Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant sure has a lot of brothers. Let’s see: there’s Donnie Van Zant, Johnny Van Zant, James Joyce Van Zant, Canadian Mountie Van Zant, and Larry, Curly, and Mo Van Zant, the three of whom put out three legendary albums with Iggy Pop.
But younger brother Donnie is the one we’re interested in here. He’s the long-time front man of 38 Special, who gets labeled a Southern Rock band when what they really are is a lame pop band—they’d lose an arm-wrestling match with Rupert Holmes. They’re the epitome of generic pop, but generic pop has long been a winning formula. So let’s give 38 Special their due—between 1981 and 1991 they scored two No. 1 singles and another eleven singles that broke the Top Ten mark. Contrast that with the Rolling Stones, who during the same period broke the Top Ten only five times and scored nary a No. 1. Take that, Mick and Keith!
38 Special are—album sales charts notwithstanding—primarily a singles band. So why take your chances on one of their twelve albums when you can hear the best on 2000’s long-winded 20th Century Masters—The Millennium Collection. You have to love that 20th Century Masters makes ‘em sound like Arnold Schoenberg, whose atonal adaptation of Black Oak Arkansas’ “Happy Hooker” caused a riot at Austria’s Vienna Musikverein.
And the compilation proves that, to their credit, these pop savvy Southern rockers in name only bequeathed to the world several songs that—if disparaged by snobs like me—will burn forever like the eternal flame at Minsk, whose leaders are loathsome Russian lackeys whose government is already feeling the pinch of the embargo on copies of “Hold on Loosely.”
And let’s face it, “Hold on Loosely” is a tremendous song. Great guitar riff, primo melody—this ain’t Southern rock, it’s top notch power pop. Non-member but song co-writer Jim Peterik—Survivor founder and the guy responsible for “Eye of the Tiger—likened the song’s opening riff to the Cars meeting Lynyrd Skynyrd. I’d describe it as a meeting between Steely Dan and Wet Willie myself.
And the hits just keep on coming, folks! The catchy guitar riff that opens “Caught Up in You” really does have a Cars vibe, and the melody is so infections you’ll want to rush to the ER to have it treated. Van Zant doesn’t sound like your average Jacksonville, Florida boy, and the song’s pure pop for South of the Mason-Dixon line people burns like the proverbial dry cornfield.
“Back Where You Belong” kicks off with the same guitar riff as “Caught Up in You” and is every bit as catchy, but 38 Special commit the cardinal Southern Rock sin by throwing some bright synthesizer by Steve McRay into the mix. Brother Ronnie set the standard for knocking out Skynyrd keyboard player Billy Powell’s teeth—twice—and you can be dead certain he’d have done McCray the same favor.
But things go downhill from there on. You know you’re in trouble when the best of the bunch is the hackneyed “Twentieth Century Fox,” a hard rocker that makes up for its lack of personality with some badass guitars. The Cars rip “Somebody Like You” suffers from the fact that very little separates it from “Back Where You Belong,” but it’s Flashdance ready with its ubiquitous eighties drum sound and perfectly layered vocals. What it really has going for it, as do most of the songs on the compilation, are the paired guitars of Don Barnes and Jeff Carlisi, who rarely fail to bring some spark to the proceedings.
“Rockin’ Into the Night” is a Bad Company song on a diet and has something to do with a sweet Madonna with a bible in her hands. The openings of both “Rough Housin’” and “Wild Eyed Country Boys” are 1984-vintage Van Halen, but neither meets the latter band’s high standards and lack the lyrical inspiration of Donnie’s elder brother. In comparison to “Gimmie Three Steps,” “Rough Housin’” is flat-out dumb. Ronnie got eighty-nine percent of the smarts in the family, and if it weren’t for McRay’s harmonica solo on “Rough Housin’” the song would be devoid of all personality whatsoever.
On “Stone Cold Believer” Van Zant sounds like a true son of the South and the guitars have a Skynyrd feel to them, but the song goes North when that blasted electric piano comes in. Southern rockers have no use for electric pianos, except to throw them out hotel windows. The once-listen then file it away “If I’d Been You” is about as Southern as the great state of Alaska sans the musk ox, which you’ll want to look at more than once.
“Like No Other Night” is just like every other dull night in MOR country. It’s one for the boys and girls to sway to at the prom before boy impregnates girl in the backseat of his beloved GTO, which he’ll then have to sell to pay rent and buy baby formula. “Fantasy Girl”—which is, hard to believe, even worse than its title—is a craven cash-in of a power ballad that is zero power and bad ballad. There is stupid and then there is stupider and then there is “Fantasy Girl,” which almost scares me as much as a rural Jacksonville swamp gator in my bedroom.
There is nothing special about 38 Special; their sole reason for being seems to have been to fill the gap between Billy Squier and Loverboy. Ronnie Van Zant famously encouraged us to throw our Saturday night specials to the bottom of the sea. Your 38 Special isn’t as cheap as a Saturday night special but they’re cheap enough and just as dangerous, and you’d be smart to throw them in as well.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D+
