Lynyrd Skynyrd
Old Time Greats

THE REVIEW

With a Jack Daniel's-style cover, "Old Time Greats" is the ultimate expression of the poetics of dust. But what dust? The dust of roads worn by time, the dust of smelly bars in the desert, the dust of scraps abandoned in desolate lands, the dust symbolizing the slowness of a season or the loss of a memory: these and many other feelings can be conveyed by the sounds of Lynyrd Skynyrd. However, no one has captured the ills of a society that grew too quickly quite like Rob Zombie with his film "The Devil's Rejects." There, among dust and debris, among faces scarred by alcohol or for defending some brothel's tawdry woman from the county, and the outcasts of a province without a future, the "bad guys," as in the final scene with the notes of "Free Bird", are free to fly, riddled with lead, towards other shores.

"Free Bird" is a symbolic anthem of an era, it is an uncompromising piece, not just for fair dreamers, but it is a "proletarian" song with which we can all dream, attempt to be free, good or bad: 9 minutes of solid, primitive rock (in the positive sense of the term) without added frills, it is pure rock and not the sterile type we're accustomed to today.
"Free Bird", "Sweet Home Alabama", "Tuesday's Gone" and "Gimme Back My Bullet" capture an era, sing a generation, and bring back the sound of a genuine rock, now hidden under the dust on record store shelves to make room for the bland catchy tunes of up-and-coming bands or the best of the best of singers and bands still in circulation.

This is not rhetoric because the thirty songs of the double album have the flavor of a good aged wine, they are thirty tracks in which Lynyrd Skynyrd bring back the sounds of the American province, the rhythms of the folklore of a society that grew too quickly and forgot its origins. There is nothing to be surprised about, Lynyrd Skynyrd with their rock lying somewhere between Creedence Clearwater Revival and the Allman Brothers Band, have redrawn the coordinates of rock that emerged from the fervor of Woodstock, and this best of with its boozy cover can be a good starting point for those who wish to know them, while for everyone else, it is advisable not to let them gather dust and enjoy them properly.

 The double CD was distilled and packaged in Hamburg, Germany in 1988 and can be found as on import sites.