Boy, you wanna talk about bands I despised? Lynyrd Skynyrd is very high up on that list, lemme tell ya. I felt they stood for pretty much everything the douchenozzles that record under that moniker these days actually stand for. That's that it's okay to be a bigoted, gun toting alcoholic that likes to get in fights and treat other people like shit. I went through a lot of years thinking this, and making a "Ppppphhhhhtttt!!!!" noise whenever my buddy would bring them up. I was proud to dislike Lynyrd Skynyrd.
These days, I've changed my stance on them. Every few years I try to listen to things I don't like, like Led Zeppelin or The Eagles and see if I like them now, the way I started to like mushrooms and cheese. People change, and I'm a person, and I hope I keep changing. Not too much, but I hope I get better as I get older. So to my buddy Hobie: You were right. I was wrong. Lynyrd Skynyrd was a great American band. Definitely one of the best of the 70's and they deserve all the good things said about them, and they deserve apologies from liberal assholes like me that just shut them out. I mean, I still hate that confederate flag and everything it stands for. It stands for evil so far as I'm concerned. But I think Ronnie Van Zant was a probably a far better person than I imagined, and I wish I had seen it through my own shortcomings a long time ago.
So with that out of the way, I'm gonna talk about Gimme Back My Bullets before I talk about any other Skynyrd albums. I remember when it came out a lot of kids were pretty excited. Not me, but friends of mine were, and more importantly other friends of theirs were. So I was at a guy's house one day shortly after this came out, and he had it. We were upstairs in his bedroom/attic and it was kind of cool because we could smoke over there. I thought this guy was a freaking redneck and a half. To make my point he got a girl pregnant and moved into a trailer with her and the baby. They both dropped out of school. He was sixteen and she was fifteen. Teenage me thought they were total losers, and over fifty me hopes they made it against long odds. Over fifty me thinks teenage me was kind of an intolerant, judgmental dick. I hope I'm better.
But I can remember hanging out in his mom's house before they moved into their trailer, and listening to this. I think I complained between every song. I think they played other stuff and I was happy later, but for some reason I really remember listening to Gimme Back My Bullets that afternoon. And this afternoon while I'm listening to it, I'm thinking I genuinely like this album. I think the lyrics are good. I think the music is really good. I think I missed out, and I think it's my fault that I missed out.
So even though I missed out on this, I eventually did catch on to these guys. I really like the title track and All I Can Do Is Write About It. I think the other songs are good, but not great. Like the kinds of songs that don't seem to be any great shakes on their own, but as a group, they work really well. They definitely have some better albums, and some day I'll get around to those, but I felt like doing this one first. Maybe because I needed to just write down me saying that I let myself get in the way of enjoying something I should have been able to enjoy if I didn't have so many hangups.
Now, my record is nice. It plays great, it's flat and it's quiet. The cover is okay, One corner has some wear but it hasn't split, so it's not too bad. I buy a lot of used records like that. If the record looks really nice but the cover was never in a plastic sleeve they can get a little roughed up, but if the record looks like no one ever played it, that's fine with me. I'll buy it for a buck or two.
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