do a big fat internet dork list of “My Most Important Records Ever In My Ridiculously Expansive Collection” list, I took the flaming Steve Gaines the dead guitarist from the plane crash cover, and have it tacked up in the camper behind my house, half bent sideways to fit the curve of the fake wood cabinetry, because it’s an awesome cover, and not just for ironic dead guitarists eye closed engulfed in flames bullshit. It is an awesome cover. My grass is blue too, Artimus Pyle, no doubt about it, at least once you get past the top foot of it.
Lynyrd Skynyrd is really underrated as an awesome assed band, due to two reasons. The first is because they suffer from the whole “FREEBIRD!” dilemma of retards liking the one song. I actually saw a dude in a busted ass Firebird today with license plates that said FR33BRD today. And the second factor working against the Leonard Skinner Overdrive is the fact that once some main members died, the leftovers kept going strong. And then some more died from that bunch, but what was leftover from that kept going, sort of strong, to the point it was eventually watered down so goddamned bad that you can still Lynyrd Skynyrd play tomorrow in four different cities, like they were a 1950s R&B band owned by a Jew.
But don’t front through reverse close-mindedness. Lynyrd Skynyrd was some for-real type shit, all stereotypes aside. And this, as well as most of their studio albums, is a great fucking record. The flaming cover version given to me by my flaming friend just makes it better. Odd thing is, I asked that dude if he was gay before he told anybody, dressed as Willie Nelson at a Halloween party of three, with the gay dude, me, and my other roommate dressed as Charles Manson in orange jumpsuit and swastika forehead. Memories, bros, nothing but memories. That’s what owning records is all about.