Still doubtfulness music's ability to replace all barriers and boundaries? Consider the scene at a closely full New Orleans Arena on Friday night.
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During a set by Lynyrd Skynyrd, the penultimate Southern rock band, thousands cheered the Confederate flag displayed during "Sweet Home Alabama." Two hours later, those same fans waved their hands in the melodic phrase like they just didn't care as Kid Rock -- wHO owes rival debts to Johnny Cash and Grandmaster Flash -- and Joseph "Rev Run" Simmons lED an rapt sing-along on Run-DMC's rap classic "It's Tricky."
Friday's show launched the "Rock 'n Rebels" spell with Rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rev Run and Back Door Slam. For this outing, Rock stripped away the strippers, fireworks and extended forays into authoritative rock cover songs. Instead he emphatic his 11-piece Twisted Brown Trucker band and ever-growing, ever maturing catalog. They held their own without the bells and whistles.
Rock's sense of humor preceded him to the stage. As the lights dimmed, Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" blasted from the speakers -- only if to cut off just now as it did during the last episode of "The Sopranos." In an opening video, a bodyguard searched for Rock in a Waffle House -- the setting for a 2007 fight that lED to the singer's hold.
Clad all in white River save a black chapeau, an animated Rock bounded to the tip of a cross-shaped runway and threw himself into the task at hand. In the set's early exit, that consisted of shaping himself: He is a "Rock 'n Roll Jesus," as the title track of his latest album asserts. He is an "American Badass" and a "Lowlife." He is "Cocky."
With that, the ensemble dead switched gears for "All Summer Long," the harmony and acoustic guitar-laden summer anthem that borrows from Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama." The song power have fit more comfortably elsewhere in the set.
The show poorly early with "Amen," a gospel-tinged instruction of the times from "Rock 'n Roll Jesus." As Rock sang of natural disasters, images from Hurricane Katrina's aftermath flashed on video screens; the audience cheered. Rock instructed all in attendance to high-five someone they didn't know. What followed was the stone 'n roll equivalent of the peace offering in church; it was goofy, awkward, queer and bright, as neighborly a present moment as I've ever experienced at an arena show. At this point, Rock could do no wrong.
Such a bloom couldn't be sustained. A low-key "Cowboy" detoured into a extend of the "Dukes of Hazzard" theme, only to swing back into a fully amped up "Cowboy." Rock strummed an acoustic for a profane land cover and his have honky-tonk kiss-off "Half Your Age," refitted with an obscene variation told from drummer Stefanie Eulinberg's point of purview.
That Rock is a more than adequate knocker was seeming during Rev Run's 20 minute guest turn. He traded lines with Run on "You Be Illin" and channeled Steven Tyler in the rap-rock matrimony "Walk This Way." Rock also took a turn on the turntables and banged out fellow Detroit rocker Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" on drums and guitar. "So Hott," a attrition, guitar-heavy clunker, followed by a screaming "Bawitdaba," made for an anticlimactic climax.
Rock returned to thank his pal Sidney Torres, locally renowned as the telegenic proprietor of SDT Waste & Debris, for playing host during Rock's Big Easy visit. Then he light-emitting diode the band through "New Orleans," with the Rebirth Brass Band providing counterpoint. "New Orleans" is a relatively obscure cut on "Rock 'n Roll Jesus"; much of the audience seemed unfamiliar with it. But Rock's affection for the city, and ongoing evolution as an creative person, were apparent.
The original Lynyrd Skynyrd is, for me, forever frozen in time as a band of boozing, brawling Southern long-hairs of the 1970s. So there is a unplug with the spiffed up contemporary version.
Among the cracking American rock bands, Skynyrd is besides one of rock's great tragedies. Days after the 1977 discharge of "Street Survivors," the album that solidified Skynyrd's standing as a commercial and originative powerhouse, the band's hired plane crashed in Mississippi en route to a show in Baton Rouge. Six members of the entourage, including vocalist and primary songwriter Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Steve Gaines, died.
Through a twist of fate, kinetic energy and physics, guitarist Gary Rossington and keyboardist Billy Powell, among others, survived. In 1987, they revived the ring for what was ab initio billed as a one-off tribute tour, with Ronnie's younger comrade Johnny tattle songs that still endure on rock candy radio.
Two decades later on that tribute tour, Lynyrd Skynyrd 2.0 continues to do big business on the road. By now, Johnny has fronted Skynyrd much longer than Ronnie, only audiences still demand the classic songs from Ronnie's era.
And so Skynyrd's hour-and-15 minute lay out Friday consisted almost entirely of material that is more than three decades old. "He sounds the same as he did 30 long time ago," thick the guy wire next to me, wHO seemed non to cover as I tried to explain this wasn't the Van Zant who wrote and ab initio sang these songs.
Perhaps it doesn't matter. Drummer Michael Cartellone can push the material too aggressively -- he lacks the subtle swing of other Skynyrd drummers Bob Burns and Artimus Pyle. But otherwise Powell, Rossington and their current cohorts -- all athletics shoulder-length locks worthy of the seventies -- sit the old warhorses well.
Powell's pianissimo stamped the roadhouse boogie in "What's Your Name," "Gimme Three Steps" and "Call Me the Breeze." Guitarist Rickey Medlocke, a veteran of Southern rock brothers-in-arms Blackfoot, carried much of the guitar solo load. He traded vocal lines with Van Zant on "You Got That Right."
"Been there, done that, ain't never going back again," Van Zant said by way of introduction to "That Smell," an oft-misinterpreted warning around the evils of message abuse. Video images of American troops served as the background to "Simple Man." They ditched the medley deployed during the "Rowdy Frynyds" tour with Hank Williams Jr. net year and instead left many classics unplayed.
For the last "Freebird," Rossington stepped to the figurehead of the stage and traced the anthem's moaning slide guitar signature. A dozen name calling and photos from Skynyrd's past flashed on the screen behind him. The full ensemble slammed "Freebird" home, the Lynyrd Skynyrd that is saluting the Lynyrd Skynyrd that was.
Blues-rock trio Back Door Slam made the most of their five-song, 30 minute opening set. I first encountered the youth ensemble from the Isle of Man at their American debut, a gig at a Sixth Street Irish public house in March 2007 during the South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin. They have been on the road ever since, grinding kO'd the sort of backbreaking campaign topper undertaken by hungry young musicians scarce in their 20s.
Plopped mastered at the front of the massive Skynyrd/Rock leg with a bare-bones brake drum kit, Back Door Slam looked like a high school school band at a talent contest. Guitarist/vocalist Davy Knowles and his bandmates have much to memorise about playing the big rooms and the big stages. Bassist Adam Jones moved small other than his men, and Knowles -- in jeans, a T-shirt and tennis shoes -- stuck close to his mike. They are the antithesis of bolt down pomp and circumstance, a throwback to a time when musicians showed up, plugged in and wailed.
And pule they did. Knowles boasts a backbone in his voice that is well beyond his years, and the brilliant scream of his guitar cut through the din of the vast scene of action. Songs from Back Door Slam's 2007 debut, "Roll Away," served as launching pads for solos of the Guy/Clapton/Vaughan variety. He made wise use of a wah-wah pedal as he graven hearty booster cable lines, the sort that stand on their have and talk to a deep committal to, and natural feel for, the music and its history.
Armed with such musicianship, flash is not necessary.
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