Customer Reviews

Goin South

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Smartly compiled by Razor & Tie Records (aka "The 70s Preservation Society") and recently certified gold, "Goin' South" is a first-rate drinkin' or driving (not together!) Southern-fried rock compilation. Seven of its 17 tunes rest-stopped Top 10, five in the Top 5. It peeks along the way into the Southern psyche musically and culturally even when its artists aren't all Southern regionally.

It matters little that the Band were Canadians, Joe Walsh was from Ohio (by way of Kansas), or that George Thorogood leads the "Delaware" Destroyers. Songs like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," the Doobie Brothers #1 "Black Water" and the now-cliched "Bad To The Bone" draw from a Southern music and folklore well stretching from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Margaret Mitchell to Robert Johnson's blues and Burt Reynolds' black Trans Am.

You get Paul Bunyanesque humor and macho mythmaking ("Devil Went Down To Georgia," "Tuff Enuff," "Dixie Chicken"), resilient, Confederate-flag waving spirit (Lynyrd Skynyrd's still-fresh "Sweet Home Alabama," Molly Hatchet's boot-tight rock buzzer "Flirtin With Disaster") even relationship restlessness and wanderlust handled poignantly (Marshall Tucker's 1977 "Heard It In A Love Song," "Amie," "Hold On Loosely") and hilariously (Dan Baird having a good ol' boy time yodeling the Georgia Satellites' #2 1986 hit, "Keep Your Hands To Yourself.")

All this is set to some of classic rock's finest intro riffs from genre giants like Walsh, Skynyrd's Ed King, Mountain's Leslie West, Dickie Betts and Les Dudek (trading riffs on "Ramblin' Man"). You'll miss Southern anthems like "Green Grass and High Tides" and "Free Bird," (not to mention Wet Willie's "Keep On Smilin'" and Elvin Bishop's "Fooled Around and Fell In Love" which would have fit here). But they're better saved for the genre's long-overdue box set; besides, no Southern or classic rock LP collection is complete without them. (This set outranks the sadly deleted "South's Greatest Hits" on Phil Walden's even more sadly deleted Capricorn Records.)

Every song here acknowledges Southern blues/country/rock foundation ("Bad To The Bone" is stonewashed Willie Dixon) or taps it directly (Ram Jam's guitar-thick 1977 take on Leadbelly's "Black Betty."). Country stars like Hank Williams Jr., Travis Tritt, and Brooks & Dunn (who recently covered "My Maria") have folded this music back into their styles. So, while not the broadest Southern music map (its hitchhiking, spaghetti-western cover model notwithstanding), "Goin' South" is a fast, fun hayride down dusty, 70s-80s musical side streets. Highly recommended.

Goin' South is a collection of southern rock songs that contains all the usual supects. "Sweet Home Alabama", "Ramblin' Man", "Dixie Chicken", "Hold On Loosely", "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" and "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" are southern rock staples and anthems. Even though you've probably heard these songs hundreds of times each, they still can excite. I'd have to argue that songs like "Bad To The Bone", "Mississippi Queen", "Rocky Mountain Way" & "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" don't really qualify as true southern rock, but they are all great songs. Goin' South is a great cd to pop into the car stereo for a road trip.

Goin' South has a great collection of songs. If you read the list of songs and love this kind of music this is a great CD for you. I love every song on this CD so I snapped up a copy right away. But when I got it home and listened to it I was so disappointed at the production quality. It sounds like they dubbed all these classic rock songs right off an 8-track player. It was so bad I started adjusting the knobs on my stereo thinking something had broken! I switched to another CD just to compare and verified the problem is in the recording. Also, they package this in a cheaper than usual jewel case there is no inside jacket and the cover is printed on cheap paper. I would expect this if it were a... bargain bin special but not at this price!

It's rare that an anthology sold on late night television is definitive, but this one is. It leaves out only a couple of significant groups from this genre _ the Amazing Rhythm Aces and the Atlanta Rhythm Section. More important, it demonstrates how basic this genre is to the roots of American music. It's now been divided into blues, country, rock, and what have you. A lot of good music has been lost because the industry decided to split the market into subcategories.

Example: The Band was never considered southern rock (four of its five members were Canadians.) But the group's music was pure Americana. "Black Betty'' sounds like the North Mississippi All Stars and is 180 degrees from Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels. But it fits.

One other note: Lynrd Skynrd was usually dissed by highbrow reviewers despite its wonderful rythymic innovation, particularly in "Sweet Home Alabama.'' The Allmans were beloved. Why? They're very similar.

The music industry again?

I digress.

Buy this. It's far more varied than the theme suggests.

PS _ If they used The Band, they also could have used any one of a number of Grateful Dead Cuts.

Yes, a very diverse genre.

This cd is sweet as hell. I bought the two disk-set, which has more songs, but the songs on the one disk set are enough. I live in Michigan, but the first time I heard of this cd I was in the south watching TV. Later that year, I said I gotta get that. It is perfect for driving down south in a car trip. You really get in a mood. Every song is awesome, my favorites are "Sweet Home Alabama", "Devil Went Down To Georgia" "Amie" and Pretty Much everything. if you don't have this cd, I am crying for you.

These are the original songs. You'll know and sing along to all of them. Great CD.

GOIN' SOUTH-VARIOUS ARTISTS: You know that old joke about men being too stubborn to ask directions? Don't know where the brains who compiled this "Southern Rock" grabbag went to school, but when I took geography, the South meant states BELOW the Mason/Dixon Line. While Florida's Lynyrd Skynyrd, Georgia's Allman Brothers, and South Carolina's Marshall Tucker certainly fit the bill, almost half the artists kickin' up their heels here are ringers. Joe Walsh, bless his Rocky Mountain heart, is a Cleveland native, heavy hitters Mountain hail from Long Island, and four fifths of the Band are Canadian, fer cryin' out loud! ZZ Top and Wet Willie woulda fit the bill a damn sight better than George Thorogood and the (Delaware) Destroyers. The second volume of GOIN' SOUTH even hauls out British blooze bashers Foghat; apparently the assumption here is that beer drinkin', hell-raisin' lovers of good ole boy boogie are too fried to know the difference. Call this album PARTY TILL YOU PUKE for all I care...just don't call it GOIN' SOUTH!

RATING: TWO "YA CAN'T GIT THAR FROM HERE"'S

One of my all time favorite musical forms has been what we term as "Acceleration Music"; and this is it! Very few to skip over, if any.
If you just like music that you can't identify as being in either Rock or Country, this CD is for you, as its follow-up!
Aces! ~ Mariance

This CD rocks. If I had put together a CD I do not think I could have done any better.

You can't get any further south than "Goin' South". Seventeen tracks of classic hits from the greatest Southern Rockers found anywhere. The gang is all here, Marshall Tucker, Molly Hatchet, Georgia Satellites, Little Feet, The Allman Brothers, Lynard Skynyrd, and the Charlie Daniels Band. This is one of the better Southern Rock collections that I've seen. The music is good, even though I would have picked a few different songs to represent the bands on this album. Overall, I like the songs, and the bands. This is one of those CDs you plug in and let it rip for a good ol' time. This is a good compilation, no doubt. You'll be in the south in no time.